The "daily Call" From Option Alpha: Options Trading | Stock Options | Stock Trading | Trading Online

Hey everyone. This is Kirk here again from Option Alpha and welcome back to the daily call. Today, we’re answering the question, “Are brokers ripping you off with mini options commissions?” Really quick, mini options contracts are just a couple of ticker symbols that actually have mini contracts that actually trade in. The name sounds just like what they do. They trade a miniature sized number of underlying shares per contracts. Whereas most regular options would trade $100 or control 100 shares per contract, with mini options, you only control 10 shares per contract and therefore, the option price is generally 1/10th of what the regular standard price would be because you're controlling less shares. Now, on a few symbols, Apple, Google, Amazon, SPX, etcetera right now and I think it may expand into the future, but the idea behind minis has always been to give people a more cost advantage way to trade some of these higher underlying prices like Apple, Amazon, Google, etcetera which are multi-hundred dollar st