Chris’s Notes on Stock Options for Dummies

Chris’s Notes on Stock Options For Dummies, Alan R. Simon, Wiley Publishing, Inc., 2001. I recommend this book for folks that need to know the details of their company’s stock options, although the details aren’t interesting enough or important enough to warrant a book of this size, especially given how worthless most company’s stock options are these days.

I bought this book when I was too stupid to recognize it as a book about a company’s stock options instead of about publicly traded options. In general, the strategy that I’ve developed if I ever get the opportunity to exercise company stock options is as follows:

1. Exercise stock options as soon as possible, paying taxes as appropriate
2. Hold stocks for at least one year to reduce taxes on gains from normal income tax rates, e.g. ~30%, to the long-term capital gain tax rate, 15%, using 0 as the basis and subtracting the taxes already paid in step 1

Doesn’t seem like enough for an entire book…