When your RSU and ESPP vest, open your brokerage and try selling a single 20-30% out of the money call that expires in a month.
You can read about it, but actually doing it is not that hard. Although, given the inflated stock prices and US equity options being 100 sized lot - you do have to keep an eye to roll it out if market is getting really exuberant.
Warning that a lot of companies have a trading policy that forbids employees from investing in options or any kind of derivative on their own stock. You might be allowed to make options trades on other companies in the sector (not legal advice).
It talks about not allowing "hedging Google stock".
To me it means "you can't short Google stock", which is reasonable. It would be really fishy for an employee to bet on failure of the company he works for.
It doesn't mean "you can't buy call options on Google stock", which would be unreasonable.
> You should familiarize yourself with Google’s Insider Trading Policy. It describes company-wide policies that address the risks of insider trading, such as a prohibition on any Google employee hedging Google stock; and periodic blackout windows when no Google employee may trade Google stock.
The quotes gives hedging as an example of prohibited conduct and recommends reading the internal policy. The parent comment is from someone who read the internal policy. What more do you want, the internal policy to be leaked in full?
Employees of tech companies with a somewhat open culture can often make inferences about the company’s performance before financials are released. The SEC investigates when people make suspicious gains from options trades. Companies don’t want that kind of attention. Rather than try to define the exact parameters of what kind of trade is risky, it’s easier to just ban them as a rule. This may seem unreasonable to some, but it appears to be a common practice.
You can read about it, but actually doing it is not that hard. Although, given the inflated stock prices and US equity options being 100 sized lot - you do have to keep an eye to roll it out if market is getting really exuberant.