Early Exercise (assignment) - The exercise or assignment of an option contract before its expiration date.

Employee Stock Options - Stock options granted to employees by their companies as a mean of compensation and incentive. Read More About Employee Stock Options.

Equity Option - An option that has common stock as its underlying security.

European Exercise - A feature of an option that stipulates that the option may only be exercised at its expiration. Therefore, there can be no early assignment with this type of option.

ETF - Exchange Traded Funds. Open ended funds tradable over an exchange just like a stock. ETFs made it possible for investors to invest in a variety of other instruments like gold and silver just like investing in stocks.

Exercise - To invoke the right granted under the terms of a listed options contract. The holder is the one who exercises. Call holders exercise to buy the underlying security, while put holders exercise to sell the underlying security.

Exercise Limit - The limit on the number of contracts which a holder can exercise in a fixed period of time. Set by the appropriate option exchange, it is designed to prevent an investor or group of investors from "cornering" the market in a stock.

Exercise Price - The price at which the option holder may buy or sell the underlying security, as defined in the terms of his option contract. It is the price at which the call holder may exercise to buy the underlying security or the put holder may exercise to sell the underlying security. For listed options, the exercise price is the same as the Strike Price.

Expected Return - A rather complex mathematical analysis involving statistical distribution of stock prices, it is the return which an investor might expect to make on an investment if he were to make exactly the same investment many times throughout history.

Expiration Date - The day on which an option contract becomes void. The expiration date for listed stock options is the Saturday after the third Friday of the expiration month. All holders of options must indicate their desire to exercise, if they wish to do so, by this date.

Expiration Time - The time of day by which all exercise notices must be received on the expiration date. Technically, the expiration time is currently 5:00 PM on the expiration date, but public holders of option contracts must indicate their desire to exercise no later than 5:30 PM on the business day preceding the expiration date. The times are Eastern Time.

Extrinsic Value - Also known as "Premium Value" or "Time Value". It is the difference between an option's price and the intrinsic value. Read more about how Stock Options Are Priced.