Ruch Prawniczy, Ekonomiczny i Socjologiczny, 2002, nr 4
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Item KILKA UWAG NA TEMAT GENEZY GIEŁDOWEGO KONTRAKTU OPCYJNEGO(Wydział Prawa i Administracji UAM, 2002) Golecki, Mariusz JerzyOption contracts, because of their flexibility, became in the mid-1970’s an ideal instrument for transferring investment risk away from institutions that wished to secure themselves onto speculators ready to risk their funds to make large gains. At this turning point a new financial market segment was created where risks involved in investment replaced potentially profitable property as the object of trading. This is why, in a sense, the contemporary stock option market resembles an insurance market rather than a stock market. Option is regulated by the French and Italian law and although it is not regulated in the German Civil Code (BGB), it is dealt with in judicial decisions and the doctrine. Since the middle of the 19th century especially the doctrine has attempted to clarify the difference between preliminary contract, option contract, and bid contract, at the same time trying to define the legal status of option. The situation is quite different under common law. Here option becomes the main component of the contract conclusion procedure. With the development of trade in England and USA, in particular in the form of markets organized as commodity or financial exchanges, option contract began to be applied on the market as an investment instrument for speculation or for bracing against the risk of price and exchange rate fluctuations. Similarly, in ancient Greece option became a financial instrument, the only difference being that it would be controversial to consider the Greek option (.arrha) to be a derivative, especially with so few existing trade records from that period. By contrast, there has been no mistaking such a status of option on e.g. the Liverpool cotton market since at least the 18th c. On contemporary markets the notion of option as a derivative is considered equivalent with the construct of option contract developed under the common law. It is also very close to the well-known classical Greek law of arratic contract. This similarity is striking not only in the view of the time distance between the Greece of 6th c. and England and America of the 17-19th c. It is the more surprising that it was virtually impossible for the ancient Greek classical law to affect in any way the common law.