This pervasive statement that gets thrown around about "90% of options expiring worthless" is so wrong, on so many different levels.
We can go down a long list of all of the reasons why it is totally meaningless. But, it is a LONG list.
For example...just from an "option buyer" point of view, the question really should be "where did the option travel to throughout it's lifetime.?"
It may have traded $2, then .10 , then $8, then .50, then $17 and expire worthless.
Who knows how many options buyers could have bought it for $2, and sold it for $8 during it's lifetime, with the knowledge that it is a wasting asset, and one should be out of it before the heaviest time erosion starts to hit.
That is just one, of dozens, of reasons that could be given.
Then there is the whole other dimension of more "sophisticated" traders, who buy one option, and sell another against , as a spread, etc.
The list goes on, and on...
They are SO irresponsible in all of their presentations, because they are approaching it from a "marketing" perspective, rather than an educational one.
And, worst of all, they are appealing to a group of people, who are mostly novices, and appealing to that desire of wanting to make easy money.
It "sounds" so good to these people but, out of everything they present, it is just "theoretical" ideas, attempting to be backed up by "curve fitted" back tests.
They never actually go through a systematic, step by step, explanation, of a "coherent" strategy. Just nice sounding ideas, which do not work, in the long run, and probably even in the short run.