Strategies · Lesson 10 of 14 · Lab
Protective put
A protective put buys a put against an existing holding, setting a floor below which further falls are offset. On 22 September 2026 the NIFTY 23,350 put cost ₹12.65 with the index at 23,460. It settled at ₹20.95, returning ₹8.30 on the option leg while the holding fell 131 points.
NIFTY weekly expiry, 22 September 2026 · MarketCue one-minute option-chain capture
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Prices captured at the open on Tuesday, 22 September 2026. NIFTY spot at the open: 23,460. The highlighted row is nearest the money.
NIFTY closed at 23,329, down 131 points from the open. Bought 23,350 PE at ₹12.65 → settled ₹20.95. Net gain of ₹8.30 per unit, or +66% of what was put up. This was the expiry, so those closing prices are settlement values.
Insurance priced by distance
The further the floor sits below the current level, the cheaper it is. With the index at 23,460, a 23,350 floor cost ₹12.65 and a 23,450 floor cost ₹34.85 — nearly three times as much for 100 points of additional protection.
Below the strike, every point the holding loses is matched by a point the put gains. Above it, the put expires and the premium is gone. That is the entire structure, and the choice of strike is a choice about how much of the fall to absorb before the offset begins.
On this session
The index fell 131 points to 23,329, which is 21 points below the 23,350 strike. The put settled at ₹20.95 against ₹12.65 paid — ₹8.30 on the option leg, against a holding that lost far more.
That is the ordinary outcome for a protective put on a moderate decline: it was reached, it paid, and it offset a fraction of the move. The floor only becomes the dominant term in a fall much larger than this one.
The collar preset shows the common financing arrangement. Writing the 23,500 call brought ₹36.00, more than paying for the ₹12.65 put, in exchange for the same cap a covered call imposes.
Common questions
What is a protective put?
Buying a put against an underlying you hold, which sets a floor below which further declines are offset point for point. The cost is the premium, and it is lost if the floor is never reached.
What is an options collar?
A protective put financed by writing a call above the current level. On 22 September 2026 a 23,500 written call brought ₹36.00 against a ₹12.65 cost for the 23,350 put, so the floor was more than paid for — in exchange for capping the upside at 23,500.
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How these figures are produced
Every price on these pages was traded on the exchange and is read from our own option-chain capture, which records the NIFTY and SENSEX chains once a minute through the session. Each page names the session its figures come from.
Figures that a model produced rather than the market — the Greeks, implied volatility — are labelled as model outputs wherever they appear, and never presented beside traded prices without saying which is which. The pricing is checked against published reference values on every change.
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