Options provide amazing versatility for traders in any market condition. Unlike trading a stock long or short, with options you need a strategy — or a number of strategies — to take advantage of the different opportunities that a particular market offers.
But you can’t reach your investment goals being one dimensional. In each market scenario, you have to determine what you want to accomplish, which type of option you want to use — a call or a put — and whether the conditions require purchasing, selling or a combination of different contracts.
Too often traders will jump into options trading to just flat out “make money.” They have no real goals. Do you need monthly income or is this for a retirement account? What are you going to do with the money you make?
As you can see, top traders narrow the range of strategies after they first establish goals.
Now that you have goals, where do you start with selecting a strategy? Do you want to protect an existing stock position, speculate on future prices movements or volatility, or add income with limited risk? Since each strategy has different goals and risk/reward characteristics, it’s critical to know a little bit about each as you are getting started.
This free 11-part guide provides you with a step-by-step guide to the most important options strategies, tips and tricks for any market condition.
- 5 Reasons Why I Never Sell Options On Single Stocks And Neither Should You
- Will My Options Contract Be Exercised At Expiration?
- How To Profit From Volatility Skew With Put Ratio Spreads
- Here’s A Quick Way To Hedge A Credit Spread You Didn’t Think About
- 4 Ways To Trade Weekly Options In Your Portfolio
- How Long Should You Hold A Position Before You Cut Your Losses?
- Why “Cheap” Options Aren’t Always A Good Investment
- Options Strategy For Deep ITM Options
- How Much Money Should You Invest In Each Options Strategy?
- Using Diagonal Spreads For Long-Term Cash Flow
- Your Simple Checklist Before Adjusting Any Trade
As with all the education here at Option Alpha, learning more about different option strategies is a great step in the right direction. Your education needs to be on-going which is why you need to sign up for our free newsletter where we publish pleasantly infrequent updates on new topics each week.
