Options requiring 5 cent intervals for me, but apparently not for others?

Discussion in 'Options' started by Amun Ra, Aug 4, 2020.

  1. Amun Ra

    Amun Ra

    So I have a covered call option set to expire this week that i've kind of been mulling over to close out just in case some wild news comes out that shoots the stock up. Bid is 0 and ask is .05 "Last" is .04. I've seen this before in options where I have to make 5 cent intervals but the last is some odd amount that is most definitely not a 5 cent interval. Is it just my broker? I have Etrade.
     
  2. guru

    guru

    Could be that someone bought or sold some option combo where this option was just a leg, therefore part of a trade.
    In such cases the last price may even be wrong because the actual price is unknown, for example when you trade a spread for $0.10, the price of each leg may be arbitrary.
     
    BlueWaterSailor likes this.
  3. CET

    CET

    My guess is the market makers don't have to follow the same rules that we do. I get filled between the bid and ask all the time on stocks whose options are supposed to have at least a nickel spread.
     
  4. FSU

    FSU

    Only some stocks allow trading of options in pennies. For the ones that don't, you can still trade spreads in pennies, so you may be seeing one leg of a spread trade.
     
    guru and ajacobson like this.
  5. While I don't really know, would assume if I sold a 5-lot with the fills of 4 @ 5cents and one at 0, it may show last as 4cents!
     
  6. Amun Ra

    Amun Ra

    On your account maybe, but I don't think it works that way on quotes for the last price traded.
     
  7. If you trade through a platform with payment for order flow, you can get price improvements of a penny or two that won’t get put in the order book but will get reported as a trade.