Showing posts with label options strategies. Show all posts
Showing posts with label options strategies. Show all posts

The Options Strategist: How to Invest and Trade Equity-Related Options Review

The Options Strategist: How to Invest and Trade Equity-Related Options
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I've bought and sold many options using a variety of strategies. I enjoy reading as much as possible on options strategies because of the complexity of the subject. The author writes in a very clear logical sequence starting with Options 101 and then rapidly moves on to the more advanced strategies. He doesn't lose you in technical terms but keeps your interest as he walks through Options 401 (more advanced), and onto the more complex stuff. If you want to understand all of the "greek" options stuff, he explains it in an understandable format. Most options books I read get too generic and I lose interest but this book was different and I actually enjoyed it. I have 5 options books on my shelf right now and this one is the best of the group by far.

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Options DeMYSTiFieD, Second Edition Review

Options DeMYSTiFieD, Second Edition
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"Options Demystified" is a worthy addition to McGraw-Hill's "Demystified" series, easily living up to its claim of being a self-teaching guide. Hundreds of books have been written on the subject of puts and calls, but this large-format paperback is by far the best I've come across for the aspiring option trader. It is comprehensive, well organized, generously illustrated and easy to understand. The book also includes many quizzes and a "final exam" to help the reader master the material.
The author, Thomas McCafferty, has been around commodities, stocks and options for many years and written numerous books on those subjects. This one not only lays out the basics of the options game, it also condenses much of the author's impressive horse-sense into a very readable and relatively short work (251 pages, plus an excellent index). "Options Demystified" should be on every trader's shelf. Even pros will find some pearls here, including a chapter on "trading philosophy" that's perfectly attuned to today's frothy markets. I recommend this book wholeheartedly to anyone looking for an options primer that is both comprehensive and easy to imbibe.


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In good times and bad, you need to know your OPTIONS
Market volatility is at a record high, which has investors running scared. You don't have to be one of them.Whether your goal is to protect your money in a downturn or profit handsomely from an upturn, trading options is theanswer.
Options DeMYSTiFieD reveals why today's smartestinvestors rely on the versatility of the optionsmarketplace--and how you can, too! With its quick, snappy explanations and easy-to-understand examples, it provides the knowledge you need to start trading options like a pro in no time. Chapterending quizzes and a final exam round out Options DeMYSTiFieD into a comprehensive self-teaching guide that allows you to learn at your own pace.
This fast and easy guide has everything you need to:
Protect your investments from market downturns--even those in your IRA or 401(k)
Increase income from stocks you already own
Multiply the leverage you have in the market to max out your profits
Manage the risk of investing without decreasing profit potential
Engage in more complex trading, such as covered calls, spreads, straddles, and hedges

Simple enough for a beginner but challenging enough for an advanced trader, Options DeMYSTiFieD haswhat you need to build a solid foundation in options trading.

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Options for the Stock Investor: How to Use Options to Enhance and Protect Returns Review

Options for the Stock Investor: How to Use Options to Enhance and Protect Returns
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I recently added "Options for the Stock Investor" to my financial trading and investment library, hoping it would keep its promise describing it as logically written in a systematic and straightforward manner. I'm pleased to say it HASN'T DISAPPOINTED.
Unfortunately, this book hasn't received the attention it deserves among the many books devoted primarily to intermediate options traders/investors. I've always felt that options were explained in a much too "matter of fact" manner, where the most practical information is inadvertently ignored, obscured or non-existent.
Anyone trying to learn stock options is arguably bombarded by fearful information and disorganized, incomplete explanations. This short but concentrated book cuts through the many counterintuitive aspects and implicit contradictions involving stock options.
Beginners need only go to the Investopedia and similar sites on the internet to reinforce the Introduction and supplement their exposure to the language of options.
I've seen some of the worst. This book ranks highly among the best.

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McGraw-Hill's classic options bestseller, Options for theStock Investor, has been updated to reflect changes in theoptions market. This extensively revised second edition featuresall-new material describing electronic trading, decimalization,and single stock futures, along with increasinglypopular vehicles such as stock indexes, LEAPs, and exchangetradedfunds. The CD-ROM contains all-new OP-EVAL IIsoftware, which eliminates guesswork while providing handsoninformation on spreads, position Greeks, and "what-if"forecasting and graphing features.


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Get Rich with Options: Four Winning Strategies Straight from the Exchange Floor (Agora Series) Review

Get Rich with Options: Four Winning Strategies Straight from the Exchange Floor (Agora Series)
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I'd give this book 5 stars for its practicality, but there are a few flaws. Many options books present a Chinese menu of exotic strategies, confusing the reader and probably causing him to lose his money quickly. This book distills all of these strategies down to 4 of the ones that are the most practical for investors and traders, and that in my experience work well in real life. I was put off by the awful title, which is not the main point of the material in the book at all, but I guess the publisher wants to attract some of the get-rich-quick crowd. The clarity and emphasis are uneven. The fifth "bonus strategy" would've best been left out, because most traders would consider it extremely dangerous. On balance, the book's emphasis on profiting from option time decay by using stragegies that are safer than stock ownership greatly outweighs these flaws. You can waste thousands of dollars on options classes and end up with less useful material than is contained in this book.

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A detailed guide to successfully trading stock and commodity options

After numerous years as an options market-maker in the trenches of the New York Mercantile Exchange, few analysts know how to make money trading options like author Lee Lowell. Now, in the Second Edition of Get Rich with Options, Lowell returns to show you exactly what works and what doesn't.
Filled with in-depth insight and expert advice, this reliable resource provides you with the knowledge and strategies needed to achieve optimal results within the options market. It quickly covers the basics before moving on to the four options trading strategies that have helped Lowell profit in this arena time and again: buying deep-in-the-money call options, selling naked put options, selling option credit spreads, and selling covered calls.
Breaks down four of the best options trading strategies currently available
Explains how to set up a home-based business with the best options trading software, tools, and Web sites
Contains detailed discussions of how options can be used as a hedging or speculating instrument

With this book as your guide, you'll quickly see options in a whole new light and learn how to become part of a small group of investors who consistently win.

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The Bible of Options Strategies: The Definitive Guide for Practical Trading Strategies Review

The Bible of Options Strategies: The Definitive Guide for Practical Trading Strategies
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Guy Cohen lays out just about every option strategy that you could make work, given the right market conditions and your tolerance for risk. I would certainly put this book in the "Reference Book" category -- something that you would take out on occasion to answer a query about how a certain trade is placed or when it's a good strategy to use.
I started out with the intent of reading it from cover to cover. But I have to admit that I ended up skipping a lot of the material after reading the first 100 pages or so because it gets somewhat repetitious. So this indeed makes a good reference book, say, when you hear someone mention a "Long Put Condor" and wonder what it is. Or if you forget what market conditions (volatile, neutral, etc) would be required for a Bear Call Spread to work well. Also, I do appreciate Guy's organization of strategies by Risk/Reward, Direction, Volatility, etc. That makes it easy to get a short list of strategies given your own trading style and the market conditions.
What I found missing that I wish was there is information like how far from Option Expiry should this strategy be placed, what is an optimum range of IV for the underlying stock for each type of strategy, when should the strategy be repaired or exited? How do you repair it, or leg in or out successfully?
Also, I still do not understand what the little charts mean at the end of each strategy. I understand that they represent some kind of profile for each of the greeks, but there's no scale or indicators on the axes, nor can I find an explanation of what the dotted, dashed and solid lines mean. Maybe it's just me, since I've only been trading options for about a year now. If you're an experienced option trader, you'll probably know what they mean.

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"Guy Cohen is the master when it comes to taming the complexities of options. From buying calls and puts to iron butterflies and condors, Guy explains these strategies in a clear and concise manner that options traders of any level can understand. His chapter on options and taxes is especially welcomed (and needed). The Bible of Options Strategies is a straightforward, easy-to-use reference work that should occupy a space on any options trader's bookshelf."–Bernie Schaeffer, Chairman and CEO, Schaeffer's Investment Research, Inc."The author delivers clarity, insight and perception making learning about options a joy, and practicing the art of making money that much easier: truly a bible from a guru."–Alpesh B. Patel, Author and Financial Times Columnist"Guy Cohen truly makes learning about options easy in this fact-filled guide. Bullet points make for a quick and enlightened read, getting to the heart of what you really need to know about each options strategy. This book is a must for any serious trader's library."–Price Headley, Founder, BigTrends.comPick the right options strategies...implement them step-by-step...maximize your profits!Introducing today's first and only comprehensive reference to contemporary options trading!OptionEasy creator Guy Cohen identifies today's popular strategies...and tells you exactly how and when to use each one and what hazards to look out for! It's all here....Basic Strategies including Buying and shorting shares, calls, and puts.Income Strategies including Covered Call, Naked Put, Bull Put Spread, Bear Call Spread, Long Iron Butterfly, Long Iron Condor, Calendar Call, Diagonal Call...Vertical Spreads includingBull Call Spread, Bull Put Spread, Bear Call Spread, Bear Put Spread, Ladders...Volatility Strategies includingStraddle, Strangle, Guts, Short Butterflies, Short Condors...Sideways Strategies includingShort Straddle, Short Strangle, Short Guts, Long Butterflies, Long Condors...Leveraged Strategies includingCall Ratio Backspread, Put Ratio Backspread, Ratio Spreads...Synthetic Strategies includingCollar, Synthetic Call, Synthetic Put, Synthetic Straddles, Synthetic Futures, Combos, Box Spread......and many more strategies...Plus essential tax-saving information, and more!No other book presents this much authoritative, current information on options trading strategiesCovers all of today's best income, volatility, leveraged, synthetic, and sideways market strategiesDiscover why each strategy works, when it's appropriate, and how to use it—step by step Includes a full chapter on tax issues associated with options strategiesBy Guy Cohen, whose OptionEasy application has helped thousands of traders achieve breakthrough results!The Bible of Options Strategies is the definitive reference to contemporary options trading: the one book you need by your side whenever you trade.Options expert Guy Cohen systematically presents today's most effective strategies for trading options: how and why they work, when they're appropriate, when they're inappropriate, and how to use each one responsibly and with confidence. The only reference of its kind, this book will help you identify and implement the optimal strategy for every opportunity, trading environment, and goal.© Copyright Pearson Education. All rights reserved.

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Day Trading Options: Profiting from Price Distortions in Very Brief Time Frames Review

Day Trading Options: Profiting from Price Distortions in Very Brief Time Frames
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Undeniably, this is the most densest book in a series of books by Augen that includes Trading Options at Expiration: Strategies and Models for Winning the Endgameand The Volatility Edge in Options Trading: New Technical Strategies for Investing in Unstable Markets and a workbook. This book is also perhaps the most targeted one and is unlikely to appeal to a broader audience.
The book in itself is fairly short (written with the gravity similar to academic journals) and has five chapters. The first chapter, though called "basic concepts" really sets the tone for the book and makes it evident that the intended audience is experienced day traders (true to the book title's implication). The chapter provides a very informed analysis of how options market (pricing) has changed in the recent crises, with specific focus on implied volatility swings and volatility skews across strike prices. The second chapter discusses automated trading and emerging trends in that field. Unless the reader uses sophisticated trading systems and is very familiar with programmed trading, the chapter is not likely to sustain significant interest, but the reader is well-advised to force yourself through the chapter. Using various detailed examples, Augen demonstrates the role of statistical analyses in trend exploitation, issues of "over fitting" indicators and volatility distortions. The third chapter (forming bulk of the book) deals with volatility distortions and how to trade them. The discussion is however based on 3-dimensional maps (implied volatility, calendar information and price) and is not really clear how accessible such tools are. Using various examples, Augen demonstrates approaches involving selling time decay and backspreads. The fourth chapter introduces a new charting tool with the premise that the principal goal of an option trader is to "arbitrage differences between implied and fair volatilities". Accessibility of the tools required and even suitability of these methods for the most aggressive casual trader (once whose primary job is not trading) is not clear here either. In the last chapter (perhaps, a neat set up for the next book?) Augen discusses special events focusing on only two - long weekends and associated price distortions and events surrounding markets "digesting" large amounts of news.
Overall, the book does absolute justice to its title - it is indeed targeting distortions for "very brief" (read minutes, mostly) and is fairly dense even for the experienced option trader. After having read all the books from the author in this field, the book on trading options near expiration was a far useful one for a broader audience in at least highlighting significant mechanics associated with expiration pricing dynamics and potential trade constructs. This book, Augen's dedicated focus on day trading, doesn't even pretend to be suitable for anyone but a niche audience. Augen does provide some interesting insights that will benefit any serious options trader, but this time, the book is perhaps a little too far out except for the very experienced and fanatic fans of Augen.

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"As a veteran reader of some 500+ trading and investing books and having interviewed hundreds of authors, I never take the approach that you can believe what you read or hear about how to make money in the market, so I try their theory, system, or ideas. Jeff Augen's book lays down clear guidelines to his intraday options strategy that I can report were profitable in the style I trade."--Vincent M. Rowe, President, Online Trading Academy, Texas"Augen's book breaks new ground with an indispensable and unique approach to evaluating option prices in different time frames. It also presents a new charting technique for evaluating very short-term trends lasting just a few minutes–a valuable technique for anyone who follows intraday markets. The statistical analysis and associated discussions around high-frequency trading are especially relevant in the modern financial world, which has come to be dominated by supercomputers and algorithmic trading. No serious stock or option trader should be without this book."--Sean Sztern, Alternative Strategies Group, Desjardins Securities, Montreal, Quebec"Jeff Augen's work on day trading options pulls the curtain back and reveals insights from the world of very short-term options trading. In doing so, he reveals insights beneficial even for the longer-term option trader. Specifically, Chapter 3 on trading volatility distortions introduces the idea of 3-D implied volatility surfaces. Far from being too advanced, this chapter addresses complex volatility issues in plain English that every option trader can understand. I wholly recommend this book."--Steve Lentz, DiscoverOptionsMinimize Your Exposure to Market Risk and Increase Profits by Trading in Very Brief Time FramesIn today's turbulent markets, traditional trading strategies have failed to provide protection from the rapid and violent changes that have swung the Dow down 330 points one day, up 280 points the next, and down 250 points at the open on the next. Fundamental analysis based on company performance and financial predictions has proven meaningless. Technical traders must now compete with institutional trading programs utilizing supercomputers that analyze and execute trades in millisecond time frames. So, how can a private investor compete in this environment?In Day Trading Options, expert option trader Jeff Augen shows you how to continue to profit even in these chaotic times. You'll learn to structure short-term trades that exploit well characterized price distortions and anomalies. You'll discover a breakthrough technique for utilizing volatility to identify the beginning and end of short-lived trends. And, you'll gain the knowledge to use this innovative technique to take advantage of financial news and planned events, rather than being at their mercy. Abandon outdated trading strategies and conventional "wisdom"Minimize your exposure to market risk and increase your profits by trading in very brief time frames and structuring positions that are direction neutral

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The Option Trader Handbook: Strategies and Trade Adjustments (Wiley Trading) Review

The Option Trader Handbook: Strategies and Trade Adjustments (Wiley Trading)
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You should probably have a bit of experience before reading this book. It is not an absolute beginner's book. However the concepts are presented clearly and there are enough of them so it is likely there will be something interesting for most everyone.
You will need a level of mathematical sophistication necessary to multiply by two or three as well as addition and subtraction. This book contains no mathematical concepts beyond that level.
If you are looking for theory, keep looking as you won't find much of that here. Practicality is the hallmark of the book.
There have been thousands of books written on investments and options over the years. It would be quite hard to come up with much that is truly original. Instead the better books come at things from a different perspective. This book is certainly better than most on the subject. Here are some of the things that make this book different than most.
There is no super secret no risk sure fire rags to riches in 30 days plan presented. Instead there is an emphasis on trading should be looked at for what it is; a business. A healthy respect for risk is shown throughout the pages. The first chapter of the book is worth almost anyone's time as most people do not seem to realize they are in business when they call their broker or click on their order page.
Many options books present large numbers of P/L graphs on the various possible positions. This book is no exception, however they approach things from a slightly different perspective. Here much of the emphasis is on how to move from one position to another. They extensively cover many different changes you would want to consider making as the market or your perception of it changes.
Knowing the relationships between different postions is important for several reasons. First you can react quickly by having a good idea as to what to do in a rapidly changing enviroment where a few seconds delay can cost a lot of money. An even better use for this information is in forming your trading plan before you ever place an order. A third use is to avoid situations where there are no good adjustments if things do not go as planned.
The first negative that I found had to do with the length. In general having any 2 of the three building blocks (puts, calls, underlying) you can synthetically construct the other piece (indeed a large part of the book is devoted to this concept). The authors built a little more repetition into the book than I personally found necessary by doing the same analysis on mirror image postions. This is not a major downside as some will appreciate the review and others will simply skip a few pages here and there.
The second issue concerns the use of the terms free trade or risk free trade. The reality is the trade was not free and there is a price. The price may have been actual money, foregone opportunities, or increased risk. Sometimes the authors mention the cost, other times they do not.
An example of a not so free "free trade" would be to buy a call have the stock rise, sell a higher priced call for what you paid for the original. You now have a bull spread. This is free in the sense you now have a spread position at no cost. However it could end up costing you if the stock drops because the spread could become worthless and you could have sold your long call outright. The concept is good but I find the wording to be troublesome.
Overall I believe the money spent on this book was a pittance compared to the money made or saved by reading this book and I am very glad to have bought it.

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