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

Hey everyone, Kirk here again from Option Alpha and welcome back to the daily call. Today, we are going to be answering the question, “Can you exercise your long option contract at any time?” There’s two parts to this question. The first part here is that you have a long option contract. That’s the requirement, is that you’re a long call option buyer or a long put option buyer. And in either case, when you are actually an option buyer of contracts versus option sellers, you have the choice or the “option” to exercise your contract or not. The general answer to this is that if you have a long contract and you’re an option buyer, yes, you can exercise that contract at any time up until expiration. Now, obviously, you can't exercise the contract beyond the expiration date. If the expiration is next Friday and you try to exit the contract or exercise it the following Monday, it’s not going to work. You got to do it up to expiration date. Now, there’s also a couple of little tidbits in here that you should be awar