Common use of Margin Transactions Clause in Contracts

Margin Transactions. We may purchase securities for your portfolio with money borrowed from your brokerage account. This allows you to purchase more stock than you would be able to with your available cash, and allows us to purchase stock without selling other holdings. A risk in margin trading is that, in volatile markets, securities prices can fall very quickly. If the value of the securities in your account minus what you owe the broker falls below a certain level, the broker will issue a “margin call”, and you will be required to sell your position in the security purchased on margin or add more cash to the account. In some circumstances, you may lose more money than you originally invested. We may use options as an investment strategy. An option is a contract that gives the buyer the right, but not the obligation, to buy or sell an asset (such as a share of stock) at a specific price on or before a certain date. An option, just like a stock or bond, is a security. An option is also a derivative, because it derives its value from an underlying asset. The two types of options are calls and puts: • A call gives us the right to buy an asset at a certain price within a specific period of time. We will buy a call if we have determined that the stock will increase substantially before the option expires. • A put gives us the holder the right to sell an asset at a certain price within a specific period of time. We will buy a put if we have determined that the price of the stock will fall before the option expires. We may use options to speculate on the possibility of a sharp price swing. We may also use options to "hedge" a purchase of the underlying security; in other words, we will use an option purchase to limit the potential upside and downside of a security we have purchased for your portfolio. We use "covered calls", in which we sell an option on a security you own. In this strategy, you receive a fee for making the option available, and the person purchasing the option has the right to buy the security from you at an agreed-upon price. We may use a "spreading strategy", in which we purchase two or more option contracts (for example, a call option that you buy and a call option that you sell) for the same underlying security. This effectively puts you on both sides of the market, but with the ability to vary price, time and other factors. A risk of covered calls is that the option buyer does not have to exercise the option, so that if we want to sell the stock prior to the end of the option agreement, we have to buy the option back from the option buyer, for a possible loss. A risk of spreading strategies is that the ability to fully profit from a price swing is limited.