Learn to Trade Options

I have looked at all the option educators and spent thousands of dollars on options education. Not unitl I took and completed the Options Mastery series from Options University did I really learn to trade options. If you are in need of some eduation, I highly recommend checking these guys out.

Options University Home Page

How to learn to trade options

1) Learn something about the stock market. With options, there are strategies where if you guess wrong you can be hedged (and sometime even make money). I recommend the book Power Trading by Oliver Velez.

2) Implement the scans / screens in a charting package. I use TC2007 from www.worden.com

3) Learn to trade options the right way. I recomend the guys over at Options University.

4) Open an account with Think or Swim. They are the best options platform out there by far. Paper Trade, Paper Trade, Paper trade the material in the Power Trading book and Options University education.

How not to learn to trade options ...

1) Know nothing about the stock market and trading stocks

2) Begin with covered calls (synthetically short a naked put)

3) Take a multi-thousand dollar 2-day option trading course

4) Pay for an expensive subscription option trading tool / platform

5) Take another "advanced" 2-day option trading course

6) Paper Trade (Good if you know what you are doing. Bad if you are paper trading without knowing what you are doing - at least it is not "real" money but it is time not well spent.

7) Try some real trades (thinking maybe you will get it right with "real" money). Lose money. Become frustrated.

8) Back to step 3 ...

Future Posts

1) Extrinsic Value

2) Synthetics => think CUP => C = U + P => A call is synthetically the same as owning the underlying plus a long put

3) Portfolio Hedging

And in the beginning ...

My objective: make more money than I loose with options (I'll tighten this objective up in the coming days / weeks) and generate a simple stream of income with this options blog

My goals are twofold ...

1) Learn / educate anyone who will "listen" and / or provide comments on trading options

2) Get this blog up and running as a simple stream of income - books I've read and recommend, data feed I use, charting package / stock screens, options education, stock trading education, options broker, etc ...

Note - this "project" will put my two under graduate degrees - a BBA in Finance and a BBA in Information Systems - to good use.

Option Trader