When you buy an OTM weekly call you are simply making a bet the underlying is going up...it is EXACTLY the same as if you decide to buy the UL...except you have defined your risk. Option TRADERS look at more than JUST the delta and trade spreads based on opinions not just of direction but other risks...vega etc. IOW your trades may as well be listed in the stocks section. "I think QQQ's are going up so I'm a buyer"...yawn...
If he is buying calls, he is trading options, if it bores you, that's another story but does not change the fact that he is trading options.
OPTION EXPIRY UPDATE QQQ at 99.78 The QQQ 100 calls expired worthless. Today was a wild ride, but that run from 10:30 to 12:00 ran out of steam and the end of day run just wasn't enough. QQQ 5-Day Chart Red Dot: Bought 10 contracts QQQ 100 Aug29 weekly calls at $0.07. EDIT: I just noticed that the $99.50 weekly calls closed at $0.25. I forget what they were selling for when I opened my position but I think they were about $0.25. I went 2-strikes OTM with the $100 calls, but if went 1-strike OTM with the $99.50 calls the trade would have broke even.
Or consider this. Had you bought the 99.5 and sold the 100, you may have managed a profit. And had the trade worked out as you hoped it would, you wouldn't have your 450+% ROI, but assuming a .18 entry on the spread, still a 150+% ROI net of costs. A 320 profit vs. the 330 that you were looking for. So the spread could have made about the same money in this scenario, assuming QQQ was near 100.40 near EOD. True, a larger investment and more downside risk. And the spread had limited profit vs. the profit potential of the long 100 calls. And greater costs for the spread. But as it turned out, hypothetically, the spread made a small profit vs. your total loss. ROI doesn't really matter, anyways. ROP does.