One of the defining features of an American Option is that the buyer of the contract is allowed to exercise their right to buy/sell at anytime up to and include the expiration date. I personally have a trading account at Merrill Edge and currently have a Put option with VIX underlying that expires in March. However, I am seeing the underlying approaching a price point where I want to exit. But the value of the contracts themselves are less than my profit if I exercised the contract early – so I don't want to sell to close.
I was just on hold for 30 minutes with Merrill waiting to connect with someone. They informed me that the only way to exercise early would be to call them to provide them with instruction to do just that. I may or may not have to wait 30 minutes next time when I see a price point I want to exercise at – and obviously that means the price will change by the time I connect with someone. So what gives? Is this common among trading platforms? Does anybody have any resources that would allow me to do this type of trading myself? I am astounded that it took 30 minutes to connect to someone, and on top of that, I can't even manage my own investment properly.
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