HERBERTROBIJN

Last week we revealed that there is only one optimal moment to exercise call options early: on the last trading day before the ex-dividend date. According to certain criteria, a call option is ‘early exercise' and you're better off financially if you receive the dividend or sell the call option before the ex-dividend date... This morning (April 19th), Ahold shares are listed ex-dividend. The dividend amount is EUR 0.44. Yesterday Ahold closed at EUR 11.71. Subtract the dividend amount of 0.44, and you arrive at a theoretical opening price of 11.71 - 0.44 = 11.27. And that's what you see reflected in the actual opening price: Ahold opened this morning at 11.33 (a minus of 0.38). The latest price (at the time of writing this article) at 09:10 is 11,265. That's 0.445 less than yesterday's closing price. You see: that's roughly equivalent to the dividend amount of 0.44... If you were long on one of these options series yesterday, then you would see a significantly lower value on your..