Options: Training / Courses / Reading List

gaussian said:
Your best bet is to start with the classics and work your way out from there. "Options as a Strategic Investment" is probably one of the best casual start up books. Buy the workbook. Plan on not seeing your family for months while you study it. Repeat this over and over again for every book you read.
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:thumbsup: I agree. It is still my bible and reference book. For me the workbook (Study Guide) was a great way to learn.
 
Go to optionalpha and go through all of kirks free videos and get s good idea of all the types of spreads. The best options trading software is thinkorswim from td Ameritrade all the options traders on CNBC use it.. not sure if you can open up an account from the UK though. Call and put spreads get you into a trade cheaply with good upside. Look for cheap $5 spreads one week out on weeklies.
You need a few different trading strategies deepening on the market and the day off the week. Fridays are good for Intraday trading of options on stocks like GE VXX and other range bound stocks. At any one time i have 30 different options out there soon will fail many will win, it's making the winners win big. Roll the winners over to the next week and take cash. Use the TOS ( Thinkorswim) scanner for finding the high volume trades that others are doing. Start small and try every thing sick with what is successful for you, it will take you a while until you the hang of it , it probably cost me about $2000 in trades to get it right.
 
ironchef said:
A word of caution: As retails we are essentially mom and pop amateurs and trade against some of the smartest financial professionals in finance. There is no free lunch and it is hard to come out ahead.

good luck.
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Yep. And unlike pure directional trading (stocks, futures, etc.), where there's only a buy and sell, you have complex, multi-leg positions that are often adjusted. This means lots of commissions and potential for slippage. Then there's the TastyTrade/Options Alpha approach with lots of small trades--again, great for the broker, but not for you. Here's a good read on Options Alpha:
https://www.reddit.com/r/path%3D%252Fr%252Foptions%252Fcomments%252F90hioq%252F

(If it doesn't show up, Google "Honest review of Options Alpha Reddit")

What the author doesn't say is that OA charges around $100/month (last I heard). So if you're trading a $10K account, you have to overcome that expense (12% annual loss) just to breakeven for the year. For the record, Kirk (OA guy) seems decent enough and his service probably makes money in "normal" markets. (All bets are off in a black swan or major crash.) However, you'd need a large account and be really on top of things just to have a chance of beating buy-and-hold. He doesn't give annual performance numbers, just the track record of each type of trade. Most are profitable, but it's impossible to say what you'd actually net each year.

He was interviewed by Pat Flynn (online business podcast) a few years ago. It was very instructive. At the time, Kirk said OA had started making over $100K per month in subscriptions. I'm pretty sure that's a LOT, LOT more than he makes trading options.

As for the "free lunch" and going up against professionals part, that's very true. There's no secret but simple options setup that "no one has figured out" and "will make monthly income like an ATM machine in every type of market." Don't listen to the marketing hype. The big boys have tested everything (and they have much better software and means than retail investors). If any easy, highly-profitable strategy existed, they'd have discovered it. What's tempting (and very dangerous) about options, though, is that it seems like premium selling is such a Holy Grail until the market starts misbehaving.
 
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