Worst options/trading book?

[JSOP]

There are a lot of excellent books and internet articles about options. They do a fantastic job in explaining what options are and how they should be traded and etc. The problem is people don't bother to spend the time and the effort to read them. What they want is a get-rich-quick guide or instructions on options with all kinds of magical riskless strategies that basically guarantee them a money tree. That is why books like those authored by James Cordier are so popular, so popular that they made THREE editions of it. Imagine a book that teaches people to take on the riskiest and actually the most reckless investment had to be printed and reprinted THREE times and actually sold!!

So really there are no bad books about options, only the people who read them, not really "bad" per se, but clueless and indifferent.

 

[lindq]

Any other compilations out there to avoid (and why)?

Anything written by Wade Cook. Pity the new trader (thousands like me) who took his advice to start shorting options, and retire early.

Wade Bruce Cook (October 9, 1949 – July 28, 2021) was an American author and self-proclaimed financial guru. Cook claimed to have started his success when he was a taxi driver in the 1970s. His first book, Real Estate Money Machine, was originally self-published in 1981. He filed for personal bankruptcy in 1987. An updated version of his book was published in 1996. His company was liquidated in 2003 after it had been forced into Chapter 11 bankruptcy by creditors, and he served 88 months in prison for tax evasion. He offered trading advice through his website and publications for a period after his release from prison.

 

[maxinger]

Anything written by Wade Cook. Pity the new trader (thousands like me) who took his advice to start shorting options, and retire early.

Wade Bruce Cook (October 9, 1949 – July 28, 2021) was an American author and self-proclaimed financial guru. Cook claimed to have started his success when he was a taxi driver in the 1970s. His first book, Real Estate Money Machine, was originally self-published in 1981. He filed for personal bankruptcy in 1987. An updated version of his book was published in 1996. His company was liquidated in 2003 after it had been forced into Chapter 11 bankruptcy by creditors, and he served 88 months in prison for tax evasion. He offered trading advice through his website and publications for a period after his release from prison.

what a 'colorful' life.

he served 88 months in prison for tax evasion?
that means he must have earned lots of money.

 

[Option_Attack]

Read this many years ago. I still want my money back...

 

[swingtrader123]

It is entertaining. As long as you don't do what the book says.

Actually what Cordier wrote in his book is sound. Unfortunately for his clients, he didn't follow his own advise. Knowing what to do and do it are two very different things.

 

[The_Krakenite]

Anything written by Wade Cook.

Oh wow! I remember his video... it's been a long time, but I used to wonder, if his mechanism makes so much money for him, why is he wasting his time selling it and giving away his secrets? Haha.

I had forgot the name, but as soon as you said Taxi driver... I knew who we were talking about. I didn't know we just lost him this year, but I definitely remember it mentioned around here he went to prison a while back for tax-evasion.

 

[The_Krakenite]

Read this many years ago. I still want my money back...

I have this very same book. When I read it the first time, I thought wow, I like this book and will re-read it again another time. I guess I was more impressed by his details of being a floor-trader and how things work that way...

Lately I've heard a lot of negative things about the start-ups the brothers did, which failed miserably. And then there were the times where they supported crypto scammers. Oh well...

 

[jnbadger]

I gotta go contrary to the title of the thread, for a reason. Again, I tend to ramble lately, so bare with me. I'm 54 and I don't give a shit.

I was working in the mailroom at IDS (Later called Ameriprise) in Minneapolis about a thousand years ago while I was in college, and I went to The Investment Library every day because I had an obsession with investing and trading.

I found a book called the new market wizards. And then then i finally found the original Market Wizards. Tom Baldwin is who originally "gave me permission" to trade the way I do. You don't have to trade 100 times per day. (Although I did a few years after reading that. Oops)

Back to the thread. There are a lot of great and useful books out there. I think the only bad ones are the ones which try to sell you a method. (I am going to get so much shit for this, especially since I'm trying to get my own book going. Based on memoires. Not on method.)

 

[JSOP]

Actually what Cordier wrote in his book is sound. Unfortunately for his clients, he didn't follow his own advise. Knowing what to do and do it are two very different things.

I wouldn't call what he wrote in the book as sound. He totally disregarded the phenomenon of the "Volatility Smile", completely underestimating the danger of the fat-tail risk. Taleb would've strangled him. LOL What he had was a very crude understanding of options risk and only explored the superficial characteristics of how options operate.

To his credit though, he actually did for his clients exactly what he advocated in his books, naked options selling and strangles, believing they are the best options strategies without realizing how poorly their premiums compensate for the enormous potential risks that could be encountered of course to the detriment to all those who invested their money. He did touch upon other strategies with risk-mitigating mechanisms like vertical spreads and covered calls but dismissed them all as either not profitable enough or not having all of the strikes available for vertical spread (all invalid reasons) or the missed opportunity costs of not being able to profit from the rising value in the underlying for covered calls (all the more reason for the covered calls).

His entire book was nothing but sales pitch for naked options selling with all those colourful fishing metaphors. LOL He sold well.

 

[kcgoogler]

Tony Saliba’s “The Options Workbook”.
The guy is an option’s trading legend who wrote a genetic book with the same info as in any other options book.

Good one. This Tony Saliba book takes this prize. Cottle for example pumps this guy up so much in one of his books so i thought his books should be interesting to read and have some nuggets. Zero. Total crap - its been a very long time since i read that book but it left a clear imprint in me. Why did this supposedly great trader write such useless book.. obviously he did not want to print anything useful to anyone. Why bother with writing anything at all.. vanity?

I got no problem with understanding if someone wants to keep their stuff private. You have a right to do that. But wanting free publicity for printing garbage.. bahh.