What dictates the costs of creating an options contract? (Commissions breakdown)
I'm not positive my answer is complete, but from information on my broker's website, the following fees apply to a US option trade (which I assume you're concerned with given fee in dollars and the mention of the Options Clearing Corporation): They have more detail for other countries -- see https://www.interactivebrokers.co.uk/en/index.php?f=commission&p=options1 for North America.  Use the sub-menu near the top of the page to pick Europe or Asia. The brokerage-charged commission for this broker is as low as $0.25 per contract with a $1.00 minimum.  Though I've been charged less than $1 to STO an options position, as well as less than $1 to BTC an options position, so not sure about that minimum. Regarding what I read as your overall underlying question (why are option fees so high), in my research this broker has one of the cheapest commission rates on options I've ever seen.  When I participate in certain discussions, I'm routinely told that these fees are unbelievable and that $5.95, $7.95, or even $9.95 are considered low fees.   I've heard this so much, and discussed commissions with enough people who've refused to switch brokers, that I conclude there just isn't enough competition to drive prices lower.  If most people won't switch brokers to go from $9.95 to $1 per trade, there simply isn't a reason to lower rates.
"RoR for options you bought is fairly easy: (Current Value-Initial Cost)/Initial Cost gives you the actual return. If you want the rate of return, you need to annualize that number: You divide the return you got above by the number of days the investment was in place, and then multiply that number by the number of days in a year. (365 if you're using calendar days, about 255 if you're using trading days.) RoR for options you sold is much more complex: The problem is that RoR is basically calculating the size of your return relative to the capital it tied up to earn it.   That's simple when you bought something; the capital tied up is the money you put up.   It's more complex on a position like a short option, where the specific transaction in question generates cash when it's put on.    The correct way to deal with this is to A) Bundle your strategy (options, stock and collateral) into one RoR where appropriate, and B) include any needed collateral to support the short option in the calculation. So, if you sell a ""cash-secured"" put, where you have to post the money that you'd need to take delivery of the shares if they were put to you, the initial cost is the total amount you'd need to put the trade on:   in this case, it's the cash amount, less the premium you collected for selling the put.  That's just one example.    But the approach holds more broadly:  if you're using covered calls, your original cost is the cost of the stock less the premium generated by the sale of the call." "All discount brokers offer a commission structure that is based on the average kind of order that their target audience will make. Different brokers advertise to different target audiences. They could all have a lot lower commissions than they do. The maximum commission price for the order ticket is set at $99 by the industry securities regulators. When discount brokers came along and started offering $2 - $9.99 trades, it was simply because these new companies could be competitive in a place where incumbents were overcharging. The same exists with Robinhood. The market landscape and costs have changed over the last decade with regulation NMS, and other brokerage firms never needed to update drastically because they could continue making a lot on commissions with nobody questioning it. The conclusion being that other brokers can also charge a lot less, despite their other overhead costs. Robinhood, like other brokerage firms (and anyone else trading directly with the exchanges), are paid by the exchanges for adding liquidity. Not only are many trades placed with no commission for the broker, they actually earn money for placing the trade. If Robinhood was doing you any favors, they would be paying you. But nobody questions free commissions so they don't. Robinhood, like other brokerage firms, sells your trading data to the highest bidder. This is called ""payment for order flow"", these subscribers see your order on the internet in route to the exhange, and before your order gets to the exchange, the subscriber sends a different order to the exchange so they either get filled before you do (analogous to front running, but different enough to not be illegal) or they alter the price of the thing you wanted to buy or sell so that you have to get a worse price. These subscribers have faster computers and faster internet access than other market participants, so are able to do this so quickly. They are also burning a lot of venture capital like all startups. You shouldn't place too much faith in the idea they are making [enough] money. They also have plans to earn interest off of balances in a variety of ways and offer more options at a price (like margin accounts)." There is no one answer to this question, but there are some generalities. Most exchanges make a distinction between the passive and the aggressive sides of a trade.  The passive participant is the order that was resting on the market at the time of the trade.  It is an order that based on its price was not executable at the time, and therefore goes into the order book.  For example, I'm willing to sell 100 shares of a stock at $9.98 but nobody wants to buy that right now, so it remains as an open order on the exchange. Then somebody comes along and is willing to meet my price (I am glossing over lots of details here).  So they aggressively take out my order by either posting a market-buy, or specifically that they want to buy 100 shares at either $9.98, or at some higher price. Most exchanges will actually give me, as the passive (i.e. liquidity making) investor a small rebate, while the other person is charged a few fractions of a cent.  Google found NYSEArca details, and most other exchanges make their fees public as well.  As of this writing the generic price charged/credited: But they provide volume discounts, and many of the larger deals do fall into another tier of volume, which provides a different price structure. "I'm trying to understand how an ETF manager optimized it's own revenue.  Here's an example that I'm trying to figure out.  ETF firm has an agreement with GS for blocks of IBM. They have agreed on daily VWAP + 1% for execution price.  Further, there is a commission schedule for 5 mils with GS. Come month end, ETF firm has to do a monthly rebalance. As such must buy 100,000 shares at IBM which goes for about $100 The commission for the trade is 100,000 * 5 mils = $500 in commission for that trade. I assume all of this is covered in the expense ratio. Such that if VWAP for the day was 100, then each share got executed to the ETF at 101 (VWAP+ %1) + .0005 (5 mils per share) = for a resultant 101.0005 cost basis  The ETF then turns around and takes out (let's say) 1% as the expense ratio ($1.01005 per share)  I think everything so far is pretty straight forward. Let me know if I missed something to this point.  Now, this is what I'm trying to get my head around. ETF firm has a revenue sharing agreement as well as other ""relations"" with GS. One of which is 50% back on commissions as soft dollars. On top of that GS has a program where if you do a set amount of ""VWAP +"" trades you are eligible for their corporate well-being programs and other ""sponsorship"" of ETF's interests including  helping to pay for marketing, rent, computers, etc.  Does that happen? Do these disclosures exist somewhere?" I understand the question, I think. The tough thing is that trades over the next brief time are random, or appear so. So, just as when a stock is $10.00 bid / $10.05 ask, if you place an order below the ask, a tick down in price may get you a fill, or if the next trades are flat to higher, you might see the close at $10.50, and no fill as it never went down to your limit.  This process is no different for options than for stocks.  When I want to trade options, I make sure the strike has decent volume, and enter a market order. Edit - I reworded a bit to clarify. The Black–Scholes is a model, not a rigid equation. Say I discover an option that's underpriced, but it trades under right until it expires. It's not like there's a reversion to the mean that will occur. There are some very sophisticated traders who use these tools to trade in some very high volumes, for them, it may produce results. For the small trader you need to know why you want to buy a stock or its option and not worry about the last $0.25 of its price. "I think the issue you are having is that the option value is not a ""flow"" but rather a liability that changes value over time. It is best to illustrate with a balance sheet. The $33 dollars would be the premium net of expense that you would receive from your brokerage for having shorted the options. This would be your asset. The liability is the right for the option owner (the person you sold it to) to exercise and purchase stock at a fixed price. At the moment you sold it, the ""Marked To Market"" (MTM) value of that option is $40. Hence you are at a net account value of $33-$40= $-7 which is the commission. Over time, as the price of that option changes the value of your account is simply $33 - 2*(option price)*(100) since each option contract is for 100 shares. In your example above, this implies that the option price is 20 cents. So if I were to redo the chart it would look like this If the next day the option value goes to 21 cents, your liability would now be 2*(0.21)*(100) = $42 dollars. In a sense, 2 dollars have been ""debited"" from your account to cover your potential liability. Since you also own the stock there will be a credit from that line item (not shown). At the expiry of your option, since you are selling covered calls, if you were to be exercised on, the loss on the option and the gain on the shares you own will net off. The final cost basis of the shares you sold will be adjusted by the premium you've received. You will simply be selling your shares at strike + premium per share (0.20 cents in this example)" "I thought the other answers had some good aspect but also some things that might not be completely correct, so I'll take a shot. As noted by others, there are three different types of entities in your question:  The ETF SPY, the index SPX, and options contracts. First, let's deal with the options contracts.  You can buy options on the ETF SPY or marked to the index SPX.  Either way, options are about the price of the ETF / index at some future date, so the local min and max of the ""underlying"" symbol generally will not coincide with the min and max of the options.  Of course, the closer the expiration date on the option, the more closely the option price tracks its underlying directly.  Beyond the difference in how they are priced, the options market has different liquidity, and so it may not be able to track quick moves in the underlying. (Although there's a reasonably robust market for option on SPY and SPX specifically.) Second, let's ask what forces really make SPY and SPX move together as much as they do.  It's one thing to say ""SPY is tied to SPX,"" but how?  There are several answers to this, but I'll argue that the most important factor is that there's a notion of ""authorized participants"" who are players in the market who can ""create"" shares of SPY at will.  They do this by accumulating stock in the constituent companies and turning them into the market maker.  There's also the corresponding notion of ""redemption"" by which an authorized participant will turn in a share of SPY to get stock in the constituent companies. (See http://www.spdrsmobile.com/content/how-etfs-are-created-and-redeemed and http://www.etf.com/etf-education-center/7540-what-is-the-etf-creationredemption-mechanism.html) Meanwhile, SPX is just computed from the prices of the constituent companies, so it's got no market forces directly on it.  It just reflects what the prices of the companies in the index are doing. (Of course those companies are subject to market forces.) Key point: Creation / redemption is the real driver for keeping the price aligned.  If it gets too far out of line, then it creates an arbitrage opportunity for an authorized participant.  If the price of SPY gets ""too high"" compared to SPX (and therefore the constituent stocks), an authorized participant can simultaneously sell short SPY shares and buy the constituent companies' stocks.  They can then use the redemption process to close their position at no risk.  And vice versa if SPY gets ""too low."" Now that we understand why they move together, why don't they move together perfectly.  To some extent information about fees, slight differences in composition between SPY and SPX over time, etc. do play.  The bigger reasons are probably that (a) there are not a lot of authorized participants, (b) there are a relatively large number of companies represented in SPY, so there's some actual cost and risk involved in trying to quickly buy/sell the full set to capture the theoretical arbitrage that I described, and (c) redemption / creation units only come in pretty big blocks, which complicates the issues under point b. You asked about dividends, so let me comment briefly on that too.  The dividend on SPY is (more or less) passing on the dividends from the constituent companies. (I think - not completely sure - that the market maker deducts its fees from this cash, so it's not a direct pass through.)  But each company pays on its own schedule and SPY does not make a payment every time, so it's holding a corresponding amount of cash between its dividend payments.  This is factored into the price through the creation / redemption process.  I don't know how big of a factor it is though." When my orders fill, I'll often see a 1000 shares go through over 4-6 transactions, with a few cents difference high to low, but totaling the transaction cost, it adds to one commission (say $10 for my broker). Are you sure a series of partial fills would result in as many as 20 commissions? Well, the largest, in terms of both volume and unfortunately, contact size is the options on the S&P futures index. It's based on one contract which is $250 times the current S&P index, or just over $300K current value. This does not make for too cheap an option cost, but it's definitely the largest as you requested.  For the average Joe, or Ray, in this case, the most popular ETFs are SPY and DIA for the S&P and Dow Jones, respectively. These are reasonably sized so their options are within range of your goal. See the SPY options at Yahoo. Then flip over to the DIA options.  (SPY reflects 1/10 the S&P so an option contract, on 100 SPY shares is effectively on 10 times the S&P index or 1/25 the futures option pricing.) Why not figure out the % composition   of the index and invest in the   participating securities directly? This isn't really practical.   Two indices I use follow the Russell 2000 and the S&P 500 Those two indices represent 2500 stocks. A $4 brokerage commission per trade would mean that it would cost me $10,000 in transaction fees to buy a position in 2500 stocks. Not to mention, I don't want to track 2500 investments. Index funds provide inexpensive diversity. "The answer posted by Kirill Fuchs is incorrect according to my series 65 text book and practice question answers. The everyday investor buys at the ask and sells at the bid but the market maker does the opposite. THE MARKET MAKER ""BUYS AT THE BID AND SELLS AT THE ASK"", he makes a profit form the spread. I have posted a quiz question and the answer created by the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority (FINRA). To fill a customer buy order for 800 WXYZ shares, your firm requests a quote from a market maker. The response is ""bid 15, ask 15.25."" If the order is placed, the market maker must sell: A)   800 shares at $15.25 per share. B)   800 shares at $15 per share. C)   100 shares at $15.25 per share. D)   800 shares at no more than $15 per share. Your answer, sell 800 shares at $15.25 per share., was correct!. A market maker is responsible for honoring a firm quote. If no size is requested by the inquiring trader, a quote is firm for 100 shares. In this example, the trader requested an 800-share quote, so the market maker is responsible for selling 8 round lots of 100 shares at the ask price of $15.25 per share." Yes. You got it right.  If BBY has issues and drops to say, $20, as the put buyer, I force you to take my 100 shares for $2800, but they are worth $2000, and you lost $800 for the sake of making $28.  The truth is, the commissions also wipe out the motive for trades like yours, even a $5 cost is $10 out of the $28 you are trying to pocket. You may 'win' 10 of these trades in a row, then one bad one wipes you out. "Putting them on line 10 is best suited for your situation. According to Quickbooks:  Commissions and Fees (Line 10) Commissions/fees paid to nonemployees to generate revenue (e.g. agent   fees). It seems like this website you are using falls under the term ""nonemployees""." Marketwatch reports that the 108 strike call option sells for 1.45,  down 1.53 from yesterday. If we split the bid and ask you get 1.415. That is what that contract will, likely, trade at.  The biggest problems with options are commissions and liquidity. I have seen a commission as high as $45 per trade. I have also seen open interest disappear overnight. Even if you obtain contracts that become worth more than you paid for them you may find that no one wants to pay you what they are worth.  Track your trade over a few weeks to see how you would have done. It is my experience that the only people who make money on options are the brokers. In the scenario you describe, and really, in any scenario, by the nature of how option contracts work: a higher strike put will necessarily be more expensive than the lower strike put (everything else being equal). the lower strike call will necessarily be more expensive than the higher strike call (everything else being equal). In put options, the buyer has the right to sell stock for the strike price. So the higher the strike price, the more money the buyer of the put option can make by selling the shares of stock at a higher price. In call options, it's the exact opposite: buyers of the call option have the right to buy stock at the strike price. The lower the strike price, the better for the buyer: they have the right to buy stock for a lower amount of money. So it must be worth more.