RE: How do you trade long term options? The same as short term options - figure out where the underlying will be trading during your time frame and base your option trade on that. Do not micro-manage - keep in mind your original reason for placing the trade in the 1st place. Yes
According to the books I read, most people trade LEAPS as a surrogate for the underlying. So instead of going on margin, you trade LEAPS. Depending on many factors, it maybe cheaper or more expensive than underlying on margins. If this is indeed your objective, you just buy and sit back to watch your strategy unfold. If you guess wrong, even with the long time frame, you may not recover, e.g., if you bought WFM LEAPs a year ago with WFM @ $56, it is unlikely you will recover and you pay a lot of premium for owning LEAPS. So, you say I will short WFM, if you do that, you are actually better off shorting short term WFM options. If you are a trader like most of us here at ET, do you want to sit on a position for one to two years? The advice I got from here is: Very short term (some people traded intraday or days), there are a lot of noise and uncertainties and new traders most likely cannot handle; very long term too many things can go wrong so perhaps for frequent traders the sweet spot is somewhere in between. By the way, for equity, most LEAPS are very thinly traded with huge bid/ask spread. So, they are expensive. I am new, so this is not advice, just "by the book".
I've found that math lends itself very well to publishing. And that options involve a great deal of math beyond compulsory education arithmetic. And that there are dozens of very good books on options basics, at least one of which you can probably check out for free from a local library. Certainly there are worthless books and it's hard to learn how to weld, for example, from even the best welding book. Trading options doesn't fall into that category and most of us don't reject all books simply because some are poorly written. But what do I know.
If you do not understand how people make money trading LEAPS then the basics of how people make money investing long term in stocks also escapes you and you are way over your head. Crack a book and learn about stocks before looking at options.
I think marco had a good reply, you make your guess and take your chances. Also its a levered play and that can work both for and against you.