A Legal Study of the Option Contract in the Stock market

Option contracts are one of the most important financial instruments which have been recently considered as a vehicle for management of risks and development of capital market. In Iran, the importance of option contracts is increasingly recognized in the capital market. In this article the legal aspects of option contracts will be examined. For this purpose the views of Islamic jurists and lawyers are reviewed in order to establish a basis for legitimacy and legality of option contracts in the Iranian legal system. Although in this article these views are examined, none of them are eventually accepted as a proper legal basis for option contract and thus a new approach has been adopted in this article for option contracts. This research could pave the way for the use of option contracts in Iran's stock exchange market.