Learn how a contract price is determined. The offer price of a binary options contract is roughly equal to the market's perception of the probability of the event happening. The price of a binary option is presented as a bid/offer price that shows the bid (sell) price first and offer (buy) price second, for example, 3/96, which represents a bid price of $3 and an offer price of $96.
Binary options outside the U.S. are an alternative for speculating or hedging but come with advantages and disadvantages. The positives include a known risk and reward, no commissions, innumerable strike prices and expiry dates while negatives include non-ownership of the traded asset, little regulatory oversight and a winning payout that is usually less than the loss on losing trades.
While binary options may be used in theoretical asset pricing, they are prone to fraud in their applications and hence banned by regulators in many jurisdictions as a form of gambling.[4] Many binary option outlets have been exposed as fraudulent.[5] The U.S. FBI is investigating binary option scams throughout the world, and the Israeli police have tied the industry to criminal syndicates.[6][7][8] The European Union is publishing regulations that will ban binary options trading.[9] ASIC considers binary options as a “high-risk” and “unpredictable” investment option.[10]
