According to the data, Soros's famous quantum fund managed more than 20 billion dollars at that time, and its net profit in 20 13 was 5.5 billion dollars, making it the most profitable hedge fund again. Among them, 1 100 million dollars came from its strategy of shorting the yen in the first two months of last year.
Faced with a wave of unilateral quotation of 10%, ordinary people may think of the option of directly throwing out 10 billion yen for dollars. Although you can earn 10 billion, the risk may also be 10 billion; Novice investors may think of futures, with a margin of about 1 100 million, they can earn 1 100 million, but the risk is still great; When you learn to buy imaginary options with little money, you will understand risk management and take another step away from the master.
In fact, the most surprising thing is that Soros's team only used about $30 million to realize this benefit, which is equivalent to a 30-fold increase in funds! What it really buys is a large number of reverse knock-out options with different execution prices, which is cheaper than the imagined options (that is, options that can only make money when the yen falls sharply, but will be invalid when it falls below a certain level). Even if all these options are lost, it has nothing to do with the overall situation, and once some of them are done right, it will bring considerable benefits, which of course requires a more accurate grasp of the final price trend.
This is like the World Cup draw group match "Italy VS Uruguay". Ordinary people just guess that Uruguay won by surprise. It's easy to guess correctly, but it costs a lot of money to make big money. The master not only guessed the winner, but also guessed the goal difference; Soros, on the other hand, is equivalent to spending a small amount of money to guess the score directly. Although it is more difficult, he can buy more results (even bet on Su Ya's recurrence on the court). Once one of the results is guessed, he can get high returns, but his biggest advantage is that the investment and risk are greatly reduced.
The enlightenment of the above story is that options are not gambling tools, but advanced insurance in essence. Many people simply compare lottery tickets to options, but the above story tells us that real masters don't gamble with their lives to make money, but consider how to choose the most powerful tools to achieve their goals at the lowest cost after discovering a possible potential investment opportunity through full fundamental research and analysis. The powerful tool here is the option. The highly leveraged nature of options allows experts to save more money and make more meaningful strategies.
Therefore, it is not appropriate to use lottery tickets as a metaphor for options. The most appropriate metaphor of options should be a kind of advanced insurance, which is mainly manifested in the following aspects: First, we can not only buy options, but also be sellers like insurance companies (as we all know, insurance companies make more money than policyholders). Of course, to be able to bear the corresponding risks, it is necessary to pay a deposit to sell options; Secondly, ordinary insurance can only be held at maturity after purchase, but the option can be traded at T+0 at any time, and its price changes in real time. In fact, most option investors will not hold them at maturity; Finally, general insurance is often only a risk in the "bad" direction, while the risk of option insurance can be not only a "downward" risk, but also an "upward" risk, which can bring more changes to our portfolio.
Therefore, if you want to make good use of options, you can look for some trends or risks that are ignored by the market but are "very likely". You need to analyze the trend of the market index or individual stocks more carefully, rather than simply analyzing whether it will go up. Having the option, a high-end weapon, and making full use of its "insurance" attribute will give our investment process greater wings and keep opportunities.