finance Finance refers to monetary resources and to the study and Academic discipline, discipline of money, currency, assets and Liability (financial accounting), liabilities. As a subject of study, is a field of Business administration, Business Admin ...

, a call option, often simply labeled a "call", is a

contract A contract is an agreement that specifies certain legally enforceable rights and obligations pertaining to two or more parties. A contract typically involves consent to transfer of goods, services, money, or promise to transfer any of thos ...

between the buyer and the seller of the call option to exchange a security at a set

price A price is the (usually not negative) quantity of payment or compensation expected, required, or given by one party to another in return for goods or services. In some situations, especially when the product is a service rather than a ph ...

. The buyer of the call option has the right, but not the obligation, to buy an agreed quantity of a particular

commodity In economics, a commodity is an economic goods, good, usually a resource, that specifically has full or substantial fungibility: that is, the Market (economics), market treats instances of the good as equivalent or nearly so with no regard to w ...

financial instrument Financial instruments are monetary contracts between parties. They can be created, traded, modified and settled. They can be cash (currency), evidence of an ownership, interest in an entity or a contractual right to receive or deliver in the form ...

(the underlying) from the seller of the option at or before a certain time (the expiration date) for a certain price (the strike price). This effectively gives the buyer a ''long'' position in the given asset. The seller (or "writer") is obliged to sell the commodity or financial instrument to the buyer if the buyer so decides. This effectively gives the seller a ''short'' position in the given asset. The buyer pays a fee (called a premium) for this right. The term "call" comes from the fact that the owner has the right to "call the stock away" from the seller.

Price of options

Option values vary with the value of the underlying instrument over time. The price of the call contract must act as a proxy response for the valuation of: * the expected intrinsic value of the option, defined as the expected value of the difference between the strike price and the market value, i.e., max −X, 0 * the

risk premium A risk premium is a measure of excess return that is required by an individual to compensate being subjected to an increased level of risk. It is used widely in finance and economics, the general definition being the expected risky Rate of retur ...

to compensate for the unpredictability of the value * the

time value of money The time value of money refers to the fact that there is normally a greater benefit to receiving a sum of money now rather than an identical sum later. It may be seen as an implication of the later-developed concept of time preference. The time ...

reflecting the delay to the payout time The call contract price generally will be higher when the contract has more time to expire (except in cases when a significant

dividend A dividend is a distribution of profits by a corporation to its shareholders, after which the stock exchange decreases the price of the stock by the dividend to remove volatility. The market has no control over the stock price on open on the ex ...

is present) and when the underlying financial instrument shows more volatility or other unpredictability. Determining this value is one of the central functions of financial mathematics. The most common method used is the Black–Scholes model, which provides an estimate of the price of European-style options.

References

{{Derivatives market Options (finance)

Price of options

See also

References