Beginner's Guide To Options Trading

2025 marks our 14th year as a public trading service. We closed 83 winners out of 136 trades (61.0% winning ratio). Our model portfolio produced 6.5% compounded gain on the whole account based on 10% allocation per trade. 

By Kim, Saturday at 09:20 PM

Lots of people think that becoming a successful trader is about finding some secret formula that will ensure that they make all of the right decisions all the time, and never back the wrong horse. This is, of course, very unrealistic and untrue, but you know what?

By Kim, Friday at 03:12 PM

Studies show that over a third of US adults hope to explore additional income streams in 2026. Investing is an appealing option for people looking to boost their income and grow their money. There are always risks involved, but there are ways to increase your chances of success and avoid pitfalls.

By Kim, January 14

It was a rough end to the week for markets, with a sharp sell-off on Friday reminding investors just how quickly sentiment can turn. For anyone who sold in late summer anticipating a correction and then bought back in at the start of October, that one-day drop might have felt like confirmation that they can’t win.

By Kim, October 11, 2025

Are you tempted by the shining allure of crypto trading? You aren’t alone. Decentralized cryptocurrencies hold perhaps the most tempting investment pull of a generation, especially amongst young or beginner investors. After all, by painting a different way to buy and sell, cryptocurrency offers something new that we’re all keen to get in on. 

By Kim, July 29, 2025

The Sell Put And Buy Call Strategy is an example of a synthetic stock options strategy: using call and puts options to mimic the performance of a position, usually involving the purchase of a stock. We saw this when looking at the synthetic covered call strategy elsewhere.

By Chris Young, April 16, 2025

Straddle Options Definition
An options straddle strategy is buying (or selling) both a put and call option with the same strike price and expiration date for the same underlying asset, and paying both the put and call premiums.

By Pat Crawley, March 27, 2025

Gamma scalping is a sophisticated options trading strategy primarily employed by institutions and hedge funds for managing portfolio risk and large positions in equities and futures. As a complex technique, it is particularly suitable for experienced traders seeking to capitalize on market movements, whether up or down, as they occur in real-time.

By Chris Young, February 21, 2025

Gamma is one of the primary Options Greeks, which measure an option's sensitivity to specific factors that could affect an option price. Despite traders hyping up several different Greeks and second-order Greeks like "Vanna" and "charm," there are only four primary Greeks that you need to be familiar with to understand options trading.

By Pat Crawley, January 27, 2025

In options trading, the focus should not be on predicting the exact closing price of a ticker on a given date - a near-impossible task given the pseudo-random nature of markets. Instead, we aim to estimate probabilities: the likelihood of a ticker being above a specific value at a certain point in time. This perspective turns trading into a probabilistic exercise, leveraging historical data to make informed decisions.

By Romuald, January 5, 2025