Underlying Assets

The underlying assets are the objects of the option contracts, the financial tool that you want to buy or sell. There are great varieties thus permitting a classification of different groups that attend these characteristics. Some of the most usual groups are:

• Options of fixed interest assets (fixed interest options): they are quoted on promissory treasury notes at 13 weeks and on the following bonds: long term Canadian bonds, from the Dutch government, from U.S. treasury at ten years, from the U.S. treasury at thirty years, and from the United Kingdom at long term.
• Share options (stock options): there are many hundreds of options of the stock of the most important companies that are quoted at the stock markets of new York, Philadelphia, San Francisco, Montreal, Toronto, London, Amsterdam, Tokyo, Sydney, Brussels, Frankfurt, Milan, Madrid, etc.

Index options: that are quoted in:

• The Chicago board options exchange (CBOE): the Standard & Poor´s 100 index, the Standard & Poor´s 500 index and the Standard and Poor´s transportation index.
• The American stock exchange (AMEX): the major market index, the market value index, computer technology index, the oil index, and the transportation index.
• The New York stock exchange (NYSE): the NYSE composite index, the NYSE composite double index and the NYSE telephone index.
• The stock exchange, London (TSE): the TSE 300 index, the TSE 300 composite index, and the FT-SE 100 index.
• As some more in other stock exchange markets.
• Currency options: at the CBOE they quote options for:
• Canadian dollar/US dollar, English pound/US. dollar, euros/US. dollar, Swiss francs (US. dollar, yen/US. dollar, US. dollar)/Euro, US. dollar /Dutch guilder, etc. this same contracts are equally negotiated at the Philadelphia stock exchange (PES).
• Future options (forward options): at the stock markets of New York, Chicago and London the currency, bonds and index options are quoted.
• Merchandise options (commodity options): here we can distinguish two fundamental groups: agricultural products and metals, being precious or not.

There are specialized markets for each of these commodities, establishing for each case a different contract.

Examples: the CBOT from Chicago is specialized in cereals, the Comex from New York in metals, KCBOT from Kansas in cereals, etc.

In Europe the most important market is that of London, where normalizes contracts are traded as is most of the commodities.