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Put-call parity arbitrage I

When there is not put-call parity, there is an arbitrage opportunity. In the second of two videos on arbitrage and put-call parity, we explore how this works. Created by Sal Khan.

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  • blobby green style avatar for user mavisrain79
    i think i'm dumb. i can't still understand why P+S should be equal to C+B. Any of you can elaborate more on that for me?
    (14 votes)
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  • blobby green style avatar for user Leanid Vouk
    what's a point of this whole combination if you could just buy a @30 bond, sell it at 35
    at expiration and make the same profit + save money on broker commission ?
    (8 votes)
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    • starky ultimate style avatar for user Max Maodush-Pitzer
      In the video example it would coincidentally work out that way. However, let's assume that the stock has a price = $30, put-opt. w/ strike price = $40 currently selling @ $7, call-opt. w/strike price = $40 currently selling @ $19, both options have same expiration date, and a Rf Bond is worth $40 at same expiration. In this case, S + Ps = Cs + Bs → 30 + 19 = 7 + 39 → 49 = 46. In this case, your arbitrage profit is $3 whereas the Bond profit would be $1. $3 > $1
      (7 votes)
  • blobby green style avatar for user Chun-Kai Wang
    this is an oversimplification. bonds = usually have a probability of default associated with it (ignored by this equation) as well as transaction fees (this is more obvious). i wonder how you would incorporate the default probability into this. just a discount factor to the bond price?
    (2 votes)
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  • blobby green style avatar for user sreten1
    I don't understand. If you were to buy a bond for $30 and recieve $35 from it. Why would you need to short the stock, buy a put and call too? Don't they all cancel out and you are left with a $5 profit. Would you not recieve the same $5 profit if you just bought the bond? Or am i missing something here? What outcomes happen from just purchasing the bond?
    (2 votes)
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    • mr pink red style avatar for user Nick Thorne
      Pawandeep, yet it says "Risk Free" in pink next to the Bond. So the bond gain of $5 is risk free. So we don't need the other S, P, C aspects. Surely we just buy the $30 bond for a "risk free" $5 at expiry. I am with sreten1 in not understanding the point of the bond component.
      (1 vote)
  • blobby green style avatar for user raven.adf
    So in the reverse situation, where bond and call are more, are you just supposed to short the bond?
    (2 votes)
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  • male robot donald style avatar for user harry park
    Why would a put option strike price be greater than the current trading price of the Stock?
    In the example, the Stock is trading at $31/share, but the Put Option strike price is $35.
    Doesn't that mean as soon as I buy that Put Option, the Put Option has $4 value.
    (1 vote)
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  • leaf green style avatar for user Jon Dough
    Why would a put have a strike price ($35 in video) higher then the market value of a stock price ($31 in video)? I thought you're betting that the market price of the stock is going to fall...so it doesn't make sense to me that the strike price of a put and call are the same...
    (1 vote)
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    • male robot hal style avatar for user Andrew M
      A put is the right (but not the obligation) to sell at a certain price. If you buy a put at $35 when the stock is at $30, we say that the put is already "in the money". But still if the stock goes down to $25, the put is even more in the money, so its value goes up by (roughly, not exactly) $5.

      Normally the buyer of a put or call does not expect to actually sell the stock or buy the stock. The buyer plans to sell the put or call before the exercise date.
      (2 votes)
  • leafers seed style avatar for user dimitris.chanias
    can someone write a put option to a stock that he doesn't own?
    (1 vote)
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    • male robot hal style avatar for user Andrew M
      Sure. Why would you need to own the stock to write a put? Writing a put means you are selling an option to someone else to sell you their stock at the strike price.
      Maybe you meant buying a put. You can of course buy any option you want to buy without having to own anything else.
      (2 votes)
  • blobby green style avatar for user Utkarsh
    What are bonds? Are there any on Indian Stock Market which can be used for such arbitrage?
    I have only known one type of arbitrage that is buying stock and selling futures when it is at premium, I dont get any of this bond stuff..can anyone explain it to me in sense of Indian mkt?
    (1 vote)
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  • blobby green style avatar for user Shaun Deanesh
    May I know how to do this is real life? For instance, I have been trading on the Malaysian Stock Exchange, but how do I write a put ?

    Thank you.
    (1 vote)
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Video transcript

Say stock XYZ is trading at $31. We have a call option on stock XYZ with the $35 strike price. It's trading at $8. We have a put option on stock XYZ with a $35 strike price. They have the same strike price. Trading at $12. And they both have the same expiration over here. And then finally, there's a bond. And this bond is unrelated to stock XYZ. It's going to be a risk free bond. So it could be some type of a treasury bill. Worth $35 at option expiration. And you can buy it right now for $30. And the reason why you can buy it for less is you pay $30, you're going to get $35 in the future at option expiration. So you're essentially getting interest on that bond. So with these numbers, is there a way to make risk free money? And to think about that, let's think about the put call parity. We learned that a stock plus a put at a given strike price, and the put is a put on that stock, is equal to. It's going to have the same value at expiration as a call with the same strike price. A call with the same underlying stock. Plus a bond, a risk free bond, that's going to be worth that strike price at the expiration of these two options. So since this is going to have the same value, the same payoff in any circumstance, as this at expiration, they really should be worth the same thing. But when you look at the numbers over here. Let's see if that works out. The stock is trading at $31. The put option is trading at $12. So that's plus 12. So this on the left hand side right now if you had to buy it, it's trading at $43. Is On the right hand side, you have the call option is trading $8. And then the bond is trading at $30. So this combination is trading at $38. So even though they have the exact same payoff at option expiration, the call plus the bond is cheaper than the stock plus the put. So you have an arbitrage opportunity. You have an opportunity to make profit from a discrepancy in price from two things that are essentially equal. And what you always want to do is you always want to buy the cheaper thing. And you want to sell the more expensive thing, especially when they are the same thing, when they're going to have the exact same payoff in the future. So you want to sell this. So buying is pretty straightforward. What does it mean to sell this over here? Well, you could short the stock. That's essentially, you're selling the stock. And then you would you essentially are shorting a put option. Or another way to think of it, you could write a put option. So you short the stock plus write a put. And so what would happened there? Shorting the stock, you're borrowing the stock and you are selling it. So you're going to get $31 from shorting the stock. And writing the put means you literally are essentially creating a put option and selling it to someone else. And so you're going to get $12 for that. So you're going to get your $43. And then you're going to buy the call and the bond. So you're going to spend $8 on the call, $30 on the bonds. So you are going to spend $38. And you're going to make a profit of $5. And what we're going to see in the next video is you make this profit upfront. And no matter what happens to the stock price going forward, you're able to rearrange things so that everything else just cancels out. And you can just keep your $5.