Crunch Time

I have a few employee stock options expiring in a couple weeks.    I've only executed 5% of the options, so I will be actively working to exercise the rest.  Usually, I start exercising the options a year before expiration and complete doing so a month before expiration.   But this year has been different for several reasons:

1. 2015 and 2016 had an unusually large amount of options expiring.  So I generally only exercised options that expired in those years, to reduce the amount of taxes paid.
2. Since my company is a defensive stock, its price has not risen much during the past few years.  So I am waiting as long as I can for the stock price to increase.  This has worked out somewhat, since the stock price has risen slightly in the past month.  But still it is not higher than in early 2015.
3. This year is my last year of having employee stock options.   So I don't have many shares left, meaning that a change in the stock price has less incremental impact on our investment value.

 Although I have several limit orders at higher prices, it is likely I will need to convert to market orders and take whatever price is available at the moment.

Hopefully, there isn't a big drop in the stock price in the next couple weeks.

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This is not financial advice. Please consult a professional advisor.

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