College student looking for advice on the best route to start learning options

Discussion in 'Options' started by razvanneagu, Aug 11, 2013.

  1. Thank you for your advice. I am definitely going to see which of my surrounding universities offer a options class.
     
    #21     Aug 13, 2013
  2. By using a online trading platform, wouldn't you have the option to not have them be automatically exercised?
     
    #22     Aug 13, 2013
  3. I understand it will take time, but fortunately I have it. The reason I posted in this forum was hoping that I will get advice on the direction I should begin my learning. I have gotten some great advice, but also some very funny remarks like the one where I was asked if I would also be willing to rob a bank since I want to trade options. LOL :D . I agree with you that a great mentor is needed and once I feel that I have the fundamentals learned, I will be seeking to find a person that would be willing to listen to my questions. Anyways, thank you and see you all around.
     
    #23     Aug 13, 2013
  4. Josef K

    Josef K

    Yes, as I said, the options will be exercised unless you instruct your broker not to exercise them. Depending on who your broker is, you'd need to call them, or send them an email message, or use some platform feature in order to inform them that you don't want a particular position exercised. If you forget to do that, then the options will be exercised.
     
    #24     Aug 13, 2013
  5. surfer25

    surfer25

    Although options afford higher leverage, you are not obligated to use it. The same holds true for futures. For the sophisticated trader, though, it is nice to have access to and can greatly enhance your profit potential.
     
    #25     Aug 14, 2013
  6. Read my op under "this forum over trades options" for my honest opinion.
     
    #26     Aug 14, 2013
  7. +1

    Also look at the really old tos chats from the tos archive (go back almost to the beginning of when they started the chats) - specially the ones by Joe Kinahan or Tom Preston.

    Also look at tastytrade.com - you will not find any more info on option trading than between these two sites.


    good luck!

    -gariki
     
    #27     Aug 14, 2013
  8. usrx201

    usrx201

    It's really hard to figure out how to trade options at a level where one stops losing money. Unless you have a mentor in the atticus quote where they teach you exactly what to do. But where is one going to find a mentor willing to share that. Financial tricks of the trade has been mostly secretive. Thanks to HFT now, the edges are dulled so a few are willing to teach more to hopefully get more sucker retailers who don't know what they're doing back into the market as the market still needs liquidity. Most of the stuff out there publically advertised are just snake oil vendors and "universities" and "optionetics". Even if they did know how to trade options, they would make the student pay $20k or more before they invite one into the "super advanced elite" course "at the poolside of a Las Vegas hotel sharing among the "inner circle"" (i didn't make that up, Optionetics actually said something like that in one of their ad blurbs) where they may and just may teach something that finally works and it probably isn't such a big deal. Another is the "parachute" , kiss the ground with my feet, "Master" "income trader" Preston James with his radio ads, and the culimination of the course is .... covered calls with "parachute" protection small puts. That's it... and then they call you every couple of months with a different sounding accent guy trying to sell you a more advanced "mentorship" for $8k or the deluxe for $10k... And then a year later, they call and offer a mentorship with Preston himself or his "first mate" Karson Keith, who had a a awful call on VIT in the "MIT" newsletter. In fact all the calls were bad except for GMCR and something else which was made before the newsletter got started. Anyways one learns there are probably more real profitable traders on Elite and some of the other forums than the entirety of the bogus snake oil internet vendor out of control morass.

    Exactly , tastytrade.com has opened the floodgates. Forget CBOE.com and all their bs. Most of them were option market makers and stop hunters, responsible for bad fills and unfair pricing for retailers. And some of them on there still want upwards of $5k for their "mentorship services" where they teach you stuff that doesn't work like calendars and what is an option over and over again.

    Your best bet for a free education on options is the Liz and Jenny show on Tastytrade. once you register free you get their archives and they start form the very beginning. They go over fan email and even have soldiers in Iraq watching their show daily to learn. (the guy showed his laptop with the show )
    Or just watch when they place new spreads. They often go over the same details over and over again on how they place the trades every time and discuss it so the only problem is boredom from the audience. this has only opened up free for months. Before you had to have had at least a TDAmertrade account or a fee subscription. tons better than that CBOE crap they still have in their archives. They at least teach reasonable simple spreads and how to look at the option chain for deals and also modify their trades based on the volatility of the underlying. They dismiss directional TA so one has to learn elsewhere but this is the best options education out there one can get free currently.

    If you want to use options as leverage to day trade a stock, first learn to daytrade like with forex or futures. Then you can buy a good delta option call or put. Good avenues to learn options open these days instead of the last 15 years of snake oil "options education" organizations monopolizing the internet bandwidth. (like the bald crooky Fontanills and the "Gentile" guy /optionetics/Advanced GETttt! i.e. get another loser on something that doesn't work!) . Stay away from sjoptions too. They are scammy and only use papermoney accounts entirely like their so called "3 million account". They tried to hide the words "papermoney" in fact until they couldn't anymore on the TOS platform after TDAmeritrade upgraded it, hahaha.
     
    #28     Aug 15, 2013
  9. nursebee

    nursebee

    To date, my greatest gains have been from options.

    If you read online that options increase return with minimal capital while decreasing risk, you got the wrong idea.

    Learn and perform well with stocks in similar time frames as you would use options, then you can try your hand with options using the same methods.
     
    #29     Aug 16, 2013
  10. trader46

    trader46

    Fontanill's died? Well RIP in that case, but I agree to stay away from the so-called guru's raving on about how you can make money 'no matter what the stock does'.. only your broker and these edu salespeople make money from that racket.. calendar condors, butterfly this that and the other. I think CBOE for the most part are less scammy and I see that queer sjoptions guy is still running his youtube infomercials.

    Ofcourse my vote for biggest options scam artist goes to a chap from down under land called Bill Stacy and his extravagent youtube productions: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VLi9eiNK-L0 (naturally, comments are disabled)
     
    #30     Aug 16, 2013