For those of you who write options a lot. I know probability of early exercise increases the closer you get to expiry. Do larger trades have a higher probability of early exercise, or is it still a mostly last minute thing?
You need to change your name to "stock god"; you always have the answers. My thought is smaller trade = smaller account = new trader = not staying on top of things. Also, larger trade = possibly filled by more than one party on the other side = statistically greater odds that there is someone out there that decides to take the money and run.
Sorry, but no. Since you did not say, I'm going to assume equity options vs options on futures. After you do a trade and it clears, the OCC is your counter-party, not the other trader that took the other side of the trade. And, all the options at your clearing firm are lumped together at the OCC. The size of your trade makes no difference. Short ITM calls options are only exercised early if the owner perceives more value in the long stock than the long calls. Some reasons might be: -Large dividend that exceeds the value of the put on the same strike -Very hard to borrow stock -corporate event like a dutch tender offer Then the OCC has a system for determining how many of each exercised call goes to each clearing firm and the clearing firms have a system for determining how that gets allocated to each account with short calls.
So hypothetically, if the right guy at a clearing firm wanted to (and risk going to prison) he could direct early exercises to a particular trader?
The OCC and FINRA review clearing firm's procedures and their books and records to make sure they follow them . I can't speculate on illegal activity. This may not be the latest notice regarding this. https://www.finra.org/sites/default/files/NoticeDocument/p124062.pdf
Are there any european style options on USA stock? In other words could I accidentally write a contract that is European?