Well - any of them has both long and short strategies. He found buying a long straddle mid-week with at least 15 days till expiration, then holding all day or 2 days/one night had a positive return, net of fees. There are selection criteria for the stocks. I've tried this with some success and intend to make more plays. Also - selecting a proper stock - you can buy a straddle at noon on expiration friday - as the underlying crosses a strike -and hold it till 2 pm. This window, in general, provides a stable price because option prices tend to decline heavily in the last two hours and the first two of expiration day. It's kind of boring and low hit, but the stock usually moves enough to give you a positive return. Any losses would be minimal. And ocassionally, the stock takes a pretty good move. Because option prices have only a few hours time value left, a slight move (say $7 on GOOG) will return > 100%. And when you catch a very rare big move you get several hundred percent. (Trading Options at Expiration - covers ratio spreads over holidays for enhanced decay, too.). I've done the straddle a bit with limited money. The losses on losers is almost always < 10%, gains on winners above 20%, I'd say. A disciplined trader who knew how to time, pick stocks (Augen has great criteria based on standard deviation moves, rather than percent moves, and great info on how these moves can be far greater for very short time frames than longer ones), and with a simple exit strategy (2pm or 75% out at 100% up is mine - 25% rides a trailing stop). Augen is an actual commercial money manager who laments the lack of opportunities for retail traders. He has no system he is selling and no way to contact him, so he seems truly on the level - both a trader and not selling snake oil. The systems, importantly, ONLY work for retail traders - commercial money is too big to utilize this system. His primary argument is that distortions in decay are caused by market open/closing times versus perpetual decay AND far more rapid decay near expiration. These distortions can be capitalized on. He also contends that HFT has made directional trading very difficult and technical analysis meaningless over any time frame. (I know that's unpopular, but it IS worth reading the arguments - they're well analyzed on the very best data.)