Options Book with Examples?

Corey said: "Hey everyone. I am looking to pick up a book to help my understanding of options. I get the basic principles, but I am looking for something that goes from basics to more advanced strategies, like straddles and what not, using examples. Something like "as you can see with this chart, blah blah blah, we bought these options here, blah blah blah, and you can see how it turned out, blah blah blah." Anyone come across a decent book like this? Something littered with info and examples that doesn't read like a text book? Thanks!"

holzie said: "Hey Corey, I will be brutally honest with you. Unlike stock trading and investing I haven't found a single options book that I could recommend -- even the "good ones". All these books seem to be very abstract and you might get a glimpse of the theory of some strategies. But options need practice and lots of it. So instead of wasting your time and money on some options academics, I would go straight to CBOE. You can watch the webinars from market makers of 20+ years in options and they know what they are talking about. I would really recommend Dan Sheridan's webinars...this guys is nothing but common sense, which is rare in the options business. You can get the webinars here:[URL="http://cboe.com/LearnCenter/webcast/archive.aspx"]http://cboe.com/LearnCenter/webcast/archive.aspx[/URL] Hope this helps. Holzie."

bklambco said: "If you want to read an almost live daily Journal of spx credit spreads by some of the top guns sinc3 05/2005 read this after you get basic options concepts under your belt. [url]http://www.elitetrader.com/vb/showthread.php?threadid=49586&perpage=6&pagenumber=1[/url] [QUOTE=holzie]Hey Corey, I will be brutally honest with you. Unlike stock trading and investing I haven't found a single options book that I could recommend -- even the "good ones". All these books seem to be very abstract and you might get a glimpse of the theory of some strategies. But options need practice and lots of it. So instead of wasting your time and money on some options academics, I would go straight to CBOE. You can watch the webinars from market makers of 20+ years in options and they know what they are talking about. I would really recommend Dan Sheridan's webinars...this guys is nothing but common sense, which is rare in the options business. You can get the webinars here:[URL="http://cboe.com/LearnCenter/webcast/archive.aspx"]http://cboe.com/LearnCenter/webcast/archive.aspx[/URL] Hope this helps. Holzie.[/QUOTE]"

Corey said: "Awesome. Thanks guys!"

holzie said: "[QUOTE=bklambco]If you want to read an almost live daily Journal of spx credit spreads by some of the top guns sinc3 05/2005 read this after you get basic options concepts under your belt. [url]http://www.elitetrader.com/vb/showthread.php?threadid=49586&perpage=6&pagenumber=1[/url][/QUOTE] Nice link man. I got to page 16 of 2500 something something so far :) But it seems that the guy is "scalping" very inefficiently (at least thus far..maybe he has evolved). He seems to be keen on vertical spreads and rarely legs into a iron condor. Also his risk reward ratios are only 1 to 20 (3-5% profit), which is inefficient. If he trades so far OTM on the put side, if he is afraid of the calls, he could go out even farther and still get a good premium, for the same money. Being so far out, and with his active risk management, he could bring it from 5% to 10% per month on a condor 140-150 points wide, which is about what he trades based on his verticals. I will keep reading to see if he figured it out. I like the guy though, I think he knows what he is doing, this is his style, it works for him and that is ALL that matters in this game. He is a realist, but stating his yearly goal as 15-20% return is extremely low, considering he is dealing with options. Options are much riskier than stocks, they move faster, the loose value no matter what, they have 100 times the value of 1 equity stock. Given these risks, and his being a full time trader, he should shoot for a 100% a year return, which is quite conservative given the elements stated above. I think that ultimately, as I read further on, he will declare a 100%+ return anyways (on risk not on portfolio of course!). I will let you know. Holzie."

bklambco said: "He does evolve closer to the money and it gets pretty dam funny with everyone screaming about the risk on his scalps and huge contracts that he puts out, later he evolves in to futures trading, At some point in time he is rolling out hundreds and thousands of dollars trying to save his ass. He finaly quit posting his trades after a few years just last month, he is still on the forium and pitches in once in a while, last post said the way things were going he might as well buy him self a seat on the exchange. If you go to the last post and backup to around Jan 1st or so you will see a guy going by the name of piccon he is outlaying his trading style very close to yours, He explains how he lost money being fotm and is now making money being ctm. dagnyt, sailer, yip1997 are some of the heavy weights that are poping questions at piccon and his style. You might want to jump to this area since it will take a long time to read up to it. [QUOTE=holzie]Nice link man. I got to page 16 of 2500 something something so far :) But it seems that the guy is "scalping" very inefficiently (at least thus far..maybe he has evolved). He seems to be keen on vertical spreads and rarely legs into a iron condor. Also his risk reward ratios are only 1 to 20 (3-5% profit), which is inefficient. If he trades so far OTM on the put side, if he is afraid of the calls, he could go out even farther and still get a good premium, for the same money. Being so far out, and with his active risk management, he could bring it from 5% to 10% per month on a condor 140-150 points wide, which is about what he trades based on his verticals. I will keep reading to see if he figured it out. I like the guy though, I think he knows what he is doing, this is his style, it works for him and that is ALL that matters in this game. He is a realist, but stating his yearly goal as 15-20% return is extremely low, considering he is dealing with options. Options are much riskier than stocks, they move faster, the loose value no matter what, they have 100 times the value of 1 equity stock. Given these risks, and his being a full time trader, he should shoot for a 100% a year return, which is quite conservative given the elements stated above. I think that ultimately, as I read further on, he will declare a 100%+ return anyways (on risk not on portfolio of course!). I will let you know. Holzie.[/QUOTE]"

Delta said: "I was going to suggest Natenberg, but then you said that you didn't want a boring textbook. Natenberg is good, but he's also pretty dry. Other than him, I haven't come across many good options books that I would recommend to beginners. I usually tend to recommend the leading websites instead because they have more concise content, are updated regularly and sometimes have active forum communities to answer questions. Here are the most reliable ones that I have encountered: [url]www.cboe.com[/url] - the granddaddy of them all and a good place for retail options users [url]www.theoptionsinsider.com[/url] - great site for retail & institutional options users [url]www.oicoptions.com[/url] - new site geared toward institutions [url]www.888options.com[/url] - URL sounds like a scam site, but it's actually the site for the OIC, a good source of agenda-free info. There are also a number of paid options sites out there as well, but you're better off saving your money and learning on these sites for free. Delta"

RaymondKH said: "[QUOTE=Corey]Hey everyone. I am looking to pick up a book to help my understanding of options. I get the basic principles, but I am looking for something that goes from basics to more advanced strategies, like straddles and what not, using examples. Something like "as you can see with this chart, blah blah blah, we bought these options here, blah blah blah, and you can see how it turned out, blah blah blah." Anyone come across a decent book like this? Something littered with info and examples that doesn't read like a text book? Thanks![/QUOTE] Just to chime in, I agree that CBOE is one of the best places to learn about options. On another note, I recently flipped through a book that I felt is a great beginner book: The Options Strategist by Marc Allaire. Reading the back-cover it seems like Marc is/was one of the instructors at the CBOE. I think the book covers the basics pretty well, and moves on to more advanced strategies at a good pace. One pitfall the author did not fall into is to cram too much information in a single book. I leafed through it (didn't read in detail) and I like the easy reading style and it didn't come across as dry at all. I just thought I'd share. Of course I am not affiliated with the author in any way."

Delta said: "So? What was the final decision, Corey? Did it help you out? Give us some feedback."