Options Trading Tutorial

i own stock options in a private company. How can i learn the value of the stock?

how can i find the value of private stock options i own ? Are there periodic reports issued by management, periodically reqired government reports, periodic reports to investors, etc? What

Public Comments

1. newspaper or ask jeeves
2. The nominal value of stock in a private company doesn't really mean a lot - the board sets it, probably annually. But what you really want to know is probably what you could sell it for, which doesn't necessarily have any relationship to the nominal "value". Sometimes there are restrictions on how and to whom you can sell stock of a private company. You could ask what the most recent sale was and when, but other than that, no real way for a private company. If you got the stock options as an employee, there might be something in the rules that says you can turn them in to the company and get some amount, probably the nominal value.
3. I have heard of cases where people at a company will provide input into what their stock options are worth to the board in order to argue what the options are worth. You can do two things: 1. Get the company financials and run a discounted cash flow model. You can get details on how to do this on a basic level on wikipedia. 2. Do a comparable company analysis. Find your companies net income. Then, find the P/E of similar companies that are publicly traded. Apply the average or media of those multiples to your private companies net income. Divide that number by the shares outstanding and voila!