SCI Long Call Strategy
SCI (Service Corporation International), in the Consumer Cyclical sector, (Personal Products & Services industry), listed on NYSE.
Service Corporation International provides deathcare products and services in the United States and Canada. The company operates through Funeral and Cemetery segments. Its funeral service and cemetery operations comprise funeral service locations, cemeteries, funeral service/cemetery combination locations, crematoria, and other businesses. The company also provides professional services related to funerals and cremations, including the use of funeral facilities and motor vehicles; arranging and directing services; and removal, preparation, embalming, cremation, memorialization, and travel protection, as well as catering services. In addition, it offers funeral merchandise, including burial caskets and related accessories, urns and other cremation receptacles, outer burial containers, flowers, online and video tributes, stationery products, casket and cremation memorialization products, and other ancillary merchandise. Further, the company's cemeteries provide cemetery property interment rights, such as developed lots, lawn crypts, mausoleum spaces, niches, and other cremation memorialization and interment options; and sells cemetery merchandise and services, including memorial markers and bases, outer burial containers, flowers and floral placements, graveside services, merchandise installations, and interments, as well as offers preneed cemetery merchandise and services.
SCI (Service Corporation International) trades in the Consumer Cyclical sector, specifically Personal Products & Services, with a market capitalization of approximately $10.70B, a trailing P/E of 17.19, a beta of 0.89 versus the broader market, a 52-week range of 74.99-88.67, average daily share volume of 1.2M, a public-listing history dating back to 1980, approximately 25K full-time employees. These structural characteristics shape how SCI stock options price implied volatility around earnings windows, capital events, and macro-driven sector rotations.
A beta of 0.89 places SCI roughly in line with broader market moves, so the strategy payoff and realized volatility track the index-equivalent baseline. SCI pays a dividend, which adjusts put-call parity and shifts the ex-dividend pricing across the listed chain.
What is a long call on SCI?
A long call buys upside exposure with a fixed maximum loss equal to the premium paid; profit accrues if the underlying closes above the strike plus premium at expiration.
Current SCI snapshot
As of May 15, 2026, spot at $77.56, ATM IV 25.70%, IV rank 33.86%, expected move 7.37%. The long call on SCI 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 long call structure on SCI specifically: SCI IV at 25.70% is mid-range versus its 1-year history, so strategy selection should anchor more to the directional thesis than to the IV regime, with a market-implied 1-standard-deviation move of approximately 7.37% (roughly $5.71 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 SCI expiries trade a higher absolute premium for lower per-day decay. Position sizing on SCI should anchor to the underlying notional of $77.56 per share and to the trader's directional view on SCI stock.
SCI long call setup
The SCI long call below is built from the end-of-day chain, with each option leg priced at the bid/ask midpoint of its listed strike. With SCI near $77.56, the first option leg uses a $77.50 strike; additional legs (when the strategy has them) anchor to spot-relative offsets. Premiums come from the bid/ask midpoint on the listed SCI 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 SCI shares for the stock leg in covered calls and collars).
| Action | Type | Strike / Basis | Premium (est) |
|---|---|---|---|
| Buy 1 | Call | $77.50 | $2.35 |
SCI long call risk and reward
- Net Premium / Debit
- -$235.00
- Max Profit (per contract)
- Unbounded
- Max Loss (per contract)
- -$235.00
- Breakeven(s)
- $79.85
- Risk / Reward Ratio
- Unbounded
Max profit is unbounded; max loss equals the premium paid times 100. Breakeven is strike plus premium.
SCI long call payoff curve
Modeled P&L at expiration across a range of underlying prices for the long call on SCI. 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% | -$235.00 |
| $17.16 | -77.9% | -$235.00 |
| $34.31 | -55.8% | -$235.00 |
| $51.45 | -33.7% | -$235.00 |
| $68.60 | -11.6% | -$235.00 |
| $85.75 | +10.6% | +$589.92 |
| $102.90 | +32.7% | +$2,304.70 |
| $120.04 | +54.8% | +$4,019.49 |
| $137.19 | +76.9% | +$5,734.27 |
| $154.34 | +99.0% | +$7,449.06 |
When traders use long call on SCI
Long calls on SCI express a bullish thesis with defined risk; traders use them ahead of SCI catalysts (earnings, product launches, macro events) when the expected upside justifies the premium and theta decay.
SCI thesis for this long call
The market-implied 1-standard-deviation range for SCI extends from approximately $71.85 on the downside to $83.27 on the upside. A SCI long call expresses a directional view that the underlying closes above the strike plus premium at expiration, ideally with implied volatility holding or expanding to preserve extrinsic value through the hold period. Current SCI IV rank near 33.86% is mid-range against its 1-year distribution, so the IV signal is neutral; the long call thesis on SCI should anchor more to the directional view and the expected-move geometry. As a Consumer Cyclical name, SCI options can move on sector-level news flow (peer earnings, regulatory updates, industry-specific macro data) in addition to SCI-specific events.
SCI long call positions are structurally bullish; 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. SCI positions also carry Consumer Cyclical sector concentration risk; news flow inside the sector (peer earnings, regulatory shifts, supply-chain headlines) can move SCI alongside the broader basket even when SCI-specific fundamentals are unchanged. Long-premium structures like a long call on SCI are particularly exposed to IV-crush risk through scheduled events (earnings, FDA decisions, central-bank meetings) where IV typically contracts post-event regardless of the directional outcome. Always rebuild the position from current SCI chain quotes before placing a trade.
Frequently asked questions
- What is a long call on SCI?
- A long call on SCI is the long call strategy applied to SCI (stock). The strategy is structurally bullish: A long call buys upside exposure with a fixed maximum loss equal to the premium paid; profit accrues if the underlying closes above the strike plus premium at expiration. With SCI stock trading near $77.56, the strikes shown on this page are snapped to the nearest listed SCI chain strike and the premiums come straight from the end-of-day bid/ask midpoint.
- How are SCI long call max profit and max loss calculated?
- Max profit is unbounded; max loss equals the premium paid times 100. Breakeven is strike plus premium. For the SCI long call priced from the end-of-day chain at a 30-day expiry (ATM IV 25.70%), the computed maximum profit is unbounded per contract and the computed maximum loss is -$235.00 per contract. Live intraday quotes will differ as the chain moves through the trading session.
- What is the breakeven for a SCI long call?
- The breakeven for the SCI long call priced on this page is roughly $79.85 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 SCI market-implied 1-standard-deviation expected move is approximately 7.37%; if the move sits well outside the breakeven distance, the structure's risk-reward becomes correspondingly tighter.
- When should you consider a long call on SCI?
- Long calls on SCI express a bullish thesis with defined risk; traders use them ahead of SCI catalysts (earnings, product launches, macro events) when the expected upside justifies the premium and theta decay.
- How does current SCI implied volatility affect this long call?
- SCI ATM IV is at 25.70% with IV rank near 33.86%, which is mid-range against its 1-year history. Strategy selection depends more on directional thesis and expected move than on a strong IV signal.