The amount of time that an investor believes is left until it would no longer be beneficial to exercise an option early, or the likelihood that an American-style option will be used before it expires. The fugit concept was named and created by Mark Garman, a Berkeley professor who studied the optimal time for exercising an American option using binomial trees.


Unless an option is deep in the money, it should not be exercised early because this causes a loss of inherent value. Some investors find it profitable to exercise call options early when they are in the money or right before an ex-dividend date.