MET Collar 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 collar on MET?
A collar pairs long stock with a protective out-of-the-money put financed by a short out-of-the-money call, capping both tails of the position around the current spot.
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 collar 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 collar structure on MET specifically: IV regime affects collar pricing on both sides; compressed MET IV at 24.70% typically pushes the short call premium to roughly offset the long put cost, 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 collar setup
The MET collar 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 $82.50 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 100 shares | Stock | $79.65 | long |
| Sell 1 | Call | $82.50 | $1.18 |
| Buy 1 | Put | $75.00 | $0.93 |
MET collar risk and reward
- Net Premium / Debit
- -$7,940.00
- Max Profit (per contract)
- $310.00
- Max Loss (per contract)
- -$440.00
- Breakeven(s)
- $79.40
- Risk / Reward Ratio
- 0.705
Max profit roughly equals short-call strike minus cost basis plus net premium; max loss roughly equals cost basis minus long-put strike minus net premium. Breakeven shifts by the net premium.
MET collar payoff curve
Modeled P&L at expiration across a range of underlying prices for the collar 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% | -$440.00 |
| $17.62 | -77.9% | -$440.00 |
| $35.23 | -55.8% | -$440.00 |
| $52.84 | -33.7% | -$440.00 |
| $70.45 | -11.6% | -$440.00 |
| $88.06 | +10.6% | +$310.00 |
| $105.67 | +32.7% | +$310.00 |
| $123.28 | +54.8% | +$310.00 |
| $140.89 | +76.9% | +$310.00 |
| $158.50 | +99.0% | +$310.00 |
When traders use collar on MET
Collars on MET hedge an existing long MET stock position; the long put sets a floor while the short call finances it, often run as a near-zero-cost hedge during expected volatility windows.
MET thesis for this collar
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 collar hedges an existing long MET position with a protective put while financing the put cost via a short call; when the premiums roughly offset, the collar acts as a near-zero-cost insurance band around the current spot. 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 collar positions are structurally neutral (protective); 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 collar on MET?
- A collar on MET is the collar strategy applied to MET (stock). The strategy is structurally neutral (protective): A collar pairs long stock with a protective out-of-the-money put financed by a short out-of-the-money call, capping both tails of the position around the current spot. 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 collar max profit and max loss calculated?
- Max profit roughly equals short-call strike minus cost basis plus net premium; max loss roughly equals cost basis minus long-put strike minus net premium. Breakeven shifts by the net premium. For the MET collar priced from the end-of-day chain at a 30-day expiry (ATM IV 24.70%), the computed maximum profit is $310.00 per contract and the computed maximum loss is -$440.00 per contract. Live intraday quotes will differ as the chain moves through the trading session.
- What is the breakeven for a MET collar?
- The breakeven for the MET collar priced on this page is roughly $79.40 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 collar on MET?
- Collars on MET hedge an existing long MET stock position; the long put sets a floor while the short call finances it, often run as a near-zero-cost hedge during expected volatility windows.
- How does current MET implied volatility affect this collar?
- 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.