<<when does a stock become delisted?>>
A stock must meet several criteria to be 'option-eligible', mostly market capitalisation, share price, Canadian listing, number of shareholders, float, etc. Then if anyone wants to list that class, a lottery must be called, a die is cast to see who chooses first among the participating exchanges, and if it is still available when your turn comes, you may select that class. Crazy but true.
A stock will fall into the 'non-performing' class if its average monthly volume and average open interest fall below certain levels on a nine-month moving average (I believe 1000 and 1500 respectively). If it does not improve in a limited period of time, it becomes 'delistable' or something like that, and no new series are added. It is a cumbersome process which attempts to strike a balance between clearing the board of dogs and protecting the interests of those with open positions. In my view, it takes too long to kill the pooches.
I'm not too familiar with option software packages--I wrote most of the programs I need for my book-keeping, and the pricing and modeling software we use was developed by a group of traders and exchange programmers. I have heard nice things about OptionVu...do a Yahoo search on it to find their website. I looked into it a while back and liked what they had, although it is expensive. Ultimately though, it didn't offer me anything I didn't already have.
Hope this helps.
Happy trading.
Porter |
