저자: Brian · 외국인
요약 보기
워런 버핏의 옵션 거래 신화를 연차 서한 등 자료로 검증. 1993년 코카콜라 풋옵션(프리미엄 약 $7.5M)은 규모가 작아 의미 없음. 2004~2008년 주가지수 풋옵션(총 $37B)은 담보가 극히 적고($550M) 15~20년 만기 유럽형이라 일반 투자자에게 부적합하다고 주장. 버핏은 배당주 장기 보유를 선호하며, 영상 말미에 배당성장 ETF 선택 4단계를 소개할 예정이라고 함.
다듬은 글
I reread all of Warren Buffett's annual letters to shareholders, which explain his options trading. I went back 46 years and looked through hundreds of pages, and this is not at all what I expected to see. When I type “ Warren Buffett options” into Google, I see tons of links to articles like “how to use options to invest like Warren Buffett”, “ Warren Buffett’s approach to options trading”, “ Warren Buffett’s hidden strategy”, “ options trading for income ”.
After reading the headlines, it is easy to conclude that Warren Buffett is an active options trader, specifically that he sells put options. I found two main claims about Warren Buffett's successful options trading. The first brought him millions, and the second, in fact, billions. Let's start with the first one.
The first transaction that is often talked about is Warren Buffett's sale of put options on Coca-Cola shares. In 1993, Warren Buffett wrote put options to buy Coca-Cola shares at a price of $35 per share, when the market price was $40 per share. To be clear, the details of this deal were not in the annual letters to shareholders, but since there are so many articles about this particular transaction, I assume it is true.
For context : in put options, the buyer of the option has the option to sell shares to the seller of the option at an agreed price within an agreed period. However, the buyer is not obligated to sell the shares. For example, if the market price on the option's expiration date is higher than the agreed-upon price, then the option buyer will simply sell their shares on the open market.
They will benefit if the price of the company, in this case Coca-Cola, falls and then the buyer can sell their shares above the market price. In Warren Buffett's case, he sold put options with a strike price of $35 because that was the price he was willing to pay for Coca-Cola. If the price had fallen below $35, he would have gotten his deal.
If the price had stayed above $35, he would have been able to keep the premium for which he sold those put options. In this case, $1.5 per share. When I first read the details of this deal, I thought it was a pretty big deal because his put options were for 5 million shares. Multiply that by $1.5 and you have a $7.5 million premium just for being able to buy the stock at a better price.
In this case, since Warren Buffett did n't actually have to buy the stock, he simply kept $7.5 million for himself. For an average person like me, $7.5 million is a lot of money, until I looked at Berkshire Hathaway's stake in Coca-Cola in 1993 . Warren Buffett's letter to shareholders states that Berkshire Hathaway owns 93.5 million shares of Coca-Cola, so an additional 5 million shares would be a very small increase, especially after 3 years.
In 1996, Berkshire Hathaway increased its stake in Coca-Cola to 200 million. At least in this case, opening a new position using put options is not a meaningful strategy for Warren Buffett. You'll get a much better return by clicking the "like" button . So what about the second example of Warren Buffett selling put options?
The example where he made billions. Well, between 2004 and 2008, Warren Buffett sold put options on four different stock indexes. The S&P 500 in the US, the FTSE 100 in the UK, the Euro Stoxx 50 in Europe and the Nikkei 225, not sure if I'm pronouncing it correctly, in Japan. The total value of the contracts was $37 billion.
This is the amount of money Berkshire Hathaway would have to cover its obligations if all contracts were to exercise the right to sell Berkshire Hathaway shares for a total of $37 billion. In other words, the maximum loss would be 37 billion if all underlying assets depreciated to zero. This is because the seller, in this case Warren Buffett, would be forced to buy the worthless shares at the agreed price for a total of 37 billion.
At first glance, this seems like a big risk, especially considering that Warren Buffett is a man known for his words: “The first rule of investing is don’t lose money, and the second rule is don’t forget the first, and that’s all there is to it. ” Of course, Warren Buffett is not a die-hard gambler.
We need to delve into the details of this deal. In his 2009 letter to shareholders, Warren Buffett revealed that he received $4.9 billion in bonuses. This is a really significant amount of money. So that answers my question, right? Warren Buffett really trades options on a large scale. And the conclusion from all the articles is true.
I should sell put options too. Actually, no. There is a huge turning point and a very important detail in Warren Buffett's strategy that is not mentioned in any of the articles I have read . You should look at his annual letters to shareholders. Warren Buffett has something that an ordinary person like me doesn't have.
AA+ rating from Standard&Poor's. Berkshire Hathaway was able to write $37 billion in put options without putting up $37 billion in collateral. At the end of 2008, Warren Buffett had only $550 million in collateral. I can't get over how crazy this is. If I personally wrote 37 billion put options, I would have to put 37 billion in the bank to cover them if the buyers decided to execute the deal.
The opportunity cost of not investing all that money in the market would be enormous. For example, the S&P 500 index has an average annual return of about 10% . 10% of 37 billion is $3.7 billion per year. These are huge expenses that Warren Buffett was able to avoid. So, not only did Berkshire Hathaway need very little collateral, just $550 million.
They also received a $4.9 billion bonus for their efforts, which Buffett was able to invest immediately. You might ask, how was Buffett not completely wiped out by the financial crisis of late 2008? I mean, it was the worst time to sell put options. The S&P 500 index fell almost 50% from its peak in late 2007 to its bottom in early 2009.
Well, Buffett's options are structured differently. In addition to requiring almost no collateral, they were European put options, meaning the buyer could not execute the deal until the contract's expiration date . When most people, including me , think of selling put options, we mean American options , where the buyer can exercise the contract at any time.
If, in Buffett's case, these were American put options, the buyer could exercise them, forcing Buffett to buy the stock at a price 50% lower if they had guessed the bottom of the S&P 500. So, his options could not be exercised early, but he also bought options back in 2004. Would they also be saved?
I mean, he needed a five or six year term, maybe. In my experience, when I consider selling put options, I usually see the longest expirations being 2 to 3 years. What were the details? Let's take a look. These contracts are European options that are exercised only on the expiration date, and when entered into had a term of 15 to 20 years.
This is just ridiculous. I've never seen a put option with a 20-year expiration. So, all these articles are nonsense. Warren Buffett is not an active options trader, at least not in the way such articles try to portray it. When ordinary investors like me ask, does Warren Buffett trade options? We are not talking about 15-20- year put options without collateral.
This is simply not suitable for the average investor. And of course, Warren Buffett sold some American put options with an expiration of about a year, give or take, but that was only a tiny fraction of his total assets, just one instrument. By the way, Warren Buffett prefers the "buy and hold" strategy above all else.
and he tends to invest in dividend-paying companies , which is great news for me , because the buy-and-hold strategy is probably the simplest of all . And I don't need to be a stock-picking expert like Warren Buffett. In my opinion, one of the easiest ways to gain access to quality dividend companies is to invest in the right ETF.
In this video, I'll go over the four steps I use to pick dividend growth ETFs that outperform the S&P 500. See you on the other side.
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