Where can I buy European-style options?
On the US markets, most index options are European style.  Most stock and ETF options are, as you noted, American style.
"I'm adding to @Dilip's basic answer, to cover the additional points in your question.  I'll assume you are referring to publicly traded stock options, such as those found on the CBOE, and not an option contract entered into privately between two specific counterparties (e.g. as in an employer stock option plan). Since you are not obligated to exercise a call option you purchased on the market, you don't need to maintain funds on account for possible exercising.  You could instead let the option expire, or resell the option, neither of which requires funds available for purchase of the underlying shares. However, should you actually choose to exercise the call option (and usually this is done close to expiration, if at all), you will be required to fund your account much like if you bought the underlying shares in the first place.  Call your broker to determine the exact rules and timing for when they need the money for a call-option exercise. And to expand on the idea of ""cancelling"" an option you purchased: No, you cannot ""cancel"" an option contract, per se.  But, you are permitted to sell the call option to somebody else willing to buy, via the market.  When you sell your call option, you'll either make or lose money on the sale – depending on the price of the underlying shares at the time (are they in- or out- of the money?), volatility in the market, and remaining time value.  Once you sell, you're back to ""no position"".  That's not the same as ""cancelled"", but you are out of the trade, whether at profit or loss. Furthermore, the option writer (i.e. the seller who ""sold to open"" a position, in writing the call in the first place) is also not permitted to cancel the option he wrote.  However, the option writer is permitted to close out the original short position by simply buying back a matching call option on the market.  Again, this would occur at either profit or loss based on market prices at the time.  This second kind of buy order – i.e. made by someone who initially wrote a call option – is called a ""buy to close"", meaning the purchase of an offsetting position.  (The other kind of buy is the ""buy to open"".) Then, consider: Since an option buyer is free to re-sell the option purchased, and since an option writer (who ""sold to open"" the new contract) is also free to buy back an offsetting option, a process known as clearing is required to match remaining buyers exercising the call options held with the remaining option writers having open short positions for the contract.  For CBOE options, this clearing is performed by the Options Clearing Corporation.  Here's how it works (see here): What is the OCC? The Options Clearing Corporation is the sole issuer of all securities   options listed at the CBOE, four other U.S. stock exchanges and the   National Association of Securities Dealers, Inc. (NASD), and is the   entity through which all CBOE option transactions are ultimately   cleared. As the issuer of all options, OCC essentially takes the   opposite side of every option traded. Because OCC basically becomes   the buyer for every seller and the seller for every buyer, it allows   options traders to buy and sell in a secondary market without having   to find the original opposite party.   [...]   [emphasis above is mine] When a call option writer must deliver shares to a call option buyer exercising a call, it's called assignment.  (I have been assigned before, and it isn't pleasant to see a position called away that otherwise would have been very profitable if the call weren't written in the first place!) Also, re: ""I know my counter party cannot sell his shares"" ... that's not strictly true.  You are thinking of a covered call.  But, an option writer doesn't necessarily need to own the underlying shares.  Look up Naked call (Wikipedia).  Naked calls aren't frequently undertaken because a naked call ""is one of the riskiest options strategies because it carries unlimited risk"".  The average individual trader isn't usually permitted by their broker to enter such an order, but there are market participants who can do such a trade. Finally, you can learn more about options at The Options Industry Council (OIC)." You are in a difficult situation because of US regulation, that is much more demanding to fulfill than in EU or rest of the world.  Second, Interactive Brokers stopped serving FX for US clients. Third, EU brokers - like Saxo Bank - don't accept US clients: Almost any private client can open an account with Saxo Bank, although there are few exceptions. You can’t open an account if you are US, Iranian or North Korean resident - Brokerchooser: Saxo Bank Review Working for Brokerchooser, I would say you are limited to Oanda or Gain Capital. The latter is an ECN broker, and operates through other white label partners, you could try Forex.com also. I live in europe but have been paid in usd for the last few years and the best strategy I've found is to average in and average out. i.e. if you are going in August then buy some Euro every few weeks until you go. At least this way you mitigate the risk involved somewhat. You can look into specific market targeted mutual funds or ETF's. For Norway, for example, look at NORW. If you want to purchase specific stocks, then you'd better be ready to trade on local stock exchanges in local currency. ETrade allows trading on some of the international stock exchanges (in Asia they have Hong Kong and Japan, in Europe they have the UK, Germany and France, and in the Americas they have the US and Canada). Some of the companies you're interested in might be trading there. I would say your decision making is reasonable.  You are in the middle of Brexit and nobody knows what that means.  Civil society in the United States is very strained at the moment.  The one seeming source of stability in Europe, Germany, may end up with a very weakened government.  The only country that is probably stable is China and it has weak protections for foreign investors. Law precedes economics, even though economics often ends up dictating the law in the long run. The only thing that may come to mind is doing two things differently.  The first is mentally dropping the long-term versus short-term dichotomy and instead think in terms of the types of risks an investment is exposed to, such as currency risk, political risk, liquidity risk and so forth.  Maturity risk is just one type of risk. The second is to consider taking some types of risks that are hedged either by put contracts to limit the downside loss, or consider buying longer-dated call contracts using a small percentage of your money.  If the underlying price falls, then the call contracts will be a total loss, but if the price increases then you will receive most of the increase (minus the premium). If you are uncomfortable purchasing individual assets directly, then I would say you are probably doing everything that you reasonably can do. Selftrade does list them. Not sure if you'll be able to sign up from the US though, particularly given the FATCA issues. You can trade currency ETF options on IB. It is SIPC insured; the options are just like vanilla options in Saxo. Yes, past option prices are available for many options, but as far as I know not for free.  You can get them from, for example, OptionMetrics.  Probably there are other providers as well, which may be cheaper for an individual or small institution. OptionMetrics data comes from the National Best Bid and Offer.  Probably there are some over-the-counter options that are not included here, but for someone asking this question, OptionMetrics will most likely have the option you are interested in. I'm normally a fan of trying to put all the relevant info in an answer when possible, but this one's tough to do in one page.    Here's the best way, by far to learn the basics: The OIC (Options Industry Council) has a great, free website to teach investors at all levels about options. You can set up a learning path that will remember which lessons you've done, etc.  And they're really, truly not trying to sell you anything; their purpose is to promote the understanding and use of options. Options - yes we can :) Options tickers on Yahoo! Finance will be displayed as per new options   symbology announced by OCC. The basic parts of new option symbol are: Root symbol + Expiration   Year(yy)+ Expiration Month(mm)+ Expiration Day(dd) + Call/Put   Indicator (C or P) + Strike price Ex.: AAPL January 19 2013, Put 615 would be AAPL130119P00615000 http://finance.yahoo.com/q?s=AAPL130119P00615000&ql=1 Futures - yes as well (: Ex.: 6A.M12.E would be 6AM12.CME using Yahoo Finance symbology. (simple as that, try it out) Get your major futures symbols from here: http://quotes.ino.com/exchanges/exchange.html?e=CME There is such a thing as a buy-write, which is buying a stock and writing a (covered) call simultaneously. But as far as I know brokers charge two commissions, one stock trade and one options trade so you're not going to save on commissions. Just a few observations within the Black-Scholes framework: Next, you can now use the Black-Scholes framework (stock price is a Geometric Brownian Motion, no transaction costs, single interest rate, etc. etc.) and numerical methods (such as a PDE solver) to price American style options numerically, but not with a simple closed form formula (though there are closed-form approximations). A broker does not have to allow the full trading suite the regulations permit.  From brokersXpress: Do you allow equity and index options trading in brokersXpress IRAs?     Yes, we allow trading of equity and index options in IRAs based on the trading level assigned to an investor. Trading in IRAs includes call buying, put buying, cash-secured put writing, spreads, and covered calls.  I understand OptionsXpress.com offers the same level of trading. Disclosure - I have a Schwab account and am limited in what's permitted just as your broker does. The trade you want is no more risky that a limit (buy) order, only someone is paying you to extend that order for a fixed time. The real answer is to ask the broker. If you really want that level of trading, you might want to change to one that permits it. "To other users save yourselves time, do not test any of the alternatives mentioned in this post. I have, to no avail. At the moment (nov/2013) Saxobank unfortunately seems to be the only broker who offers OTC (over-the counter) FX options trading to Retail Investors. In other words, it is the only alternative for those who are interested in trading non-exchange options (ie, only alternative to those interested in trading FX options with any date or strike, rather than only one date per month and strikes every 50 pips only). I say ""unfortunately"" because competition is good, Saxo options spreads are a rip off, and their platform extremely clunky. But it is what it is." According to your post, you bought seven shares of VBR at $119.28 each on August 23rd.  You paid €711,35.  Now, on August 25th, VBR is worth $120.83.  So you have  But you want to know what you have in EUR, not USD.  So if I ask Google how much $845.81 is in EUR, it says €708,89.  That's even lower than what you're seeing.   It looks like USD has fallen in value relative to EUR.  So while the stock price has increased in dollar terms, it has fallen in euro terms.  As a result, the value that you would get in euros if you sold the stock has fallen from the price that you paid.   Another way of thinking about this is that your price per share was €101,72 and is now €101,33.  That's actually a small drop.   When you buy and sell in a different currency that you don't actually want, you add the currency risk to your normal risk.  Maybe that's what you want to do.  Or maybe you would be better off sticking to euro-denominated investments.   Usually you'd do dollar-denominated investments if some of your spending was in dollars.  Then if the dollar goes up relative to the euro, your investment goes up with it.  So you can cash out and make your purchases in dollars without adding extra money.   If you make all your purchases in euros, I would normally recommend that you stick to euro-denominated investments.  The underlying asset might be in the US, but your fund could still be in Europe and list in euros.   That's not to say that you can't buy dollar-denominated investments with euros.  Clearly you can.  It's just that it adds currency risk to the other risks of the investment.  Unless you deliberately want to bet that USD will rise relative to EUR, you might not want to do that.   Note that USD may rise over the weekend and put you back in the black.  For that matter, even if USD continues to fall relative to the EUR, the security might rise more than that.  I have no opinion on the value of VBR.  I don't actually know what that is, as it doesn't matter for the points I was making.  I'm not saying to sell it immediately.  I'm saying that you might prefer euro-denominated investments when you buy in the future.  Again, unless you are taking this particular risk deliberately.