What is Pyramiding?

A type of stock swap option exercise in which a small number of previously-owned sharesis surrendered to the company to pay a portion of the exercise price, for which a slightly larger number of option shares may be purchased, which are then immediately surrendered back to the company to pay additional amounts of the exercise price, and so on until the full option price has been paid and the optionee is left with just the number of shares equal to the option spread. With the advent of broker-assisted "Cashless Exercise/Same Day Sale" programs (see above), pyramiding has fallen out of favor.