STRENGTHEN YOUR STRATEGY WITH STOCK OPTIONS

A world of options

Cornèrtrader gives you access to more than 400 of the most liquid options on stocks and stock indices in the most exciting markets in the US, Europe and Asia-Pacific. That means you have ample opportunity to trade individual stocks that you follow. Or trade on indices like the S&P500, DAX, SMI, etc.

Shifting strategies

Stock options provide an opportunity to execute a variety of plans for playing the markets and maximising the potential for profits.

Protective Put

Hedge your portfolio of stocks to protect against a short-term downside in the market.

Covered Call

While you enjoy the benefits of the underlying stock ownership, you can also earn a premium writing calls.

Straddles

Straddles allow you to take advantage of the unpredictability of stock price gap movements following quarterly earnings reports.

Tools

Option Strategies*

It has a dedicated module that allows you to place combos, by creating multi-leg combos or by selecting a predefined strategy and adjust its parameters.

*Currently available only for American stock options and options listed under "Option Price Reporting Authority (OPRA)".

Option Chain

An option chain, is a representation of options, displaying listings of all available option contracts simultaneously, (both puts and calls), for different strikes, for a given security.

In the matrix, you can customize the visible columns: traders typically focus on 'last price' with “volume” traded, 'open interest', volatility, delta and 'bid' and 'ask' columns to assess current market conditions and compare the opportunity to trade a given option vs the others.

 

Stock op�tions In-The-Money (ITM) - execution at the expiring

The Stock options have delivery requirements to be met at the expiring, meaning that in order to be executed and to receive the underlying stocks, the account must reserve the equivalent cost of acquiring the stocks. If this is not matched, the stock option position will be closed usually 2h before expiry.

So two scenarios can occur when Stock options are In-The-Money (ITM)

• you have sufficient Cash to buy the underlying stock > you will be assigned to buy at the strike price.
• you do NOT have sufficient Cash to buy the underlying stock -> your stock option position will be closed before expiry.

How the system manage the risk and margin spikes:

When approaching the expiry of a stock options and the option is In-The-Money (ITM) or close to be ITM, our system will start to calculate the costs of acquiring the underlying stocks and reserve the cash accordingly.

More specifically, 2 hours before the expiry, the system will start reserving more and more cash; this to ensure that the cash required acquiring the underlying at the strike price is available at the time of expiry.

The Cash that the risk system reserves is shown in the platform in the Initial Margin Requirement and Maintenance Margin Requirement fields. For this reason, a spike in your Margin Utilization around expiry can be experienced and in certain cases can reach or cross the levels at which normally a stop out would take place, in particular when the account has no sufficient cash available. But this is only a technical setup needed to make sure the account can meet the delivery requirements at the expiry. The account, in fact, will not be stopped based on this and will go back to the normal levels once the expiry is reached, unless other leveraged positions (ex. Forex, CFDs, Futures) are present, which do not match their own margin requirements (usually margin calls notifications will be activated).