Interesting April 2014 Stock Options for American Express

Consistently, one of the more popular stocks people enter into their stock options watchlist at Stock Options Channel is American Express AXP -0.28% Co. (NYSE: AXP). So this week we highlight one interesting put contract, and one interesting call contract, from the April 2014 expiration for AXP.

The put contract our YieldBoost algorithm identified as particularly interesting, is at the $72.50 strike, which has a bid at the time of this writing of $1.44. Collecting that bid as the premium represents a 2% return against the $72.50 commitment, or a 4.4% annualized rate of return (at Stock Options Channel we call this the YieldBoost).

Selling a put does not give an investor access to AXP’s upside potential the way owning shares would, because the put seller only ends up owning shares in the scenario where the contract is exercised. Read more.