I rarely buy shares. They tie up quite a bit of capital, and have no time or volatility component to their pricing. The only way to make money with long shares is to hope their value rises higher – which statistically only happens about 50% of the time. If I do trade shares, it is most likely because I took on one of my or I am pairing them with an option for strategic purposes.
There may be times, however, where you want static directional exposure – you want your rate of P/L (delta) to remain constant with changes in share price. Shares do come in handy for these purposes.
While outright shares will not be a commonly used strategy at Food for Theta, they are important to understand because their dynamics are at the heart of all option behavior. Option prices are directly tied to the value of the shares and their expected movement.