Thank you for the encouragement. Yes, there are lots of professional options traders on ET and some were kind enough to help me out here and there.
You might call this: The Confession Of An Option Trader Yes, I trade options because of the leverage but also because of the asymmetric payoff (i.e., like lottery). It is probabilistic based, so more like gambling than trading? The house (market makers, institutions, professionals...) has an edge in terms of commissions, bid/ask spreads, etc. so if us retails play randomly, it is a negative sum game like going to Vegas. Furthermore, everyone, especially the market markers have more accurate options pricing models than us mom and pop retail traders making it difficult to win in this game. To add insult to injury, we are also competing against traders who are PhD mathematicians from Stanford, CalTech, MIT.... However, since it is math based, everyone who trade hope to find the math that give us a positive edge. I would day trade instead of playing with options if I could do that profitably but I couldn't.
Yes, I perceive it as a very much a 'crabs in bucket' mentality. Instead of making use of an opportunity to receive a helping hand up, the preference to stay rigid, stay 'right' and attempt to drag that helping hand down. It just doesn't work that way. The thinking that perceives the problem is distinct from the thinking that receives the solution. I prefer to think of it as our minds being a radio receiver and that we can tune to any radio station of our liking. Once tuned to a station on the dial, the others are filtered out. It's just a matter of choice. As is relates to the market, either one orients themselves to what the market is actually doing as opposed to the preconceived notions of what it 'should' be doing. If one's chosen path isn't producing the results that they want, there is always another better way. The price to pay is that one has to give up their preconceived notions which has led one to the current crux, and think differently. Out-of-the-box thinking has entirely different reference points and looks foreign compared to thinking 'in-the-box'.
Most people cannot think "out-of-the-box" and I think it is impossible or at least very difficult to learn it. The human brain does not think "out-of-the-box" initially, so your brain should be reprogrammed to change the way of thinking it uses. To me "out-of-the-box" is also linked with having problemsolving abilities.