So if any of you are with scottrade, you notice there is a little graph that shows the balance of your account. Well yesterday this morning i noticed a significate drop in that graph, but i couldnt figure out why as my account balance had not gone down. Then i see that Scottrade does not include options value in that graph. I guess they assume that the minute you buy an option, you will completely lose all of that money.
They say most options expire worthless, but i just thought it funny that scottrade doesnt count the value of your options from the day you buy them.
How much did the graph go down by? Was it by the amount you paid for the options by any chance? What is the unrealized profit and loss on your options? Is it near zero by any chance?
Are you referring to your cash balance? Or is there a chance that you're looking at a graph of available margin? Long options have no loan value so that would explain their non inclusion if you were looking at that.
No, its they show the account value that way. Regardless of whether or not you can the option has loan value, you can still mark it at something. Make it the worst case scenario (they could be conservative and mark it at the bid if you're long, offer if you're short)...in short, get a new broker...
i have scottrade too, the graph goes down because you spend capital buying new positions, so your capital today is less than it was yesterday, but when you close the positions, if u made money, the graph will be back up again.
I'm not going to argue about what Scottrade does since I don't use them. However, with an option purchase, cash balance would decrease, available margin would decrease but account value would remain the same (ignroring B/A slippage and commissions) until the value of the option changed. So it kinda depends on what graph the OP is looking at.