Today is the expiry date for the BHP put options I wrote on the 3rd May. Closing price was $46.25, exactly $3 above my strike price, so those options expired worthless. Yay! Although you bank the premium the day after the trade, you still have an open obligation until the contracts expire, so it's always a good day if your options expire worthless (unless you're an option buyer!) For this trade, I was on the hook for 10 contracts of 112 shares per contract at 43.25 per share, so $48440. To be clear, this is no different than just outright buying 1120 BHP shares at $43.25. Actually, that's not quite true, if the trade went against me, yes I would have had to buy 1120 BHP shares, but don't forget I still keep the premium of $1.50! So buying at $43.25 would really have been the same as buying at $41.75 (which was ok with me anyway - I would have started writing calls to sell my holding if that happened). Here's the chart. I highlighted the purchase date, strike price, and expiry date. Notice that the share did move below my strike price for a few days. Technically, I could have been exercised on one of those days, but it rarely happens.
There's probably something else that you might be thinking at this point....
Wouldn't I have been better off just buying the shares on the 3rd May? I could have sold them today for $3 more! I would have made $3360 instead of $1680. That's true, I suppose. But that's only if I sold though. Knowing myself, I probably wouldn't have. So.... I believe the correct thinking here, is that I don't care. So what. You need to know what strategy works for you. I'm terrible at picking when to sell... Writing options is great for me, as there is an end date on the trade before I even get in. So I avoid my weakness this way. Take a look at any chart. It's so easy to say "if I bought here and sold here, I'd have made <insert lots more than you actually made>". So what. You didn't. Why think that way. This trade represents an annualised return of 29.38% which isn't bad in my opinion. I entered the trade using earlier support levels as a guide for picking a reasonable strike. I thought BHP would remain mostly sideways, and expected it to add $1-2 which it did. So I'm really pleased with this result.
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