This topic has been deep in my thought and in my heart for many past months. As a Managing Director of a thriving manufacturing company and being in the business for many years, the questions of where we stand has always came back again and again.

The Questions of the place of the heart in the Business World. Especially in the Past Few Months where more and more businesses are conducted without any heart attached. What I mean the cruelty of human being and the extend of it in trying to accumulate wealth for themselves.

Cases like the followings are really heartbreaking to learn of:

1. The total recall of the toys by Mattel that causes one of the factory owner in china to hang himself and committed suicide because he did not know that his trusted friend has decided to make more money for himself by providing unsuitable paint for these toys that is very dangerous and posed a health hazards to the children.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/20254745/

2.  China Egg Cancer Scare - 1,159 kilograms of salted red-yolk eggs, all produced in Hebei Province, were seized in Beijing because they contained the carcinogenic dye Sudan-IV which was fed to ducks to produce red-yolk eggs, which are sold at a higher price at market. No one know how long has these suppliers been doing these tricks and they do not care how many people can die only how much money they can earn.

http://www.china.org.cn/english/MATERIAL/189808.htm

These 2 cases just happened to be exposed and they are happening in China, however I see that these problems do not just happen in China alone but these also happen in developed country such as America, Europe, Australia, Singapore and many more.

In fact, recently it happened to me, as my family are health freaks, we eat brown rice most of the time. I have noticed that the brown rice that I have been eating in my office looks strange as it looks rather purplish in colour. However due to my ignorant, I did not question my staff where she bought those rice from.

Until my sister and my father make the same remarks, so attention is drawn and we decided to buy our own packet of brown rice to see if the colour will be the same as the one we ate in the office. We also learnt that the rice in our office left a purplish coloured water upon washing before cooking which does not happen with the rice that we bought ourselves.

Only then we realized that the seller of the rice has dyed the rice to sell it at higher price to our office staff without considering the harmful effect it might bring to the consumers.

It is really sad to learnt that there are people out there who will do anything to earn money. Although admitted that it is not easy to run a business the Right Way, as there are people who will try to persuade you otherwise or put you in a position of difficulty that you have to choose to do the Right Things and Lose the Business or Get the Business but in doing it you Lost your heart.

Well, it is to my believe that lost business can be recovered, but a Lost Heart needs a Miracle to recover. I really encourage all business people to start thinking about this aspects in managing your business and I believe that your business will grow leaps and bounds without you giving up your heart.

Options has always been a intriguing subjects and somehow very confusing to a lot of people. In this post, I will try to simplify and explain it in a lay man terms, for call options and in my next post, I will explain on Put Options.

We actually uses a lot of call options in our daily life. We just do not realize it or it is not called “Call options” here are some of the normal call options most people encounter in their daily life but they just do not realize it.

For examples:

1. When you are buying a house, you place a booking fee of 1% or a sum of money so that the seller cannot sell it to another person for a certain period of time until you come up with the payment of the  downpayment of 20% or more to carry on with the purchase, however when you decided on the next day that you have made a bad choice as that house value you realized is not worth the sales value, you can decide to stop the purchase process and forfeited your booking fee of 1% or so.

By placing the booking fee, you became the buyer of  the call option which is the right to purchase the house at the agreed price for a limited time. While the seller of the house being in possession of the physical house became the seller of the call option, he sells you the right to buy his house and therefore he has the obligation to deliver the physical house to you upon the full payment of the house given.

2. Shopping Vouchers - is another type of call options that we uses a lot in our life but we just do not realize it. We bought a shopping voucher normally with specific value in each of the voucher that will be valid until a certain time. You became the buyer of the call options in this case and the merchant became the seller of the call options. What happens when you did not use your shopping voucher till the end of the validity date? You will not be able to use those vouchers anymore as they became worthless and you lost all the money paid to buy those vouchers.

Options whether call or put has validity date which we traders called expiry date of the option. When you think about it, actually our life do involve a lot in buying a call options, such as buying a prepaid parking tickets, prepaid one year access to recreation park or to the zoo, prepaid phone cards, buying our home appliances by placing a deposit first and full payment upon delivery.

In many events of our life, we actually in one form or another transact with buying or selling an “option” though the terms is not at such.

Call Options in Stock Market or in future market works in the same manners as the above. When you buy a call option, means you have the right to buy the stock which is the underlying asset of that options at the later date with limit to the expiry date of the option contracts at the agreed price

When you buy a call option, you have the Right to Buy the underlying stock - The key word here is the Right to Buy which means you are in control which also means you can decide whether to buy or not to buy. When you decided to Buy the stock, what you need to do is just Exercise your options, as a buyer you exercise your right.

However as a Seller, when you sell a call option, you no longer have the right, but now you have an OBLIGATION that you should fulfilled by delivering the asset when the buyer of your call option decided to use his or her right to buy the underlying stock. Which is called assignement - this is what happen when someone exercise their right, your call options has got assignment. As a Seller you have been assigned to fulfilled your obligation.

Call Options is not as complicated as it sounds but you need to be real careful when you are trading options as it can become a very expensive learning experience.

Hope that this brief explaination can help to interest you more to know about one of the most flexible and powerful financial instrument available.