Understanding and Managing Leverage    • 177
or $800 per contract, which would allow us to buy six contracts in all for 
$4,800. There is only $0.01 worth of time value (= $15.00 + $8.00 − $22.99) 
on these options because they are so far ITM. This means that we are pay-
ing $1 per contract worth of time value that is never recoverable, so we 
shall treat it as a realized loss. If we were to graph our potential profit and 
loss profile using this option, assuming that we are analyzing the position 
just as the 540-day options expire, we would get the following
3:
Net Gain (Loss) - Levered
0246810 12 14 16 18 20 22 24
Stock Price
Levered Strategy Overview
Gain (Loss) on Allocation
26 28 30 32 34 36 38 40 42 44 46 48 50(10,000)
(5,000)
-
5,000
10,000
Unrealized Gain
Unrealized Loss
Cash Value
Realized Loss
15,000
20,000
The most obvious differences from the diagram of the unlevered po-
sition are (1) that the net gain/loss line is kinked at the strike price and 
(2) that we will realize a total loss of invested capital—$4,800 in all—if 
Intel’s stock price closes at $15 or below. The kinked line demonstrates the 
meaning of the first point made earlier regarding option-based investment 
leverage—an asymmetrical return profile for profits and losses. Note that 
this kinked line is just the hockey-stick representation of option profit and 
loss at expiration that one sees in every book about options except this 
one. Although I don’t believe that hockey-stick diagrams are terribly useful 
for understanding individual option transactions, at a portfolio level, they 
do represent the effect of leverage very well. This black line represents a