MET Butterfly Strategy
MET (MetLife, Inc.), in the Financial Services sector, (Insurance - Life industry), listed on NYSE.
MetLife, Inc., a financial services company, provides insurance, annuities, employee benefits, and asset management services worldwide. It operates through five segments: U.S.; Asia; Latin America; Europe, the Middle East and Africa; and MetLife Holdings. The company offers life, dental, group short-and long-term disability, individual disability, pet insurance, accidental death and dismemberment, vision, and accident and health coverages, as well as prepaid legal plans; administrative services-only arrangements to employers; and general and separate account, and synthetic guaranteed interest contracts, as well as private floating rate funding agreements. It also provides pension risk transfers, institutional income annuities, structured settlements, and capital markets investment products; and other products and services, such as life insurance products and funding agreements for funding postretirement benefits, as well as company, bank, or trust-owned life insurance used to finance nonqualified benefit programs for executives. In addition, it provides fixed, indexed-linked, and variable annuities; and pension products; regular savings products; whole and term life, endowments, universal and variable life, and group life products; longevity reinsurance solutions; credit insurance products; and protection against long-term health care services. MetLife, Inc. was founded in 1863 and is headquartered in New York, New York.
MET (MetLife, Inc.) trades in the Financial Services sector, specifically Insurance - Life, with a market capitalization of approximately $50.24B, a trailing P/E of 14.07, a beta of 0.78 versus the broader market, a 52-week range of 67.33-83.85, average daily share volume of 3.7M, a public-listing history dating back to 2000, approximately 45K full-time employees. These structural characteristics shape how MET stock options price implied volatility around earnings windows, capital events, and macro-driven sector rotations.
A beta of 0.78 places MET roughly in line with broader market moves, so the strategy payoff and realized volatility track the index-equivalent baseline. MET pays a dividend, which adjusts put-call parity and shifts the ex-dividend pricing across the listed chain.
What is a butterfly on MET?
A long call butterfly buys one lower-strike call, sells two ATM calls, and buys one higher-strike call, paying a small net debit for a defined-risk position that maxes out if the underlying pins the middle strike at expiration.
Current MET snapshot
As of May 15, 2026, spot at $79.65, ATM IV 24.70%, IV rank 28.35%, expected move 7.08%. The butterfly on MET below is built from the same end-of-day chain, with strikes snapped to listed contracts and premiums pulled from the bid/ask midpoint at a 34-day expiry.
Why this butterfly structure on MET specifically: MET IV at 24.70% is on the cheap side of its 1-year range, which favors premium-buying structures like a MET butterfly, with a market-implied 1-standard-deviation move of approximately 7.08% (roughly $5.64 on the underlying). The 34-day window matched to the front-month expiry keeps theta exposure bounded while still capturing the post-snapshot move; longer-dated MET expiries trade a higher absolute premium for lower per-day decay. Position sizing on MET should anchor to the underlying notional of $79.65 per share and to the trader's directional view on MET stock.
MET butterfly setup
The MET butterfly below is built from the end-of-day chain, with each option leg priced at the bid/ask midpoint of its listed strike. With MET near $79.65, the first option leg uses a $75.00 strike; additional legs (when the strategy has them) anchor to spot-relative offsets. Premiums come from the bid/ask midpoint on the listed MET chain at a 34-day expiry; the cross-strike IV skew is reflected directly in the per-leg values rather than approximated. Quantity sizing assumes one contract per option leg (or 100 MET shares for the stock leg in covered calls and collars).
| Action | Type | Strike / Basis | Premium (est) |
|---|---|---|---|
| Buy 1 | Call | $75.00 | $5.55 |
| Sell 2 | Call | $80.00 | $2.30 |
| Buy 1 | Call | $82.50 | $1.18 |
MET butterfly risk and reward
- Net Premium / Debit
- -$212.50
- Max Profit (per contract)
- $281.98
- Max Loss (per contract)
- -$212.50
- Breakeven(s)
- $77.13
- Risk / Reward Ratio
- 1.327
Max profit equals the wing width minus net debit times 100 (reached when the underlying pins the middle strike); max loss equals the net debit times 100. Two breakevens at lower-wing plus debit and upper-wing minus debit.
MET butterfly payoff curve
Modeled P&L at expiration across a range of underlying prices for the butterfly on MET. Each row is one sampled price point from the computed payoff curve; the full curve uses 200 price points internally before being summarized into 10 rows here.
| Underlying Price | % From Spot | P&L at Expiration |
|---|---|---|
| $0.01 | -100.0% | -$212.50 |
| $17.62 | -77.9% | -$212.50 |
| $35.23 | -55.8% | -$212.50 |
| $52.84 | -33.7% | -$212.50 |
| $70.45 | -11.6% | -$212.50 |
| $88.06 | +10.6% | +$37.50 |
| $105.67 | +32.7% | +$37.50 |
| $123.28 | +54.8% | +$37.50 |
| $140.89 | +76.9% | +$37.50 |
| $158.50 | +99.0% | +$37.50 |
When traders use butterfly on MET
Butterflies on MET are pinning bets - traders use them when they expect MET to settle near a specific level at expiration (often the prior close, a round number, or the max-pain strike) and want defined-risk exposure to that outcome.
MET thesis for this butterfly
The market-implied 1-standard-deviation range for MET extends from approximately $74.01 on the downside to $85.29 on the upside. A MET long call butterfly is a pinning play: it pays maximum at the middle strike if MET settles there at expiration, with the wing legs capping both the cost and the maximum loss to the net debit. Current MET IV rank near 28.35% sits in the lower third of its 1-year distribution, where IV often re-expands toward the mean; this favors premium-buying structures and disadvantages premium-selling structures on MET at 24.70%. As a Financial Services name, MET options can move on sector-level news flow (peer earnings, regulatory updates, industry-specific macro data) in addition to MET-specific events.
MET butterfly positions are structurally neutral / pin (limited-risk, limited-reward); the modeled P&L assumes European-style exercise at expiration and ignores early assignment, transaction costs, dividends paid before expiry on the stock leg (when present), and the bid-ask spread on the listed chain. MET positions also carry Financial Services sector concentration risk; news flow inside the sector (peer earnings, regulatory shifts, supply-chain headlines) can move MET alongside the broader basket even when MET-specific fundamentals are unchanged. Always rebuild the position from current MET chain quotes before placing a trade.
Frequently asked questions
- What is a butterfly on MET?
- A butterfly on MET is the butterfly strategy applied to MET (stock). The strategy is structurally neutral / pin (limited-risk, limited-reward): A long call butterfly buys one lower-strike call, sells two ATM calls, and buys one higher-strike call, paying a small net debit for a defined-risk position that maxes out if the underlying pins the middle strike at expiration. With MET stock trading near $79.65, the strikes shown on this page are snapped to the nearest listed MET chain strike and the premiums come straight from the end-of-day bid/ask midpoint.
- How are MET butterfly max profit and max loss calculated?
- Max profit equals the wing width minus net debit times 100 (reached when the underlying pins the middle strike); max loss equals the net debit times 100. Two breakevens at lower-wing plus debit and upper-wing minus debit. For the MET butterfly priced from the end-of-day chain at a 30-day expiry (ATM IV 24.70%), the computed maximum profit is $281.98 per contract and the computed maximum loss is -$212.50 per contract. Live intraday quotes will differ as the chain moves through the trading session.
- What is the breakeven for a MET butterfly?
- The breakeven for the MET butterfly priced on this page is roughly $77.13 at expiration, derived from end-of-day chain premiums. Breakeven is the underlying price at which the strategy's P&L crosses zero ignoring transaction costs and assignment risk. The current MET market-implied 1-standard-deviation expected move is approximately 7.08%; if the move sits well outside the breakeven distance, the structure's risk-reward becomes correspondingly tighter.
- When should you consider a butterfly on MET?
- Butterflies on MET are pinning bets - traders use them when they expect MET to settle near a specific level at expiration (often the prior close, a round number, or the max-pain strike) and want defined-risk exposure to that outcome.
- How does current MET implied volatility affect this butterfly?
- MET ATM IV is at 24.70% with IV rank near 28.35%, which is on the low end of its 1-year range. Premium-buying structures (long call, long put, debit spreads) are relatively cheap in this regime; premium-selling structures collect less credit per unit risk.