Stock Options For Dummies

by Alan R. Simon

Book Overview

Confused by all the brouhaha surrounding stock options? Let expert Alan Simon demystify this often-confusing investment vehicle for you.

If you're like the majority of the estimated 12 million employees in the U.S. who have stock options as a key component to their compensation packages, you have a vague notion, at best, of how options work and what they can mean to your financial well being. What's the vesting schedule for your shares...

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 076455364X
• ISBN13: 9780764553646
• Release Date: July 2001
• Publisher: For Dummies
• Length: 336 Pages
• Weight: 0.50 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.9" x 7.4" x 9.2"

Customer Reviews

Good book + Free trading

This book is especially good for the person who wants a broad overview of investing. It will give you a solid foundation to begin growing your money from. After reading, I opened a Scottrade account because they had the lowest rates ($7), and no inactivity fee. [...] to get a referral for 3 free trades.

Well rounded discussion on every facet of options

A well rounded discussion on almost every facet of options, from how to understand the legal implications of the stock option plan to taxation. Simon explains preIPO, IPO, lockup periods, blackout periods, Rule 144 stock in detailed and desciptive ways. The chapters on taxation give an excellent overview - even of the 83b election and is probably sufficient for most. For more comprehensive discussion and tax strategy read Pastore's book.

Every option-holder should read this book!

By far, the best, most thorough, and most honest book on stock options I've ever read. Even though other books (such as Pastore and Thomas) cover taxes on stock options in more detail, the author definitely provides more than enough information, including considerations I've never seen elsewhere - ordinary income tax and AMT implications of working in multiple states, for example. And he covers the dreaded AMT trap of ISOs with detailed scenarios, better and easier to understand than I've seen anywhere else. But by far, this book's greatest value is in the author's no-holds-barred discussion of - as he puts it in one of the chapter headings - the good, the bad, and the ugly of stock options, including an entire chapter on stock option agreements and what to watch for. Like most Dummies books, there is humor and sarcasm, but the author doesn't overdo it; it just makes the book extremely readable. Even those who have had stock options in the past - whether or not they made money or not - will find value in the author's fresh perspective and post-crash look at just about everything about options.