Going through a haunted house in Salem, Massachusetts, on Friday the 13th during a full moon. Quadruple witching.
Also, it's a term used to describe multiple expirations in the financial markets.
Derivative contracts have expirations. We're talking about options and futures here. These expiration dates are pre-set. Every quarter (every three months), the expirations of stock options, stock futures, stock index futures, and stock index options all take place on the same date. It happens on the third Friday of March, June, September, and December (each representing the last month of a particular calendar quarter).
These expirations can cause volatility in the underlying markets. Squaring the derivative positions involves buying and selling the underlying assets (in this case, individual stocks and stock indexes). All that action can make things wonky when quadruple witching happens.
Related or Semi-related Video
Finance: What Is a Call Option?25 Views
finance a la shmoop. what is a call option? option? option, where are you? okay
yeah yeah. not phone options, call options. and a close but no cigar. a call option [man smokes in a tub of cash]
is the right to call or buy a security. the concept is easy the math is hard.
you think Coca Cola's poised for a breakout as they go into the new low
calorie beverage business. their stock is at 50 bucks a share and you can buy a [man stands on a stage as crowd cheers]
call option for $1. well that call option buys you the right
to then buy coke stock at 55 bucks a share anytime you want in the next
hundred and 20 days. so let's say Coke announces its new sugarless drink flavor
zero it's two weeks later and the stock skyrockets to fifty eight dollars a
share. you've already paid the dollar for the option now you have to exercise it. [man lifts weights]
so you buy the stock and you're all in now for fifty five dollars plus one or
fifty six bucks a share and your total value is now fifty eight bucks. well you
could turn around today and sell the bundle that moment, and you'll have
turned your dollar into two dollars of profit really fast. and obviously had the [equation on screen]
stock not skyrocketed so quickly well you would have lost everything. still you
lucked out and now you're sitting on some serious cash, courtesy of your call [two men in a tub of cash]
options. as for Coke flavor zero turned out to be nothing more than canned water.
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