The highest reward potential is to simply buy calls or buy puts on stocks and indexes.
There is unlimited profit potential with this simple option strategy.
You can limit the risk of those option trades by using a stop loss.
For example:
Lets say you think stock XYZ is going up substantially.
You take no more than 10% of your option trading account and you buy In the Money (ITM) Call options on stock XYZ that have very high intrinsic value and very little time premium built in, with about 2 months of time left on those options before expiration.
You then have a couple of choices regarding sell orders:
1: [ High Profit method ]
This method uses Fixed Sell Parameters which pre-determine the entry price, profit level and stop.
Lets say you want 100% option profit on your trade.
You can set up an automated order that buys the options at a
limit entry price and closes the position at a limit sell of +100%
above the entry price, or stops out the options with a -40% stop limit. Its called a Bracket Order. It does the work and you go do something else and not interfere with the trade.
[ Homerun Method ]
2: Unlimited Profit Trailing Stop Method:
Lets say your shooting for the absolute highest profit you can.
Step A: Initially you simply buy the options and then place
a -40% stop limit. If the options initially do not stop out and they continue to rise higher and higher in value, move to Step B.
Step B: Passively Monitor the option value. When the option value
hits +100% above your entry price, cancel the initial -40% stop,
sell one half of your contracts (this satisfy's one need to book some profits).
For the remaining open contracts, passively monitor the option value once or twice a day. Use this table for a mental stop:
[ Trailing Stop Table ]
Option Value.....Stop
+100%............ +50%
+150%............ +100%
+200%............ +150%
+250%............ +200%
+300%............ +250%
+350%............ +300%
...etc................
in other words, for every +50% the options gain, keep moving up the mental stop +50%.
Eventually one of two things will happen:
1: The options pullback -50% and you sell them at one of the prices in the Trailing Stop Table above.
2: The options runs out of time.
Of course all this assumes you were correct on your analysis of the stock or index moving up a substantial amount before you get initially stopped out.
With either of the two methods above, your ability to pick a substantial move in a stock or index can be wrong 60% of the time and you will still make decent money.
Lets use the High Profit method for example:
4 wins at +100% = +400%
6 losers at -40% = -240%
10 Trade Gain........ +160%