Zeev's Turnips Patch-No Politics (ZEEV)

[Zeev Hed]

Hard 10, I think few other posters posted various sources indicating that indeed, around 80% of all options expire worthless. That means, in my book, the guy that wrote the option and collected the time premium winn 80% of the time (not necessarily big wins, particularly with those premiums contracting here) and 20% of the time the buyer of those time premiums won. I know few guys that made like "thieves" on the bu$$ December calls, they took profits along the way, paying for the the cost of the options and keeping a good chink, and they left few options on the table in case the $33/34 area is taken out, it was not and they lost on those option. Yet, they did quite well on the rest. That strategy paid off because they took profits along the way. Most of the time, the options buyers are not so lucky. Of course, the 20% winning bets on options is probably (I have no data to support that assumption, it is a wild guess) concentrated on 5% of all option players (those that have paid the tuition and developed a strict option trading discipline), thus the 80%/20% picture is probably even optimistic.