Keep your Investing Options Open – Doctor

OR – Hedge your Bets

By Dr. David Edward Marcinko MBA MEd CMP™

http://www.CertifiedMedicalPlanner.org

[Publisher-in-Chief]

As a physician executive or investor, if you don’t ordinarily deal in options or other financial derivatives, you may need to brush up on puts and calls, straddles, strangles (or combinations), forwards, futures, swaps, spreads, and non-equity options such as stock index options. Options and other financial derivatives can be used by astute physicians, financial advisors and investment managers not only as a tool to better manage the investment risks potentially affecting portfolio returns, but to craft truly value-added investment strategies customized to meet investors’ needs. The three main types of risk of equity securities (individual company, industry, and market) can be mitigated with options.

Individual Company Risk

Individual company risk can be addressed with equity options in that company’s stock. Industry risk can be reduced through the use of narrow-based index options, while market risk can be mitigated with broad-based index options. Sophisticated hedging and risk management strategies can be designed using both equity and stock index options.

Exotic Stock Options?

Some doctors feel that options have been generally thought of as too risky or exotic or requiring too much capital, resulting in a general lack of comfort. A decade ago, these opinions have no doubt been shaped by the collapse of Bearings and the resulting bitter litigation by Proctor & Gamble and Gibson Greetings against Bankers Trust. Last decade, it was Enron, Tyco, WorldCom, Lehman Brothers, AIG, BA, Fannie, Freddie and all those involved in the “flash-crash” of 2008-09; etc.

Assessment

Generally, premiums paid in buying puts or calls are nondeductible capital expenditures and may produce a capital gain or loss depending upon whether the option is sold prior to exercise, the call expires unexercised, or, if the option is exercised, it is added to the basis of the stock (call) or deducted from it (put). Premiums received for writing puts or calls are not included in income upon receipt but are deferred until the option expires, is exercised, or a closing transaction is entered into. Non-equity options (index options) are marked to market at year end (same as for futures) with 60% considered long-term capital gain and 40% considered short-term.

Note: “An Introduction to Options and Other Financial Derivative Strategies,” by Thomas J. Boczar, Trust & Estates, February 1997, pp. 43–68, INTERTEC/K-III Publishing.

The primary objectives in using derivatives are:

1. Risk management and hedging (reducing or eliminating downside risk, monetizing a position, deferring and possibly avoiding capital gains taxes)

2. Leveraging investment capital

3. Enhancing after-tax returns

4. Creating customized risk/return profiles

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Speaker: If you need a moderator or speaker for an upcoming event, Dr. David E. Marcinko; MBA – Publisher-in-Chief of the Medical Executive-Post – is available for seminar or speaking engagements. Contact: MarcinkoAdvisors@msn.com

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On Financial Sector Failings

Understanding the Debacle

[By Staff Reporters]56371606

Did you know that Michael Lewis and David Einhorn recently gave a nice review of the financial system catastrophe, and its devastating flaws, causes and effects, in the January 3rd 2009 New York Times?

Exposing the Flaws

In review of How to Repair a Broken Financial World, they said:

1. Wall Street CEOs won’t self-incriminate or blow the whistle on their own companies [Think: thin-blue line]. And, they receive bonuses and are on peer-compensation committees. Perhaps they might even be fired if they self-accuse of irresponsibility.

2. The credit-rating agencies, which are supposed to carefully measure the amount of risk that companies take, dropped the ball.

For example Fannie, Freddie, GE and AIG all had triple-A ratings; remember Enron? But, they disguised the risk, rather than expose it. Why? Because they would have to re-rate tens of thousands of credits tied to them, as well as increase their own cost-of-capital; integrity and reputations be damned! And, did the big financial firms contribute to those very same credit-rating agencies [pay-2-play]?

3. Was Chris Cox and the Securities and Exchange Commission [SEC] competent enough, or motivated enough, to do its job and investigate the Madoff scheme even after being warned about it?

Assessment

Can you cite some other, even more pernicious, flaws? For example; how did the mortgage industry’s engorgement of commission-driven sales, and the consumer sentiment to “own a home – at all costs” factor into the fault-line?   

Link: http://www.nytimes.com/2009/01/04/opinion/04lewiseinhornb.html?_r=1

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Speaker: If you need a moderator or speaker for an upcoming event, Dr. David E. Marcinko; MBA – Publisher-in-Chief of the Medical Executive-Post – is available for seminar or speaking engagements. Contact: MarcinkoAdvisors@msn.com

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