Having heard about Single Stock Futures (SSF) for a while, lot of
questions arise in my mind (and may be in your too..).

First and formost, whats the difference between SSF and Options on
Stock?
Is one riskier then other. (I am completely well versed with options,
but a rockie in SSF).

About commissions, are SSF commissions less or more then Options
commission??

Does one require more money to trade SSF's then options? (Options can
be traded at dirt cheap as $25 per option contract, but the
commissions and the bid/ask spreads sometimes doesn't make sense to
trade that low, as it eats out the % gain...anyways, but yes, you can
trade options as cheap as that...

Regarding volatility and the options chain....it takes lot of
analysis, time and "what if" parameters to arrive at a decission for
the risk/reward.
But futures have only one expiry date (depends on the month you
select) and the futures price is available for you to go long or
short. So, is analysizing the futures contract much easier then the
options???

Does technical analysis play the same role when dealing with options
contract and SSF?

What happens if the stock splits or gets acquired or merged with
another company? What happens to the futures contract?

Would appreciate of someone who is well versed with both the worlds
of
options and futures can shed some light on these and other points if
I
missed on any.

Thanks in advance.

I haven't traded commodities for awhile now but as I recall the online
broker I was using also offered these SSF's. 1 Future contract of GOOG
was [at the time, it fluctuates with price of the underlying Stock] it
was around $8,800 plus an additional $8,000 in margin so for $17K + U
could trade 1 contract. I don't remember the specs on the contract so
I couldn't tell U what the leverage is but as U've already figured out
options might make more sense for most people.

Futures typically only deal with expiry, not strike price, ie a Dec
contract of wheat. Expiration is the last trading day of the month ,
derivitives or options on Futures have strike price and expiry just
like a stock option, usually expiring more like a stock option just
past mid month. I don't recall options being available on SSF's.

If U want to play with futures on stock U might try trading a mini
contract [1/5] of one of the indexes like the eMini S&P500 or
something like that to get some Futures experience.

As always technical analysis and luck blend to an outcome one way or
the other. Of course wherever there is leverage and volume, volatility
isn't far behind...

GL...

an Option is the same as a SSF future but with insurances.

  1 at the money call + insurance = 1 SSF.