Short Put Options Trading Strategy

What is short put option strategy?

A short put is the opposite of buy put option. With this option trading strategy, you are obliged to buy the underlying security at a fixed price in the future. This option trading strategy has a low profit potential if the stock trades above the strike price and exposed to high risk if stock goes down. It is also helpful when you expect implied volatility to fall, that will decrease the price of the option you sold.

When to initiate a short put?

A short put is best used when you expect the underlying asset to rise moderately. It would still benefit if the underlying asset remains at the same level, because the time decay factor will always be in your favour as the time value of put will reduce over a period of time as you reach near to expiry. This is a good option trading strategy to use because it gives you upfront credit, which will help to somewhat offset the margin.

Let’s try to understand with an Example:

Suppose Nifty is trading at Rs. 8300. A put option contract with a strike price of 8200 is trading at Rs. 80. If you expect that the price of Nifty will surge in the coming weeks, so you will sell 8200 strike and receive upfront profit of Rs. 6,000 (75*80). This transaction will result in net credit because you will receive the money in your broking account for writing the put option. This will be the maximum amount that you will gain if the option expires worthless. If the market moves against you, then you should have a stop loss based on your risk appetite to avoid unlimited loss.

So, as expected, if Nifty Increases to 8400 or higher by expiration, the options will be out of the money at expiration and therefore expire worthless. You will not have any further liability and amount of Rs. 6000 (75*80) will be your maximum profit. If Nifty goes against your expectation and falls to 7800 then the loss would be amount to Rs. 24000 (75*320). Following is the payoff schedule assuming different scenarios of expiry. For the ease of understanding, we did not take into account commission charges and Margin.

Analysis of Short Put Option Trading Strategy

A short put options trading strategy can help in generating regular income in a rising or sideways market but it does carry significant risk and it is not suitable for beginner traders. It’s also not a good strategy to use if you expect underlying assets to rise quickly in a short period of time; instead one should try long call trade strategy.