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Chief
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Be very very careful. Options are the casino of the stock market. You make/lose (mostly lose) money very quickly. Even the most experienced traders tend to avoid options because of how it magnifies everything. If used at all, options should be a hedge, not a way to earn money.
A huge amount of options expire completely worthless. You could buy one now and easily be down 50% in a short time frame. And if you're thinking of buying puts because the market is down or whatever, a small rally is enough to wipe you out. Also the options market prices in whatever you're anticipating, so just buying puts in a down market isn't enough; they will be expensive to buy.
If you're thinking of the wheel strategy, think twice. Covered calls seem like free money until you get assigned and lose out on those gains while having to wait for a low price to buy back in (or you have to buy back in higher). The premium you earn on them isn't much unless you set the strike price closer, which of course increases your chance of assignment. Getting pennies on a postion that is going down in value isn't a good thing. Also it is not cheap to hold 100 shares of a reliable underlying stock (e.g. apple?).
Cash secured puts sound great too until the underlying goes bye-bye (see PayPal, square, netflix). Also you are sidelined with a huge amount of cash that could easily just be sitting and enjoying market gains.
Also watch out for scammers in this bowl promoting binary options. They are 100x worse than regular options in terms of risk and reward.
If you still want to learn, start off by learning the Greeks. But just know that theta decay and IV crush will very likely wipe you out. I strongly recommend not doing this unless you can stomach 5 figure losses for years while figuring it out (if you ever do). And know that short term options (affectionately known as "FDs" by the wallstreetbets crowd) are crazy lottery tickets and mostly expire worthless. LEAPS make more sense but you'll end up rolling them as you scramble to make things work.
TLDR:
Enthusiast
This is really the perfect response. Well done.
Use options to manage risk
Rising Star
Options are like picking Pennies in front of a steam roller. You will pick quite a few and one day you will lose a limb.
I have played with every strategy out there: naked puts, covered calls, butterflies, broken wing butterflies, collars, condors, strangles, straddles, calendars, diagonals, earnings plays, volatility plays, index options, options on futures etc etc). Unless you have a definitive edge (which you clearly don’t), you will not make money and that would be the best case scenario.
Options have to done with a full time focus, so work will distract from that.....
I’ve been trading options on and off since covid started, if you have a solid strategy and manage risk correctly you can make a lot of money. I don’t trade everyday, only when I find a set up I believe in. It’s definitely high risk high reward, I personally made 15 and 22k the last 2 years. If you can successfully make 1% on your account a day then you are golden, just don’t yolo on one trade and never have more than 10% of your account in a non hedged option
You are fine a fall under the steam roller and lose all your money
Chief
I hold options as a hedge on my VOO holdings. It’s shocking how much the prices move each day. I see 25% price swings some days on some of my options. Also the bid ask spread can be huge so you can lose a lot just buying and selling at the “same” price.
Tried but only lost money. Options trading is day trading and you need to be fully focused on that vs. Attending client meetings lol
Blew up my account and still ended up with 30k in taxable cap gains last year.
Shrodinger’s options: made 30k and lost money at the same time.
Wheeling big tech- no meme business.