Options Installment Strategies: Long-Term Spreads for Profiting from Time Decay

An “installment strategy” in its most basic form, combines two options, one long-term position and one short-term. This strategy is designed as a conservative, no-cost method to either eliminate risk for future trading when stock is owned; or to fix the price for a future purchase of the underlying security.

Portfolio managers and experienced individual traders face a chronic problem – risk versus time. This goes beyond the well-known time decay of options and expands to the ever-present mar...