Stock option...what is your guess?

[FIRE'd@51]

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Originally Posted by free4now At my company there were "blackout periods" right before quarterly results were announced, when the company wouldn't allow employee stock options to be exercised. If a call came due during this period it might be two weeks before it could be covered by exercising, and the market price might have changed unfavorably by quite a bit between the call coming due and covering it. So in that case you wouldn't have been successful in keeping the stock in the 41.05-48.55 range.

The exchange-traded options we have been discussing expire May 17. Her employee options expire May 1, so she will have exercised them by then, more than 2 weeks in advance of the announcement of HPQ's 1Q earnings (assuming HPQ has a 2-week blackout period), which I believe will be around May 20. Since she doesn't have the funds to carry the stock, she will just have to unwind the options position at that time, but I don't see how her profit falls outside of the 41.05-48.55 range. If the stock is below 42.50, she exercises her put. If her call is assigned early, she will get $50 per share for her stock.

[megacorp-firee]

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Originally Posted by zoey Questions are: Answers: 1. Yes, this is an option that was granted at work. 2. $29 is the price when it was granted. So, the grant price is less and I was waiting for the new year to exercise/sell it because I didn't want the profit to fall in 2007 since my income will be much lower (recently laid off) in 2008. However, I'm seeing stock prices falling since the first of the year. So, I'm looking for input on whether, or not, you think I should sell now, or wait and gamble that stock will go up before May 1. Thanks!

IMO, you have to figure out what you are trying to accomplish.
1) get profit into 2008. Check!
2) make maximum profit. ? what does that mean?

1st, you have plenty of good advice and recommendations on how to proceed from others.

For some reason, I get the impression that you are not a fanatical student of the market (I could be wrong). So some of those recommendations might be a little daunting to you. As well as somewhat risky.
Also I think you are looking for the magic bullet, less filling/more taste. IMO, it does not exist.

Now that you have fulfilled objective #1, you now have to figure out if you are happy with the $15 or so profit that you have so far (yes I know it was more last year, but that was last year) or if you want to gamble hold the options until May, or do one of the other strategies that have been suggested (options, puts/calls, ...etc.).

IMO, if you lock in the $15 or so now, unless you want to own HP for a longer period, you should just take the dough and DCA it into your AA, using index funds.
If you want to own HP or try and maximize it, why I don't know, then you could use one of the suggested recommendations. You choose how much you want to risk/make and that will determine which recommendation.

Analysis; the company stock (HP) is incentive pay. Don't treat it as an investment. Cash it in and run your plan. No one on this board can guarentee you that the stock price will go up before May.