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What Is the Risk?

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One of the biggest problems with exercising an option early is that there might be more risk at this point. It is true that you can exercise it at a given time, but there is always a chance that you might lose more from an early exercise than if you just waited for a while. The problem with exercising early is that you will still have the right to pay a certain amount for a share. You will not necessarily lose anything when you do this. However, you will risk not getting the profits that you could earn from a stock in the event that it rallies and moves into the position you wanted.

If you exercise the stock and want to own the shares now, you will sell your option and then buy the stock at that total value you agreed to at the expiration date. What if something happens with the stock and it moves in the opposite direction of what you wanted to buy or sell it at? You will end up buying the stock much higher than what you may have wanted to pay.

If the option continued to run until its proper expiration date, you would have simply paid the premium for the option. When you let the option go all the way to its expiration date, the most you could lose is the money when the option is not in the money.

Review the risks before you start an option. Do not try to sell something that might be overly expensive or potentially risky for you.