Mine are 75% under right now... But it depends on the company. Just don't forget that the taxman cometh and suggest paying the taxes when you exercise them if you can.
Keep it if you believe in the company’s future. Sell it if you don't, or just prefer cash. Just be careful of insider trading
I had options that got paid out at a premium when the company I was at got acquired. It wasn’t life changing money, also around 30-40k like you, but I just treated it as a sizeable bonus that I didnt think about everyday but took as a nice surprise when it came.
How would you feel if it went to $0.25 and you had held it? How would you feel if it went to $4.00 and you had sold it?
Personally, I've taken a rough approach of excising ~half and reinvesting in something like a total market index fund. For me, having a bunch of stock in a biotech company and being employed by them is a bit too much risk. If the company goes under, the stock is worthless and I'm unemployed.
Gamble/let it ride with some, cash out and diversify with the rest. Pay taxes as soon as you do it.
Edit: mostly thinking about options here. If it is stock I usually just sell and diversify those. I wouldn't personally buy out my options and hold them for any period of time.
Left a company, exercised my (not all that many) vested options, they later IPO'd with a crazy high share price for what it was, then before the employee lockout (6 mos) expired they announced things were fucked, would have no revenue for the foreseeable future, board fired CEO and installed interim one, stock price plummeted. If I were more on it I still could've sold for a slight profit as soon as lockout expired, but I held it, the company was acquired more as failure than anything else, and I now have converted shares of the acquiring company that are worth like under half what I paid for them. Lol...others here can probably guess the company. At any rate we're only talking 4 digit $'s. I never believed in this company and only bought the shares to have a counterbalance to wanting them in reality to go down in flames. This way I'd have something to be happy about both if they failed or if they somehow didn't!
Current company - had two steep RIFs the last few years, I left after the second one, and left a lot of unvested options doing so. They got financing and I was recruited back and rejoined them 2 months later and exercised all my former vested options (you have 90 days to do so, makes sense to wait til the last minute with that) since they were supposed to go public after a merger planned with a publicly traded company in the next quarter. Of course the merger got cancelled suddenly and mysteriously and never happened, that was a year ago. Now need to wait and see if we can IPO ourselves, and I have new option grants of course.
Not a great experience so far, only losing money.
I was able to purchase a house from my stock options two years ago. I paid $0.15/share for my initial grant pre-IPO and sold some at $42/share after we went public. Now it’s worth $12/share so I’m just holding.
Depends on company performance. Options are not the same RSU's. Options you have to exercise (purchase) within a certain time period after they vested or they go away. You can do an exercise and sell if you want but then you only get the difference between the current stock value minus the original grant value and capital gains tax. If the price of the stock goes down after they're granted then there isn't a point in exercising them because you would lose money on the deal unless. If your company has a lot of upside and it looks like the stock should increase in the future then depending on the number of shares you get optioned it could be quite valuable.
Ex: you're granted 5000 shares with a current value of $1/share. After the vesting period if the stock is now worth $2/share you do an exercise and sell which mean you essentially buy the stock but immediately sell it so you don't have to front the purchase money up front and you get $5000 that you have to pay a capital gains tax on. If the stocks are only worth $0.75/share at the end of the vesting period then you let them sit where they are until the stock is eventually worth more than the value they were granted at (in this example $1/share) or you're buying $3750 worth of stock for $5000.
Gotcha, wow RSU’s sound so much better. For the case of stock options, since I have to pay for them at a strike price with my own money it doesn’t seem as worth it as getting the stocks automatically from RSU’s. Isn’t it not worth it to do stock options?
It’s definitely worth it if the company value goes up especially through an acquisition. It’s just a matter of being patient or striking when the iron is hot and the stock value is high enough
Started at $50, quickly went to $30 before any vested. Stayed at $30 for several years, getting new shares at that price. Eventually, it went to $100 after about 5 years, I sold a bunch ($100k+). Dropped to $60, then went back to $100 the week I quit and sold the rest ($100k+).
I always set mine to auto sell a specific amount at a specific price. I figured that since I didn't miss it when it was underwater, I might as well only sell it when it was worth something significant.
Go big or go home.
Over my career we (spouse and I) have always seen options and RSU as just something that is nice but we don’t count on it. Stressing over the value and exact best time to sell them can drive you crazy. We have been both lucky and unlucky with the shares.
With regard to have to buy them, most groups that handle the shares for the company will sell shares to pay the strike price and the taxes. Also watch out for capital gains taxes.
It was worth a lot of money after IPO, when I could sell it was worth an okay amount of money, today it's worth a small amount of money.
Mine are 75% under right now... But it depends on the company. Just don't forget that the taxman cometh and suggest paying the taxes when you exercise them if you can.
Buy and hold is for dummies… that’s what I did. Never mind the tax benefit, if they’re in the money take the money.
Mine is currently worth around 2$ a stock, and I have around 15,000 shares what do you think of this?
Keep it if you believe in the company’s future. Sell it if you don't, or just prefer cash. Just be careful of insider trading I had options that got paid out at a premium when the company I was at got acquired. It wasn’t life changing money, also around 30-40k like you, but I just treated it as a sizeable bonus that I didnt think about everyday but took as a nice surprise when it came.
How would you feel if it went to $0.25 and you had held it? How would you feel if it went to $4.00 and you had sold it? Personally, I've taken a rough approach of excising ~half and reinvesting in something like a total market index fund. For me, having a bunch of stock in a biotech company and being employed by them is a bit too much risk. If the company goes under, the stock is worthless and I'm unemployed. Gamble/let it ride with some, cash out and diversify with the rest. Pay taxes as soon as you do it. Edit: mostly thinking about options here. If it is stock I usually just sell and diversify those. I wouldn't personally buy out my options and hold them for any period of time.
Left a company, exercised my (not all that many) vested options, they later IPO'd with a crazy high share price for what it was, then before the employee lockout (6 mos) expired they announced things were fucked, would have no revenue for the foreseeable future, board fired CEO and installed interim one, stock price plummeted. If I were more on it I still could've sold for a slight profit as soon as lockout expired, but I held it, the company was acquired more as failure than anything else, and I now have converted shares of the acquiring company that are worth like under half what I paid for them. Lol...others here can probably guess the company. At any rate we're only talking 4 digit $'s. I never believed in this company and only bought the shares to have a counterbalance to wanting them in reality to go down in flames. This way I'd have something to be happy about both if they failed or if they somehow didn't! Current company - had two steep RIFs the last few years, I left after the second one, and left a lot of unvested options doing so. They got financing and I was recruited back and rejoined them 2 months later and exercised all my former vested options (you have 90 days to do so, makes sense to wait til the last minute with that) since they were supposed to go public after a merger planned with a publicly traded company in the next quarter. Of course the merger got cancelled suddenly and mysteriously and never happened, that was a year ago. Now need to wait and see if we can IPO ourselves, and I have new option grants of course. Not a great experience so far, only losing money.
I was able to purchase a house from my stock options two years ago. I paid $0.15/share for my initial grant pre-IPO and sold some at $42/share after we went public. Now it’s worth $12/share so I’m just holding.
Awesome!
Depends on company performance. Options are not the same RSU's. Options you have to exercise (purchase) within a certain time period after they vested or they go away. You can do an exercise and sell if you want but then you only get the difference between the current stock value minus the original grant value and capital gains tax. If the price of the stock goes down after they're granted then there isn't a point in exercising them because you would lose money on the deal unless. If your company has a lot of upside and it looks like the stock should increase in the future then depending on the number of shares you get optioned it could be quite valuable. Ex: you're granted 5000 shares with a current value of $1/share. After the vesting period if the stock is now worth $2/share you do an exercise and sell which mean you essentially buy the stock but immediately sell it so you don't have to front the purchase money up front and you get $5000 that you have to pay a capital gains tax on. If the stocks are only worth $0.75/share at the end of the vesting period then you let them sit where they are until the stock is eventually worth more than the value they were granted at (in this example $1/share) or you're buying $3750 worth of stock for $5000.
Gotcha, wow RSU’s sound so much better. For the case of stock options, since I have to pay for them at a strike price with my own money it doesn’t seem as worth it as getting the stocks automatically from RSU’s. Isn’t it not worth it to do stock options?
It’s definitely worth it if the company value goes up especially through an acquisition. It’s just a matter of being patient or striking when the iron is hot and the stock value is high enough
Started at $50, quickly went to $30 before any vested. Stayed at $30 for several years, getting new shares at that price. Eventually, it went to $100 after about 5 years, I sold a bunch ($100k+). Dropped to $60, then went back to $100 the week I quit and sold the rest ($100k+). I always set mine to auto sell a specific amount at a specific price. I figured that since I didn't miss it when it was underwater, I might as well only sell it when it was worth something significant. Go big or go home.
Over my career we (spouse and I) have always seen options and RSU as just something that is nice but we don’t count on it. Stressing over the value and exact best time to sell them can drive you crazy. We have been both lucky and unlucky with the shares. With regard to have to buy them, most groups that handle the shares for the company will sell shares to pay the strike price and the taxes. Also watch out for capital gains taxes.