economics

I found Pastore's "Stock Options" book to be an essential resource for any employee or entrepreneur needing to understand this very complex subject. It is one of the few comprehensive accurate resources available on the topic. While my book "Engineering Your Start-up" contains some overlapping material and more specific guidance to the entrepreneur in granting stock options, Pastore's book is an essential supplement. It is more complete in some areas, and is up-to-date on the related tax laws. The financial risk of not optimizing one's tax exposure in deciding when to exercise or sell stock options, for example, far exceeds the cost of this book. I recommended to all my friends who have any stock options at all, to buy, read, and keep this book for future reference.

I was shocked at the thinness of this book. Not including the Appendix and and intro, I count about 73 pages. Many of those pages contain tables and many of those tables were *very* simple re-hashes of the examples. I feel like I spent way too much money on this book.

It does a good job at explaining NQSOs and ISOs and all the quirks of each. When it got to the part I was really interested in "Two Tax Saving strategies", I found that while it does present some general ground rules and some examples, it ends up saying basically that it all depends on your situation. I half expected to read the proverbial "speak to your tax advisor about your specific tax situation."

If you want basic info about Stock Options, you can find that on the Web. If you want general advice about what to do with your options - exercise and hold; delay; etc., this will give it. If you want detailed advice and formula for figuring out what to do, get something else.

This book helped me greatly with some stock options I got from my work. I had NSO stock and had not idea how the taxes worked out on it and when the best time was to exercise.
Well this book, I made a good decision and made $80,000 on my stock options.