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Old 05-08-2008, 12:20 PM
Broken Arrow Broken Arrow is offline
Foot in mouth diseased
 
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Quote:
Originally Posted by gekkoplus View Post
I too was "options averse" until recent days. My previous company, a private start-up, had offered me a large number of stock options that would reduce a big chunk of my salary. At that time, I was completely new to the options world, and I chose a fixed base salary over options.

Just after one and half year or so, this company was bought out and I heard that many of my colleagues made a fortune overnight. That somewhat jolted me and made me a little more open to at least investigate the opportunity.

I am not a great fan of hit and miss, but I do now realize that one hit can potentially compensate for thousand misses.
Yes, but without knowing the specifics of the company you work for, isn't it just as possible for the opposite to be true, and your colleagues could have lost a fortune overnight? Enron is the classic nightmare scenario.

I don't think stock options is necessarily a bad thing either. We had someone who asked about it for Novo Nordisk a little while back, and I made the uncharacteristic recommendation of 10% (instead of the usual 5%). However, I do think that having too much into any one stock could set your entire portfolio off-kilter... unless that is exactly what the person wanted to do.

But that's just me.
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