It's an option. When you buy a call, you buy the right to buy the stock at a particular price. So in this case, he bought the right to purchase SGYP at $2 on Jan. 19th or any day prior to that. He paid $.25 X 100 for that right so $25 plus commission. 1 call option gives you the right to purchase 100 shares of the stock at a set price.
So, if the price of the stock is anywhere north of $2.25, he makes money. If the stock price is $2.50, he doubles his money because he only paid $.25 and now the option is worth $.50.
The catch is though that if the stock falls below $2 on the last day, then he loses all his money and whoever sold him the option gets to keep the money that he paid. So options are risky, but they also can result in some very nice gains if you hit it right.
If SGYP goes up to $3 by the 19th, he has quadrupled his money. Of course, no one knows what it will do, but it sounded like a good bet to me. The stock price is already over $2.25 so he could sell the option now or he could go ahead and exercise the right to buy the stock for $2 each if he wants. He would probably make more money by waiting and hoping the stock price will increase further and hence the price of the option would increase as well.
Your brokerage account must be set up to buy and sell options if you want to purchase a call option.
