Renting Shares - Is it Possible to Rent Out Stocks?

Renting shares is fast becoming one of the mostsell a call option that is out of the money (above the
talked about Stock Market Investment strategies. Moreactual price of the share). Why because that way if
and more investors are looking at creating incomewe are forced to sell our shares we will at least be
from their shares and capital growth from property.forced to take a profit. For selling a one month call at
But what is share renting? Is it legal and can anybody$105 we are likely to receive about 3-6% of the
do it? Let's have a look at the basic concept of rentingshares price. So in this case let's assume that we
shares and see if this investment strategy isreceive $5 per share.
something that everybody should have a look at.I'm sure you don't need any help with step 3 but you
Renting out shares is very similar to leasing out yourmight be wondering why we can simply forget about
property for rent. The basic share renting strategy isour shares rather than monitoring them each day. The
as follows.answer is simply because we aren't too concerned
Step 1/ Buy a parcel of shares. If you are in Australiawhether they share price goes up or down. Why?
you will need to buy in lots of 1000 whereas in the USWell lets now have a look at what would happen
you can buy in lots of 100.should the share price go up, down or sideways.
Step 2/ Sell a one month call option, one strike priceShare price goes up above $105 to $108.
out of the money.We will be forced to sell our shares for $105 despite
Step 3/ Enjoy yourself for the month e.g. Go to thetheir actual price being $108. This sounds like a very
beach, watch the footy etc.bad out come but if you have a closer look it is
Step 4/ This will depend on where the share price is atactually a great outcome. We bought our shares for
the end of the month. Read below for more details on$100, sold them for $105 and also got paid $5 for the
renting shares.month. Therefore we actually made a $10 profit
Now if this doesn't make much sense I will now try towhereas if we had of just bought the shares instead
explain it in some more detail.of renting them out we would have only made $8.
The reason why you need to buy your shares inShare price goes sideways and remains at $100.
groups of 100 (1000 in Australia) relates to step 2. CallWe will get to keep our shares because no one is
options are sold in lots of 100 shares e.g. If you buy 1going to pay $105 for shares that could be bought for
call option you are actually buying a call option for 100$100 on the open market. So in this case we have
shares.made a profit of $5 whereas if we hadn't rented our
What is a call option?shares we wouldn't have made one cent.
A call option gives the buyer the right but not theShare price goes down to $95
obligation to buy a set number of shares, on or beforeOnce again we will keep our shares. Had we not
a set date, at a predetermined price.rented out our shares we would have lost $5 but
For example Lets say the stock ABC was trading atbecause we received the $5 premium we actually
$100 and somebody bought a call option at $105 thatdon't loose a cent.
lasted for one month. This would give them the right toSo as you can see renting shares is actually quite a
buy ABC at $105 no matter what the actual price ofsafe wealth creation strategy. Effectively what you
ABC was at anytime during the next month. In order toare doing is trading of your potential to make a
get this right, the person buying the call will need to paymassive gain in one month for a regular monthly
the seller a premium.income. Which one is better? Well if you average out
This is where we come in.your percentage returns from share renting over the
People that rent out their shares get paid by theyear you may be surprised at how effective it can be.
people who buy call options. So let's say we buy 100Share renting returns generally fluctuate from 20-80%
ABC shares at $100. The next thing we would do isper annum. With a modest average of about 40% -
sell a covered call (it is called covered because webetter than bank interest I'm sure you will agree.
actually own the shares) at $105. We always want to