Sunday, March 14, 2021

Options can be expensive -- not only at the stock market

What do you actually get, when you buy a cinema ticket? (In those ancient times when cinemas were still a thing)

You buy yourself an option. The right --but not the obligation-- to execute an operation at a later time. In this case the right to watch a certain movie at a certain time.

The cinema, on the other hand, sells a commitment. They are (to a degree) obliged to actually show that specific movie at the stipulated time. If we look at it like this, it is a considerable investment the cinema promises, in exchange for those couple of bucks your option costs.

And while it is often thought to be helpful to think in options, it is also almost always important to make sure that you're on the right side of that transaction.

Where's the problem with options?

What does that mean for our day-to-day actions? If we hand out options too freely, we quickly end up in a quagmire of "maybes" that is hard to get out of. As I mentioned in an earlier post, the whole thinking around real options in the way Olav Maassen and Chris Matts describe in their book "Commitment", is quite fascinating and well worth a read. But for today let's just look at one thing we don't do often enough, when we use options in our personal lives.

We tend to offer options without an expiry date. And that can leave us with a huge amount of commitments, and very few options left for ourselves. One of the prime offenders here is doodle (or similar meeting planners) and the way they are often used these days. Just the other day I got a doodle poll for 58 30-minute slots stretched over two weeks. Scheduled in about six months from now. And the closing date for these options was meant to be set three <sic> months in the future. So worst case, I would have committed to keep 29 hours blocked for three months. Which would have left me unable to actually plan anything for those weeks in the next three months.

Of course doodle only makes this visible – it happens all the time. Look at this scenario:

  • We could go on vacation either at the beginning of the summer break or at the end

  • I could renovate the shelter either in the beginning of the summer break or towards the end

  • Our kids could go on their "no parents camping weekend" either in the beginning of the summer break or at the end

For as long as you don't decide the first one of these, those options create a deadlock.

And the situation makes it almost impossible to actually decide anything related to the summer break as well, for that matter.

Set an expiration date to ease the pain

The solution is simple, really. But it takes some uncommon behavior to apply it. Let's look at the way the stock market handles options. Options at the stock market have a window of execution and an expiry date. Once that date has passed the option can no longer be converted. Merely adding this expiry date, already mitigates the risk of too many open ended options even for the side which holds the commitment end of it.

A lot of options that we encounter have this attribute of an expiration date in one way or another: When we get a quote for some repair work for our house, car or even bicycle, it usually says "valid until." The same is true for business offers, medical quotes, and almost everything we consider as "business."

Amending the options we hand out with expiration dates, even if it is not in a formal business setting, may feel a little strange at first. But it makes life so much easier. Whether it's toward a colleague, a significant other, friends or even yourself. Reducing the amount of open options also reduces the number of times you have to say "I don't know yet, I might have another engagement."

till next time
  Michael Mahlberg