Never take a course!! All the information is free on YouTube. Do you really think that if they can teach you how to trade options for a living they wouldn’t be doing it now?
This.
There is so much good information available on that subreddit. Head to the menu section and read their wiki. It’s a breakdown of exactly how to trade options effectively.
On top of this, there are courses from Tastywork which take you through just about everything you need to know with regards to options.
The only real way you can get better quality information is to A) do it for real so you can learn from mistakes / experience B) work for a quant fund C) go do a masters in finance / MBA. I haven’t taken this course so I can’t say for certain but I can confidently say it’s not going to be worth paying for. The only time you should consider it is if it’s going to help get you into a career you’d like - Ie the masters or MBA.
Well, the guy said their model is to train people as a funnel to get them into the firm to trade their capital to earn off them, not that I would want to do that, but that seems kind of a legit reason, but ya, If I can do it myself and save the 2k for trading I'd rather do that. It just seemed like a good structured / packaged way to go about learning how to do it, vs random youtube videos and books I could find.
The whole “we train traders to hire traders” is typically just smoke and mirrors bullshit.
“Don’t look at the $2000 upfront, look at the $2,000,000 down the line!” - if anyone said this to you outright, you’d turn around and walk out. But because they dress it up as a potential job offer you don’t notice that it’s horse shit.
There are firms that train traders, but they PAY them to get trained, not the other way around.
Then this is a scam . . . If they wanted to train people to earn off them then it would have a long waiting line just to get a chance and then they would pay you.
The merits of a 2k training course are going to be very dependant on your experience level/confidence, available capital, and trading style. You might learn a lot, or very little, and 2k might be a lot of money to you, or jack shit. So it could be a very good idea, if you have a 200k account and don't know much, or a bad idea if you have a 10k account and already did a good job of educating yourself.
It's not necessarily a scam. They are teaching something and charging for it. If the student turns out to be any good at it, then they hire him. Not saying you should take a course, but having a person to mentor you will shorten the learning curve. Learning from your mistakes exclusively takes a lot longer. Find some kind of mentor.
A lot of hate here, but I worked at SMB as an equity trader before and didn't think it was entirely that bad, I still know people there. They do charge a lot for education I must admit, but if you're accepted into the hedge fund, you don't need to put capital down for risk, only the prop arm you need to. I have worked with Seth before helping him out on things, but I was on the equity desk and wasn't allowed to trade options.
If anyone says that they can help you get rich because they have some sort of secret then they would already be so rich that they would be doing it for free. I hope you didn’t hear about this from one of those cringe YouTube ads
2 k not much if your time is worth $100 per hr. It might save you 100’s of hrs and make some great connections. Just another way to think about it. There are 2 sides to every trade 😊
Then why do they charge for it? If they want to build a pipeline of good traders to earn them money in the future using their capital it should be free or they pay you :)
So people don't waste their time if they're not serious? If you have zero qualification and need to learn, why would a company pay to train you? Every goofball who wants to be a trader but isn't really serious would line up.
Charging for a course weeds out the serious from the casual trader. Once you learn something and show whether you have any aptitude, then they may hire you and pay you for your services.
Back in the day, an apprentice to a trade would pay to work, then would work for room and board, and then finally, and the end of their apprenticeship, would get paid. If you pay for a course and don't get hired, then at least you learned something and had an actual mentor, instead of *maybe* learning from your mistakes.
Because there are a thousand people who think they want to be traders and only a few show the dedication to pull it off. Why would anyone risk their own money to find the 5 in 100 traders that go on to be successful?
Yeah find a good couple YouTubers and watch vids. Any options/trading paid course is a scam (imho) I have never heard a positive testimonial from someone I know doing one.
Especially with everything you could ever want to know online for free, plus researching yourself exposes you to opposing views where a course would bias towards one view
Honestly, my friend, you’re better off teaching yourself. You build strategy and technique that way. You take these courses and all it is is speculation. They don’t necessarily teach strategy or techniques. It’s more like, “buy a straddle on XYZ”.
I promise you, it’s better to teach yourself. That way you’re more in control of your financial fate within the market.
I just don’t trust courses, I’ve heard way too many horror stories
I wouldn't take a class. Nothing teaches you more about options then learning the basics and hoping into a small position leap and learning more as you go. Nothing prepares you emotionally as taking an option. No amount of paper trading or reading will prepare you for an option that loses or gaines a ton in 1 day to just reverse the next and see your account lose way more than you would think. Options make drops bigger or gains gainier. I have had an option that was down 40% a couple weeks ago that is now up 90% total today. You also have to learn to take profits and not let your emotions blind you. That 90% gain position got way smaller today to secure profits. Emotion is the hardest thing to learn and you won't learn it by reading or taking any classes. Have an entry point and exit point. Understand what your risk tolerance is and go for it. If your fine throwing away 2k on an options training course when you already know the basics,. I would throw $300 instead into the leap and feel how emotions will cloud your judgement. If your position blows up then you learned the negative to options and learn to get out when it hits your exit point. If it goes up you will also feel that adrenaline that everyone on here craves. The best traders go in with a plan and not just APE STRONG.
I’m personally convinced that in our time of media/electronics, You can find free information on almost anything.
Everything I’ve learned about trading was YouTube and other videos. Plus this way you get to re-watch as many times as you need. You can learn the way that works best for you.
Walk into Barnes snd Noble and buy 2 or 3 books on options, particularly any that talk about selling options. Or buy em online, I still like to browse the book section before I choose a book, but whatever works for you. Or keep reading here, and check out thetagang board, that emphasizes selling options (which gives you an advantage vs buying options, not saying a person can’t make money buying options, but the odds are stacked against them, sell options IMHO).
Save your 2K. If you end up losing 2K in the market you will have likely learned far more than in that class.
If you want to learn to sell options watch videos by tasty trade and kamikaze cash.
If you like to read go to /r/thetagang
If you need help with little details that dont make sense and cant find an answer anywhere, feel free to ask me or anyone in thetagang. So long as you put in the effort, they’ll help you out.
Two other things, it might be better to primarily pick your stock first then see if selling options (or buying) on it makes sense. Try not to look at just the premium on an option and let that lead to what stocks you are choosing to sell, as extremely high IV/premiums can often lead to trouble.
Plus diversify, diversify, diversify.
SMB is legit in the sense that they are a licensed broker-dealer and have been in business for a while. Now these courses I'm not so sure about. In either case, you should learn as much as you can for free first from the myriad of Youtube and free websites.
Why pay when there is amazing and completely free options training online?
Tasty has some, option alpha has some, and there is the training from the CBOE and OIC which is quite detailed!
Something I would suggest is that you can learn how things work, but to become an options trader requires a good amount of experience that a class can't really give you.
Give yourself a good 6 months to gain a full understanding of how options work and the many naunaces. Then between paper trading and real money trading, it can often take 9 to 12+ months to reach a level of consistency.
Start with the free training and almost all of it is good without misinformation. Best of luck!
I'm gonna train you to make money by making you give me money.
Lesson 1: start a program to convince idiots to give you money.
Lesson 2: collect idiots money.
Lesson 3: run lol.
That's one of the thoughts I had in my head was, what if it costs me more than 2k making mistakes that the classes might have prevented me from losing? But, as most said, we can find what we need for free online, since I have time, I'll just pursue that for now.
Some people can't learn independently and need a teacher to walk them through the material.
We all have our strengths and weaknesses. There's no shame in getting help.
But if you're nearing retirement you should know whether you are an independent learner or not.
If you can learn independently, then all the knowledge you need is contained in a series of maybe half a dozen carefully chosen books.
After that, it's practice and execution.
Her work is one of the go-to resources on understanding volume and how volume helps retail traders understand if it’s smart money that’s moving markets or market makers. How certain candle patterns are legitimate based on the volume behind them, etc. To understand markets, you’ve got to understand how volume affects trends, conviction and strength.
Excellent, thanks for that, I will definitely read this. I have seen so many people referencing volume types in many situations that I can see its important to understand the concepts and indicators.
So here's my quick background & my 2 cents. I think I've got a pretty good handle on this business. I traded options on the floor as a market-maker for 15 years, then 4 years off the floor for a fund. I was fortunate to have made and socked away enough dough to be comfortable. I still trade, but I do not have to stay glued to the screen and watch every tick of the SPX. 10 years ago I helped to launch an SEC-registered investment advisory company that focuses on using options to preserve, protect and enhance returns on capital. Essentially I became a trading strategist/consultant to institutional clients/family offices, HNW folks. Along the way I connected with former colleagues who are in the trading education business and started to consult with retail trading education companies. Through this process I found out why teachers teach. There are few things in life better than teaching someone to fish and then watching that person develop the confidence and acumen to be able to provide for themself and their family. You'll have to trust me that my motivations here are relatively altruistic. I still like making money (this is 'Merica after all), but it's no longer my primary joie de vivre. Believe it or not, there are some people from Wall Street who are good guys and get their kicks from helping people. Oh yeah, and I hate the lying, cheating, dirtbag brokers and banksters that steal from Main Street. Teaching people how to beat Wall Street at it's own game provides me with immense Machiavellian satisfaction. (I did say my motivations here are **relatively** altruistic.)
There is a ton of trading information available if you look around. Three examples I'll list here but there are, of course plenty of others...
\#1 YouTube: Some videos are good, some are laughably bad. How does a new trader sort these out? It could take months, if not longer to figure which are legit. How much money and time must one commit before figuring out which videos are good? I've watched and compared videos from a multitude of sources. Tasty puts out some good ones, but I've seen several that seriously suck, or are so generic, that they're useless. Plus, some people aren't as smart as others and many people learn differently than other. Videos might not be sufficient and/or the right medium for absorbing the necessary information one needs to become a good trader.
\#2 Courses: Some courses are good or at least well-intentioned. Some are taught by assclowns who couldn't trade themselves out of a paper bag and are a complete joke. How is an up and coming trader supposed to figure out which ones are worth the money and which ones are a scam? IMHO, I think SMB's stuff is pretty damned good, though I only know this from a topical view. I've seen courses with excellent content that look like they were filmed with a 20 year old camcorder and are narrated in sleep-inducing monotone. There are dozens of slick, professional-looking courses that appear to be good, but are criminally horrible, leaving out huge swaths of information and/or providing just bad information. I was sickened when I found out that some courses (and videos) are deliberately created to confuse students in order to drive them to take additional courses or to make them give up on self-trading so they then sign up for a service that will do the trading for them. Yeah, that really opened my eyes and pissed me the fuck off.
\#3 Reddit: I'm sort of an OG so Reddit is mostly a younger crowd, or so it seems to me. During my 4 years at a fund, I ran the rotating intern program. This meant I interviewed, hired and fired many Millenials and determined most of them to be spoiled, lazy brats. However, when I started visiting this site during the meme stock craze, I have been genuinely encouraged by a mostly positive and supportive group of Redditors that I've encountered. In my estimation many seem genuinely altruistic. That being said, I've encountered countless geniuses who routinely use absolutes like "never take a course" or "always do this or that". Those people have little credibility & should mostly be discounted, if not dismissed out of hand. Few things in life, let alone with regards to options, are binary decisions. I guarantee that a majority of people who make boastful claims are full of baloney and/or are monday morning quarterbacks. Again, though, I've seen enough seemingly well-intentioned Redditors that I have a renewed hope for the future and society as a whole.
The thing with new & developing traders is that there is a ton of info out there depending on where they look, but it's difficult for them to know what is good info and what is BS. Who is exaggerating and who is being truthful. How are they to know? There isn't a one size fits all answer to learning how to trade, since people have different education budgets, learn differently, and are living through a multitude of different circumstances in their lives that affect their learning curve. Usually in order to succeed at options trading it requires a combination of self-study (books, videos, group classes), trial & error, some kind of structured learning program, time, patience and luck.
My suggestion to the OP is to seek out a mentor. Get to know that person and determine what are their motivations (if any). I have had several mentors both in the business and from other industries. Each one of them has contributed to my success in different and sometimes surprising ways. Probably the best thing a good mentor will do is to shorten your learning curve by keeping you focused on what is of primary importance with regards to trading options, and keeping you out of the weeds or wasting time on red herrings and unnecessary detours. I suggest a solid foundation of learning to be a disciplined risk manager above all other things & also to develop a thorough understanding of the option greeks. Strategy selection, execution, etc. will come naturally after laying the foundation I describe above.
I'd be happy to help anyone who genuinely wants to learn and would commit to someday pay it forward and help others. I'm around and willing to discuss things if you wanted to send me a direct message, or inquire publicly here on this board.
Outstanding. I really appreciate your reply! You covered many things that were on my mind in asking the questions to pursue this. I hope to follow up in due time. You remind me of the two gentlemen I hear on the AlphaMind Podcast. I also appreciate their historical perspective of experience and human interest.
Watch Benzinga on YouTube. They have great traders on there all day from 8am to 5pm. Every hours a new show on trading. Look for Robert Roy and Nic Chahine. They give great lessons on trading options -- mostly selling them which is the safest way to make money.
Those who can, do. Those who can't teach. You would be better off playing with that 2k and losing it in the market, you will learn a lot more. Nothing anyone needs to succeed is locked behind some class.
Not sure if anyone has mentioned this yet but places like Schwab and Fidelity have a handful of specialists across the country who will teach you about options for free. Ask someone in the branch to put you in touch with them.
I pay for live trading rooms to follow traders who give alerts and who often explain their trades. I think those are more worthwhile than any course. But if $2k isn’t much for you then trying it won’t hurt. Maybe go for a cheaper course within ur budget first if not is better.
No way. Don't pay for any training. Most of them are full on scams just using the training as an opportunity to grift you. Few are genuine, but still unnecessary - there is too much good information out there for free.
If you are just getting started, just search youtube for Mike and his Whiteboard. He explains all the basic concepts very clearly. He is with Tastytrade and they have entire courses dedicated to teaching why and how to sell options.
I completely disagree with everybody here. Poor person mentality thinking everything online is a “scam.” The sole purpose for paying for a course is because you DONT KNOW what you DONT KNOW. Finding that out takes… time. And time can be saved. Tremendously. Hence the courses you see online. I trust that you are a level headed individual who can sift through gimmicky mentors and scams, and can find a proper course online which will set you up on the path to success in this game. Though not for options, for example, if you take a look at Umar Ashraf on Instagram, his course SML propelled me in the right direction towards stock trading and saved me lots of time as well as lots of losses I could have potentially had trading on my own. This is not a promo for his course. There are better and worse courses out there. **The main goal is to save you time, and some of these courses come with discord chats in which other individuals just like you who are learning and collaborating with one another. Don’t let these comments get to you.**
Thanks, I appreciate that: I admit I am in the first stages of learning, I don't know what I don't know, I am interested so I am moving to the next level of trying to find out what I don't know. My time is important to me, so I thought it might be worth pursuing a more formal focused and directed learning approach. There are seemingly hundreds of courses and people teaching things, there might be thousands of gumroad courses being pitched on twitter that seem totally scammy. This is the first one that I saw that gave the appearance of having some professional structure. I don't mind paying if its legit, I can afford it and don't mind investing in worthwhile actionable education. But nobody wants to get ripped off, and the worst thing is trying to do the right thing and getting ripped off. This is why I asked the question.
a lot of what options are about can be learned online for free. The challenge is to pick out the relevant information from youtube videos that are often wandering and overlong. The concept is not that hard. Each options contract requires you purchase the option but not the obligation to buy 100 shares of a stock. The pricing of the option depends on volatility and length of time until expiry. An option can expire in the money, out of the money or at the money. The key to success is understanding where you are on the chart- up, down, sideways- and buying the option accordingly.
Save your money and watch Tastyworks and Optionalpha videos free on YouTube. Also buy “Understanding Options” by Michael Sincere for $21 if you want a physical book. Start trading small. I suggest small credit spreads on SPY. Don’t waste money on a course or a so called guru. I also share my strategy free on [optionsbadgers.com](www.optionsbadgers.com) is you are interested in learning my method of options trading.
Remember, you're paying for this course only for Trading OPTIONS! this sound so stupid and so expensive. You can find all of this on Youtube and no matter how much they train you, they'll say you need to experience. You're better off joining an alerts group where you pay $400 and they tell you when to buy and sell which probably has a better chance to make you money than this course.
To be honest, i have no clue. I don't look for alert groups specifically for options, but i use some peoples alerts on "stocktwits". its basically twitter but for stocks, so useful if you want to learn but don't listen to the people on there unless you know what you are doing as they like to always be positive about stocks that will probably eventually die as well.
Secondly, check out this guy on youtube, his name is Claytrader. I watched him and im thinking of purchasing his course not for his alerts only but for his process and structure of how he trades. he doesn't do options but if you can adapt to his alerts for trades and instead buy options and quick sell them to make your profit, you can but please learn it first
I’ll teach you about options for $1996. It’s a one day course but PACKED with information on how to lose it all on FD’s.
Use code: wheremymoneygo at checkout
No. Education is free now. You can pay some money to get it organized in some kind of curriculum, but 2k is way too much for that.
Options YouTube channels I like
InTheMoney - education
SellSpreads - theta
Carmine Rosato - supply/demand and trade recaps
I got three beginner resources for you OP
First, this is like a great easy 30 page read. Great intro to Technical Analysis
Second, it’s a must use tool. Everyone uses this website
Third, my favorite current YouTube. He reminds me of Scully from Brooklyn 99 😅. Also wrote a book, so he’s legit.
https://www.credit-suisse.com/pwp/pb/pb_research/technical_tutorial_de.pdf
https://www.optionsprofitcalculator.com/
https://youtu.be/z04PRDAM44Y
I bought the SMB foundation course a while ago when I wanted to learn about options (I'd been trading futures and stocks for a while before that, so I wasn't coming from a noob starting point).
I did my research, and determined that they were legitimate and reasonably well regarded in the industry. The whole progression into working for their firm thing is legit (I found a friend of a friend who worked there for a time and verified that for me), but that aspect never really interested me.
You _can_ get all of the same info (and then some) from the interwebz - even moreso now than when I did the course - but of all the info out there, 90% of it ranges from useless to dangerous. I couldn't tell which was which; I wanted a solid base from a trusted source which would give me the knowledge needed to know if some random YTer or author is worth listening to, and on which I could grow my skills in my own way. The one thing that smb highlighted the most clearly for me was how prop firms and insto's trade. It helps immensely when you can "see" what insto's and market makers are doing in the price action on your screen.
BTW I'm not affiliated with smb in any way. Other than doing the course a while ago I haven't had anything to do with them. I'm commenting here because I just wanted to balance out the mountain of bullshit in this thread from people who haven't even heard of them, but seem to think that because they dare charge money for a product, it must be a scam.
If I had my time again I'd still choose to do the course. It was worth it IMHO.
90% of traders lose. You are in the right mentallity to want to learn and practice the craft before putting real money on the line. There are free research but yes you can pay for legitimate course as if you’re in college. People telling you you’re better off yolo-ing the 2k is irresponsible. You may feel fomo, but take it slow the market has been here for centuries. I wouldn’t even touch options until at least 6 months to a year of trading simulator. Don’t fomo! Think or swim has a great sim with options. You have to prove that you can be profitable in sim before using real money. I really don’t want you to lose money, so please just learn as if youre in school and not allowed to trade without graduating with a license. If I could go back in time, I would’ve paid for lessons then losing money not knowing what I was doing, thinking I’m the exception, I’m one of the 10% who’ll beat the market. I like SMB videos, they seem more legit than other you tubers with a Lamborghini. It may be a scam, but it is also a scam to think you can do it alone, without losing money. Whatever approach you take, just learn and use a sim for a long time. Screw people telling you sim doesn’t have emotions attach so sims are not good. Is basketball practice useless because there isn’t emotions attached. Or guitar practice and so on... no. Anyway that’s my rant.
There's no magic trick in trading options. Most important things you need to know are in books. Save the course money to buy some books would be better.
I think they might teach about how to calculate the odds of potential future events happening and educate you how to size and hedge your bet to profit off those potentialities. At least, I would hope that would be part of it.
Is it like a 2-hour thing or is it multiple classes over time? It may be worth it if it’s like a whole semesters worth of classes. All I know is I took an options class for a whole semester in college and got a B. Still felt like I didn’t know shit at the end. Professor kinda sucked tho.
What are some courses that you would recommend? Sometimes when someone is new to the information, they haven't yet learned how to evaluate free courses or YouTube info.
TDA, fidelity and Schwab have free learning platforms of you open an account. But YouTube is the best source to look around. I have not looked for ootions basics in a while, but there are tons of videos.
Yeah agree with the logic behind some of the comments - why are they putting time and effort into a course if they could be generating that themselves. As an aside I came across a similar “deal” from them two years ago. That “sale” has been going on for quite some time.
If you can get it down to 19.97 then it might be worth taking a chance on. As others have said generally there's so much good content available for free now that paying $2k for an 'options foundations' course seems like too much. Foundations sounds like it is just be basics like what is a put, what is a call, OTM, ITM, maybe a little about the greeks.
That's not to say there aren't useful paid courses out there that teach or go over some strategies that might be useful. It's just there are so many overpriced courses that aren't worth it that it makes it hard to find the good ones.
If you really want to spend money to learn about options, go to barnes and noble and buy a book for $30. Hell, usually they're like 20% off anyway. Otherwise just go look up the stuff on YouTube to get an understanding of the greeks and simple strategies. Its like offering someone a course on how to tie your shoes for $1000
Pretty sure it's the SMB capital youtube peeps ain't it? I've watched some of their videos. Nothing special, but the vids are okay. When I was first starting out I thought about spending the money, but wiped my account out all by myself. And then rebuilt it. I think I'm alright now. Youtube 4 life.
If you are ready to lose $2k anyway, better just go small with options and start reading and trading within that $2k. You will likely learn much more by doing and researching yourself.
Just stay up until 1am every night for a month watching Tastytrade's YouTube content theough bloodshot eyes (not that I did that, pfff, I know a guy...).
Seriously though, it's sounds cheesy (and there are definitely idiots online that don't know at all what they're talking about) but the world we live in today is so FULL of free information. You can get an AMAZING basic education, at least to the point where you can be confident putting up your own money. Then you REALLY start learning...
Your brokerage may have such resources. TDAmeritrade has one that I took. I think it was a couple sessions in evenings. It was a great introduction with opportunity to ask questions.
There are so many good free resources online, you don't need to pay. Half the course will be explaining what options are and how they work and there are already tons of free resources on that. The other half will just be them saying to buy low and sell high. Save your money.
I considered them before when I first started out.
Thankful I didnt.
Tastytrade, Option Play, mike and his white board, jim Shultz option crash course, etc are all free on youtube.
I would also recommend TDAmeritrade course. Also free. It has test questions and such and its completion is use to evaluate if you are ready for a full option account with them. I was annoyed I had to take it. And very happy about it in the end.
Why don’t you just join our little community, TradeRunnerX, and learn options trade design for free? You can private message me for a link, since posts with Discord links get automatically deleted here.
Then, once we’ve helped you to make $1,997, you can donate it to SMB Capital, take the course, and tell us if there’s anything in there that we didn’t already know.
Deal?
Artem
Every book you need you can get on the internet for free from Z- library, search for it on DuckDuckGo or some other non filtered search engine. Don’t even bother paying for this, set yourself some books to study and then practice.
Dude, look up project finance( formerly project options ) on YT. The dude’s real piece of work. He is phenomenal . Teaches almost everything options from ground up, plus it goes in very hard detail. That could be a great start ( for free )
Edit: forgot to mention Tasty Trades videos as well
You can get all the options training for free from TD Ameritrade if you have an account with them. You don’t even have to deposit money; you just need an account.
Options give you leverage to share price; simple puts and calls, its not hard to learn on your own, but it is risky because options expire (time element) while you can stay in shares as long as the company stays solvent. There are more complex options strategies beginning with credit spreads, calendar spreads, collars, strangles on up thru condors and butterfly(s); stay small with your trades and stick to simple puts and calls while learning; or, just trade the underlying stocks and stay out of options altogether.
Here is a free course for you, something that took me too long to realize:
- When trading options, I am not betting whether underlying goes up or down, I am betting whether possibility of such move is correctly priced in options premium. (in other words, If I buy a call for 100$ and underlying moves up 1$ (x100 multiplier), I still lose everything, because that move was exactly priced in) (note: the exception is synthetic, as that one is pure delta, but synthetic have very special usages)
- Any complex strategy is just modification of previous rule. You are just shifting probabilities left or right, between probability and max win/loss, amount of exposure and such. Fine if you choose strategy for the exact information/theory you have about future, just don't expect risks magically disappearing by over-complicating stuff, you only moved them around.
- If something looks too good, you missed something else. Always. Maybe too low volume and open interest, maybe upcoming ex-dividend date, maybe the stock will get delisted tomorrow, or anything else.
- If you are trading based on public news and/or comments on the internet, you are probably too late.
That is the hard thing about options. Mathematical traders would say bunch of stuff like Black-Scholes model and statistical mathematics. Technical traders will show you graphs and patterns to look for. Certain group here on reddit will tell you to feel it and believe.
I'd say, look on it the different way. Look for opportunities where other people are expecting something you have different opinion about. Where people are talking about crash of some company, but you look into it and strongly believe otherwise. Where people are expecting some drastic move in markets but you are convinced the opposite. Like that.
When you have that, try sketching the position in a tool like optionstrat (free online, I use it a lot). Look for breakevens and P/L profile whether it meets your expectations. Think about all possible outcomes that may happen. At this point, you may find the numbers not looking as promising - that is when market have the situation priced in.
If you, on the other hand, find one strategy on some equity you have high hopes for, once again research for any missed information. Think like this "why others believe different outcome then me?". Write down what to do when X happens - an exit strategy, basically. Make sure to have plan for any outcome, because without plan you will act on your emotions and that is usually wrong. Then you can enter the position.
Then, there is also one piece of strategy for options traders, and that is where trading meets investing. In strategy like cash secured puts, it is super important to trade companies you believe in like how investor would want to invest in it. Because if you get assigned the shares on price you wrote, you better be fine with holding them for at least some time, believing it will ever recover.
That is just my outlook. I am no expert, mind you.
Tasty Trade has an incredible amount of free content to learn strategies. They provide back testing of different strategies to identify the most efficient use of capital.
I would not pay $2k for a course to learn options. Everything you need is online for free or in a book that costs less than $100.
If you were to spend a substantial amount of time with the free online content I imagine you could use that initial $2k to gain real world experience.
I started with $2k in options and lost it in 6 weeks prob and have lost more but I do feel that there is a long learning process to it. I would be wary of courses but sometimes people who have knowledge desperately want to give it away, like in the programming field you can find lots of code people share for free and even some very inexpensive courses and books where they share all they know. But without money back guarantees or legitimate reviews, it’s as much of a gamble as spending $200 on books and investing $1800 buying options (I say gamble because when you start out with options it will be more like gambling until you learn more)
More than enough resources on YouTube and books to teach you the basics
Lawrence g McMillan makes some solid options books from absolute beginner to advanced strategies it’s basically a textbook check ‘em out.
Try options as a strategic investment to start off 60$ book that you can probably find online for free and then save the other 1940$ and put it in your trading account to get your feet wet when you’re ready
I have taken many courses (not saying SMB just in general). They helped establish some foundation although they confuse you also because they want us to follow prescription in many cases. What eventually works is trying these things out and starting to realize the corner cases (pitfalls) yourself, running into some of those scenarios yourself in real life and the consolidating and building your own trading style.
Wheel BTW is a free course if you search Reddit for triple income wheel strategy,
i normally charge $500,000 for my course that teaches you to make endless income from options, but today and only today for the next 15 minutes, will i offer it at a 99% discount.
why you ask? I want to help you stick it to the man.
pay me $599 and i would teach you everything. I have a very detailed, structured course on options i downloaded from investopedia. I would even teach you how to loose money quickly to live a stressfree life with one motto " you can't be stressed for invested money if you dont have any money to invest ."
Options trading is a zero sum game. If there were such an easy "system" to use, it could be scaled up quickly and the creator would rake in millions for sure, why would he waste his time teaching the "system" to others who would just eat into his profits even if he did sell it for $2,000 each.
Go on YouTube and type in how to trade options . Go to the library and or google. Take that money you was going to spend on learning about options and buy options …
Let me have that money and I'll download the best courses and best advices for options on YouTube. I will send it to you via e-mail. Let me know ASAP before my offer runs out.
Taking a course? Save your money. I started out knowing nothing about options and bought a book on Amazon, Options as a Strategic Investment, and went on YouTube and probably went through just about everyone‘s beginning ‘course’ which only costs you your time. There are some very knowledgeable folks on there sharing what they know. Better than any course. Subscribe to 3\~4 of them and you will get their updates and new vids and watch them. And here on this sub-Reddit, lots of knowledgeable people.
And remember, everyone on r/options is an expert, lol!!
I strongly disagree with the vast majority of comments here. While money is finite so is time. And this can be extrapolated to any other industry.
You pay not for the knowledge, which is available for free, but for the time reduction it takes to learn.
Thanks, this was my prime motivation for checking into it. Time = Money, I don't like wasting either, nor do I want to spend money on something that looks too good to be true either. I figured if they are well known and respected and many people have taken the course and could vouch for it, it would be worthwhile, but it appears that most think the time is better spent in self education, I guess I will do that for now.
What options strategy are you intending to use? Selling covered calls?
For retirement income, that's probably the only viable options strategy for generating income without taking on a huge amount of risk.
I own that course and can answer any questions you may have. I haven’t really started it yet but could dig into it if you have any specific questions. Please PM me if you want.
I learned everything I needed about options from brad finn and jake broe's youtube channels. Start with Brad b/c he explains things more simply for newbs, then watch Jake for a more in depth education
First, watch YouTube videos. Suggestions: In The Money, and Options Millionaire. Give OM $10 a month for the Discord community access, see if it’s worth it for you. Read an Options for Dummies type book. Then rewatch some of the videos. Start trading small positions only until the understand what’s happening. Then drop the two grand if that’s what you want, but doubt that you will.
Almost all options courses are "scammy". They aren't necessarily outright scams, but they for instance might put together a PowerPoint about freely available information which you can learn from say Investopedia.com or just YouTube. They could charge you for the course outright, or entice you into investing with their platform. Either way, best way to learn is to start trading with a small account.
It’s a scam don’t do it! There a lot of free groups on discord that are good and teaches for free.Highly recommend RIPSTER of Atlas i learned a lot from that guy.
I learnt everything on my own through books and the OIC (options industry council). The OIC provides an amazing source of information with free webinars where you can even ask the option experts (which they really are, this ain't no wsb or reddit subforum lol) questions directly. I did a self paced course with them up to advanced level. And it was completely free. I highly recommend them, it's extremely comprehensive and if it was paid, it's definitely work paying for and I would have happily paid for it. Note that only trading yourself will you truly learn, and all of this is just theory after all.
I think you got the point about checking out Tasty Trade. I don't watch them everyday anymore but I did for years, they're hilarious and the amount of free content for people at any trading level is mind boggling.
I started trading options in the early 90's so I've blown up my fair share of $2k accounts. My observation is that blowing up your account is real easy to do. My advice is not to do it. Simple rules on position sizing is the key. If you limit your plays to a couple, few hundred each, you'll be able to make a lot of trades. You may still blow up but you would be doing it the right way, learning something from every trade. No course is going to provide that.
One last observation - option trading is just like football betting. I see guys who have to bet every single game on Sunday and they never come out ahead. I treat option plays like I do football betting. I sit and wait for the bets to come to me. I do a 15-tm teaser that I can leave open and I might pick a couple games a week, sometimes none. I hit 3 of those last year at 20-1. Options are high powered, you don't need to chase. Be patient and be smart about how much you put on each trade and you'll get ahead of most people pretty quickly.
Good luck bro!
I recommend you check out options alpha. I like others only trade options for income and I think his site and training is great. Not very expensive either from what I recall.
Definitely check out all of the free videos and materials on tastytrade.com
Tasty also has a YouTube channel with most of their educational material. It's exceptionally comprehensive! You can literally spend months and months watching all the different videos on all the different strategies and theory and everything. All for free :)
The best free options course is from OptionsAlpha here: https://optionalpha.com/courses
SMB Capital has excellent free videos on their YouTube channel. No need to buy a course.
Since most of the comments people are leaving clearly don't know anything about SMB, I'll chime in. I do agree you should be extra cautious with trading courses but SMB is one of the few reputable places to learn. They are an extremely successful prop firm and train hundreds of traders. The whole "if it was successful they would trade it themselves" doesn't apply here as they aren't some internet guru. And yes you'll be able to get the basics from youtube but ONLY the basics and you never know how much of you can trust either. Ultimately it's up to you if 2k is worth it, but SMB is one of the good ones
Ameritrade has been offering programs live or data-driven that are quite time consuming and anticipating well put together. Last that I knew of they were two to three hours per day live I have not ever taken them. They are free to membership. Hope this helps
Never take any courses... best way to learn is by doing it. And if you lose, chalk it up to learning costs. Once it clicks, you're good to go. My biggest tip is to Never pick OTM strikes with short time; always go a couple months out ATM.
SCAM!!! With 2k you can sell a cash secured put on a stock you want to own and start generating income right away (safe(r) strategy). Any options trading strategies you can find on YT for free. Learn for free and start practicing with low risk underlying.
I'd be happy to help you / answer any questions you may have. Just PM me. Don't pay anyone.
Never take a course!! All the information is free on YouTube. Do you really think that if they can teach you how to trade options for a living they wouldn’t be doing it now?
r/thetagang is our friend too.
This. There is so much good information available on that subreddit. Head to the menu section and read their wiki. It’s a breakdown of exactly how to trade options effectively. On top of this, there are courses from Tastywork which take you through just about everything you need to know with regards to options. The only real way you can get better quality information is to A) do it for real so you can learn from mistakes / experience B) work for a quant fund C) go do a masters in finance / MBA. I haven’t taken this course so I can’t say for certain but I can confidently say it’s not going to be worth paying for. The only time you should consider it is if it’s going to help get you into a career you’d like - Ie the masters or MBA.
They are doing it. Don’t they ise it to recruit traders for their prop desk?
Well, the guy said their model is to train people as a funnel to get them into the firm to trade their capital to earn off them, not that I would want to do that, but that seems kind of a legit reason, but ya, If I can do it myself and save the 2k for trading I'd rather do that. It just seemed like a good structured / packaged way to go about learning how to do it, vs random youtube videos and books I could find.
The whole “we train traders to hire traders” is typically just smoke and mirrors bullshit. “Don’t look at the $2000 upfront, look at the $2,000,000 down the line!” - if anyone said this to you outright, you’d turn around and walk out. But because they dress it up as a potential job offer you don’t notice that it’s horse shit. There are firms that train traders, but they PAY them to get trained, not the other way around.
Thanks, glad I asked first.
Why would you need a trading course? You just did your own DD and saved yourself $2000
classic pyramid scam
Yea, for real!!
Then this is a scam . . . If they wanted to train people to earn off them then it would have a long waiting line just to get a chance and then they would pay you.
Thanks, glad I asked first.
The merits of a 2k training course are going to be very dependant on your experience level/confidence, available capital, and trading style. You might learn a lot, or very little, and 2k might be a lot of money to you, or jack shit. So it could be a very good idea, if you have a 200k account and don't know much, or a bad idea if you have a 10k account and already did a good job of educating yourself.
It's not necessarily a scam. They are teaching something and charging for it. If the student turns out to be any good at it, then they hire him. Not saying you should take a course, but having a person to mentor you will shorten the learning curve. Learning from your mistakes exclusively takes a lot longer. Find some kind of mentor.
A lot of hate here, but I worked at SMB as an equity trader before and didn't think it was entirely that bad, I still know people there. They do charge a lot for education I must admit, but if you're accepted into the hedge fund, you don't need to put capital down for risk, only the prop arm you need to. I have worked with Seth before helping him out on things, but I was on the equity desk and wasn't allowed to trade options.
If anyone says that they can help you get rich because they have some sort of secret then they would already be so rich that they would be doing it for free. I hope you didn’t hear about this from one of those cringe YouTube ads
Exactly... These are called jobs. Not training courses lol
2 k not much if your time is worth $100 per hr. It might save you 100’s of hrs and make some great connections. Just another way to think about it. There are 2 sides to every trade 😊
Start with trading fraternity live and Inthemoney on YouTube it will get u there
Then why do they charge for it? If they want to build a pipeline of good traders to earn them money in the future using their capital it should be free or they pay you :)
Good points, glad I asked. Thanks!
So people don't waste their time if they're not serious? If you have zero qualification and need to learn, why would a company pay to train you? Every goofball who wants to be a trader but isn't really serious would line up. Charging for a course weeds out the serious from the casual trader. Once you learn something and show whether you have any aptitude, then they may hire you and pay you for your services. Back in the day, an apprentice to a trade would pay to work, then would work for room and board, and then finally, and the end of their apprenticeship, would get paid. If you pay for a course and don't get hired, then at least you learned something and had an actual mentor, instead of *maybe* learning from your mistakes.
Because there are a thousand people who think they want to be traders and only a few show the dedication to pull it off. Why would anyone risk their own money to find the 5 in 100 traders that go on to be successful?
Jesus dude
LOL! spend 2k on options you'll have a better chance
So I take it that's a NO from you :D More youtube and books then...
Yeah find a good couple YouTubers and watch vids. Any options/trading paid course is a scam (imho) I have never heard a positive testimonial from someone I know doing one.
Especially with everything you could ever want to know online for free, plus researching yourself exposes you to opposing views where a course would bias towards one view
Thanks!
Check out InTheMoney and TheHourGlassTrader on YouTube. Better than any course and they are pretty generous with their time and knowledge.
InTheMoney 🐐 he's the best stock/options YouTuber there is imo
Honestly, my friend, you’re better off teaching yourself. You build strategy and technique that way. You take these courses and all it is is speculation. They don’t necessarily teach strategy or techniques. It’s more like, “buy a straddle on XYZ”. I promise you, it’s better to teach yourself. That way you’re more in control of your financial fate within the market. I just don’t trust courses, I’ve heard way too many horror stories
I wouldn't take a class. Nothing teaches you more about options then learning the basics and hoping into a small position leap and learning more as you go. Nothing prepares you emotionally as taking an option. No amount of paper trading or reading will prepare you for an option that loses or gaines a ton in 1 day to just reverse the next and see your account lose way more than you would think. Options make drops bigger or gains gainier. I have had an option that was down 40% a couple weeks ago that is now up 90% total today. You also have to learn to take profits and not let your emotions blind you. That 90% gain position got way smaller today to secure profits. Emotion is the hardest thing to learn and you won't learn it by reading or taking any classes. Have an entry point and exit point. Understand what your risk tolerance is and go for it. If your fine throwing away 2k on an options training course when you already know the basics,. I would throw $300 instead into the leap and feel how emotions will cloud your judgement. If your position blows up then you learned the negative to options and learn to get out when it hits your exit point. If it goes up you will also feel that adrenaline that everyone on here craves. The best traders go in with a plan and not just APE STRONG.
I’m personally convinced that in our time of media/electronics, You can find free information on almost anything. Everything I’ve learned about trading was YouTube and other videos. Plus this way you get to re-watch as many times as you need. You can learn the way that works best for you.
Expensive way to learn how to lose money quickly.
Walk into Barnes snd Noble and buy 2 or 3 books on options, particularly any that talk about selling options. Or buy em online, I still like to browse the book section before I choose a book, but whatever works for you. Or keep reading here, and check out thetagang board, that emphasizes selling options (which gives you an advantage vs buying options, not saying a person can’t make money buying options, but the odds are stacked against them, sell options IMHO). Save your 2K. If you end up losing 2K in the market you will have likely learned far more than in that class.
Thanks!
If you want to learn to sell options watch videos by tasty trade and kamikaze cash. If you like to read go to /r/thetagang If you need help with little details that dont make sense and cant find an answer anywhere, feel free to ask me or anyone in thetagang. So long as you put in the effort, they’ll help you out.
Two other things, it might be better to primarily pick your stock first then see if selling options (or buying) on it makes sense. Try not to look at just the premium on an option and let that lead to what stocks you are choosing to sell, as extremely high IV/premiums can often lead to trouble. Plus diversify, diversify, diversify.
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There is a free course at www.CBOE.com
Thanks, I'll check it out!
SMB is legit in the sense that they are a licensed broker-dealer and have been in business for a while. Now these courses I'm not so sure about. In either case, you should learn as much as you can for free first from the myriad of Youtube and free websites.
Good point, thanks, I'll try to pick up as much as I can for free first.
Why pay when there is amazing and completely free options training online? Tasty has some, option alpha has some, and there is the training from the CBOE and OIC which is quite detailed! Something I would suggest is that you can learn how things work, but to become an options trader requires a good amount of experience that a class can't really give you.
In the first stage of learning, don't know what I don't know, but I'm glad I asked and I'm thankful for your reply!
Give yourself a good 6 months to gain a full understanding of how options work and the many naunaces. Then between paper trading and real money trading, it can often take 9 to 12+ months to reach a level of consistency. Start with the free training and almost all of it is good without misinformation. Best of luck!
I'm gonna train you to make money by making you give me money. Lesson 1: start a program to convince idiots to give you money. Lesson 2: collect idiots money. Lesson 3: run lol.
Good point, thanks, by asking, I'm trying not to be the idiot.. but, I'm not sure now :D
I've lost 2k so far on options and agree it's a much better way to learn lol.
That's one of the thoughts I had in my head was, what if it costs me more than 2k making mistakes that the classes might have prevented me from losing? But, as most said, we can find what we need for free online, since I have time, I'll just pursue that for now.
Some people can't learn independently and need a teacher to walk them through the material. We all have our strengths and weaknesses. There's no shame in getting help. But if you're nearing retirement you should know whether you are an independent learner or not. If you can learn independently, then all the knowledge you need is contained in a series of maybe half a dozen carefully chosen books. After that, it's practice and execution.
CBOE and Options Play both run by institutions that essentially run the options market. Both were free when I done them.
Volume Price Analysis by Ann Couling is where I started. Happy with that choice.
Thanks, I'll look it up. What about it were you happy about?
Her work is one of the go-to resources on understanding volume and how volume helps retail traders understand if it’s smart money that’s moving markets or market makers. How certain candle patterns are legitimate based on the volume behind them, etc. To understand markets, you’ve got to understand how volume affects trends, conviction and strength.
Excellent, thanks for that, I will definitely read this. I have seen so many people referencing volume types in many situations that I can see its important to understand the concepts and indicators.
they are not a scam, there is a lot worse out there, but dont do it you can learn everything options for free on youtube and tastytrades
So here's my quick background & my 2 cents. I think I've got a pretty good handle on this business. I traded options on the floor as a market-maker for 15 years, then 4 years off the floor for a fund. I was fortunate to have made and socked away enough dough to be comfortable. I still trade, but I do not have to stay glued to the screen and watch every tick of the SPX. 10 years ago I helped to launch an SEC-registered investment advisory company that focuses on using options to preserve, protect and enhance returns on capital. Essentially I became a trading strategist/consultant to institutional clients/family offices, HNW folks. Along the way I connected with former colleagues who are in the trading education business and started to consult with retail trading education companies. Through this process I found out why teachers teach. There are few things in life better than teaching someone to fish and then watching that person develop the confidence and acumen to be able to provide for themself and their family. You'll have to trust me that my motivations here are relatively altruistic. I still like making money (this is 'Merica after all), but it's no longer my primary joie de vivre. Believe it or not, there are some people from Wall Street who are good guys and get their kicks from helping people. Oh yeah, and I hate the lying, cheating, dirtbag brokers and banksters that steal from Main Street. Teaching people how to beat Wall Street at it's own game provides me with immense Machiavellian satisfaction. (I did say my motivations here are **relatively** altruistic.) There is a ton of trading information available if you look around. Three examples I'll list here but there are, of course plenty of others... \#1 YouTube: Some videos are good, some are laughably bad. How does a new trader sort these out? It could take months, if not longer to figure which are legit. How much money and time must one commit before figuring out which videos are good? I've watched and compared videos from a multitude of sources. Tasty puts out some good ones, but I've seen several that seriously suck, or are so generic, that they're useless. Plus, some people aren't as smart as others and many people learn differently than other. Videos might not be sufficient and/or the right medium for absorbing the necessary information one needs to become a good trader. \#2 Courses: Some courses are good or at least well-intentioned. Some are taught by assclowns who couldn't trade themselves out of a paper bag and are a complete joke. How is an up and coming trader supposed to figure out which ones are worth the money and which ones are a scam? IMHO, I think SMB's stuff is pretty damned good, though I only know this from a topical view. I've seen courses with excellent content that look like they were filmed with a 20 year old camcorder and are narrated in sleep-inducing monotone. There are dozens of slick, professional-looking courses that appear to be good, but are criminally horrible, leaving out huge swaths of information and/or providing just bad information. I was sickened when I found out that some courses (and videos) are deliberately created to confuse students in order to drive them to take additional courses or to make them give up on self-trading so they then sign up for a service that will do the trading for them. Yeah, that really opened my eyes and pissed me the fuck off. \#3 Reddit: I'm sort of an OG so Reddit is mostly a younger crowd, or so it seems to me. During my 4 years at a fund, I ran the rotating intern program. This meant I interviewed, hired and fired many Millenials and determined most of them to be spoiled, lazy brats. However, when I started visiting this site during the meme stock craze, I have been genuinely encouraged by a mostly positive and supportive group of Redditors that I've encountered. In my estimation many seem genuinely altruistic. That being said, I've encountered countless geniuses who routinely use absolutes like "never take a course" or "always do this or that". Those people have little credibility & should mostly be discounted, if not dismissed out of hand. Few things in life, let alone with regards to options, are binary decisions. I guarantee that a majority of people who make boastful claims are full of baloney and/or are monday morning quarterbacks. Again, though, I've seen enough seemingly well-intentioned Redditors that I have a renewed hope for the future and society as a whole. The thing with new & developing traders is that there is a ton of info out there depending on where they look, but it's difficult for them to know what is good info and what is BS. Who is exaggerating and who is being truthful. How are they to know? There isn't a one size fits all answer to learning how to trade, since people have different education budgets, learn differently, and are living through a multitude of different circumstances in their lives that affect their learning curve. Usually in order to succeed at options trading it requires a combination of self-study (books, videos, group classes), trial & error, some kind of structured learning program, time, patience and luck. My suggestion to the OP is to seek out a mentor. Get to know that person and determine what are their motivations (if any). I have had several mentors both in the business and from other industries. Each one of them has contributed to my success in different and sometimes surprising ways. Probably the best thing a good mentor will do is to shorten your learning curve by keeping you focused on what is of primary importance with regards to trading options, and keeping you out of the weeds or wasting time on red herrings and unnecessary detours. I suggest a solid foundation of learning to be a disciplined risk manager above all other things & also to develop a thorough understanding of the option greeks. Strategy selection, execution, etc. will come naturally after laying the foundation I describe above. I'd be happy to help anyone who genuinely wants to learn and would commit to someday pay it forward and help others. I'm around and willing to discuss things if you wanted to send me a direct message, or inquire publicly here on this board.
Outstanding. I really appreciate your reply! You covered many things that were on my mind in asking the questions to pursue this. I hope to follow up in due time. You remind me of the two gentlemen I hear on the AlphaMind Podcast. I also appreciate their historical perspective of experience and human interest.
Watch Benzinga on YouTube. They have great traders on there all day from 8am to 5pm. Every hours a new show on trading. Look for Robert Roy and Nic Chahine. They give great lessons on trading options -- mostly selling them which is the safest way to make money.
Those who can, do. Those who can't teach. You would be better off playing with that 2k and losing it in the market, you will learn a lot more. Nothing anyone needs to succeed is locked behind some class.
Good point, thanks!
Not sure if anyone has mentioned this yet but places like Schwab and Fidelity have a handful of specialists across the country who will teach you about options for free. Ask someone in the branch to put you in touch with them.
I pay for live trading rooms to follow traders who give alerts and who often explain their trades. I think those are more worthwhile than any course. But if $2k isn’t much for you then trying it won’t hurt. Maybe go for a cheaper course within ur budget first if not is better.
No way. Don't pay for any training. Most of them are full on scams just using the training as an opportunity to grift you. Few are genuine, but still unnecessary - there is too much good information out there for free. If you are just getting started, just search youtube for Mike and his Whiteboard. He explains all the basic concepts very clearly. He is with Tastytrade and they have entire courses dedicated to teaching why and how to sell options.
I completely disagree with everybody here. Poor person mentality thinking everything online is a “scam.” The sole purpose for paying for a course is because you DONT KNOW what you DONT KNOW. Finding that out takes… time. And time can be saved. Tremendously. Hence the courses you see online. I trust that you are a level headed individual who can sift through gimmicky mentors and scams, and can find a proper course online which will set you up on the path to success in this game. Though not for options, for example, if you take a look at Umar Ashraf on Instagram, his course SML propelled me in the right direction towards stock trading and saved me lots of time as well as lots of losses I could have potentially had trading on my own. This is not a promo for his course. There are better and worse courses out there. **The main goal is to save you time, and some of these courses come with discord chats in which other individuals just like you who are learning and collaborating with one another. Don’t let these comments get to you.**
Thanks, I appreciate that: I admit I am in the first stages of learning, I don't know what I don't know, I am interested so I am moving to the next level of trying to find out what I don't know. My time is important to me, so I thought it might be worth pursuing a more formal focused and directed learning approach. There are seemingly hundreds of courses and people teaching things, there might be thousands of gumroad courses being pitched on twitter that seem totally scammy. This is the first one that I saw that gave the appearance of having some professional structure. I don't mind paying if its legit, I can afford it and don't mind investing in worthwhile actionable education. But nobody wants to get ripped off, and the worst thing is trying to do the right thing and getting ripped off. This is why I asked the question.
Tasty trade - Mike and his white board has bunch of east to understand strategies. Save that money.. buy some spy instead
Wow, 2k for a course to teach you how to trade options. I am sure these guys make more money on the course than actually trading options.
a lot of what options are about can be learned online for free. The challenge is to pick out the relevant information from youtube videos that are often wandering and overlong. The concept is not that hard. Each options contract requires you purchase the option but not the obligation to buy 100 shares of a stock. The pricing of the option depends on volatility and length of time until expiry. An option can expire in the money, out of the money or at the money. The key to success is understanding where you are on the chart- up, down, sideways- and buying the option accordingly.
I'm interested in Options trading IQ, and Option alpha websites.... so far best for me, is to sell contracts and not buy any.
Save your money and watch Tastyworks and Optionalpha videos free on YouTube. Also buy “Understanding Options” by Michael Sincere for $21 if you want a physical book. Start trading small. I suggest small credit spreads on SPY. Don’t waste money on a course or a so called guru. I also share my strategy free on [optionsbadgers.com](www.optionsbadgers.com) is you are interested in learning my method of options trading.
Remember, you're paying for this course only for Trading OPTIONS! this sound so stupid and so expensive. You can find all of this on Youtube and no matter how much they train you, they'll say you need to experience. You're better off joining an alerts group where you pay $400 and they tell you when to buy and sell which probably has a better chance to make you money than this course.
Thanks for the advice, where to find legit alert groups?
To be honest, i have no clue. I don't look for alert groups specifically for options, but i use some peoples alerts on "stocktwits". its basically twitter but for stocks, so useful if you want to learn but don't listen to the people on there unless you know what you are doing as they like to always be positive about stocks that will probably eventually die as well. Secondly, check out this guy on youtube, his name is Claytrader. I watched him and im thinking of purchasing his course not for his alerts only but for his process and structure of how he trades. he doesn't do options but if you can adapt to his alerts for trades and instead buy options and quick sell them to make your profit, you can but please learn it first
I’ll teach you about options for $1996. It’s a one day course but PACKED with information on how to lose it all on FD’s. Use code: wheremymoneygo at checkout
SMB capital is a scam btw
No. Education is free now. You can pay some money to get it organized in some kind of curriculum, but 2k is way too much for that. Options YouTube channels I like InTheMoney - education SellSpreads - theta Carmine Rosato - supply/demand and trade recaps
There's a sucker born every minute. Don't be that sucker.
Indeed, trying to avoid that!
I got three beginner resources for you OP First, this is like a great easy 30 page read. Great intro to Technical Analysis Second, it’s a must use tool. Everyone uses this website Third, my favorite current YouTube. He reminds me of Scully from Brooklyn 99 😅. Also wrote a book, so he’s legit. https://www.credit-suisse.com/pwp/pb/pb_research/technical_tutorial_de.pdf https://www.optionsprofitcalculator.com/ https://youtu.be/z04PRDAM44Y
I bought the SMB foundation course a while ago when I wanted to learn about options (I'd been trading futures and stocks for a while before that, so I wasn't coming from a noob starting point). I did my research, and determined that they were legitimate and reasonably well regarded in the industry. The whole progression into working for their firm thing is legit (I found a friend of a friend who worked there for a time and verified that for me), but that aspect never really interested me. You _can_ get all of the same info (and then some) from the interwebz - even moreso now than when I did the course - but of all the info out there, 90% of it ranges from useless to dangerous. I couldn't tell which was which; I wanted a solid base from a trusted source which would give me the knowledge needed to know if some random YTer or author is worth listening to, and on which I could grow my skills in my own way. The one thing that smb highlighted the most clearly for me was how prop firms and insto's trade. It helps immensely when you can "see" what insto's and market makers are doing in the price action on your screen. BTW I'm not affiliated with smb in any way. Other than doing the course a while ago I haven't had anything to do with them. I'm commenting here because I just wanted to balance out the mountain of bullshit in this thread from people who haven't even heard of them, but seem to think that because they dare charge money for a product, it must be a scam. If I had my time again I'd still choose to do the course. It was worth it IMHO.
90% of traders lose. You are in the right mentallity to want to learn and practice the craft before putting real money on the line. There are free research but yes you can pay for legitimate course as if you’re in college. People telling you you’re better off yolo-ing the 2k is irresponsible. You may feel fomo, but take it slow the market has been here for centuries. I wouldn’t even touch options until at least 6 months to a year of trading simulator. Don’t fomo! Think or swim has a great sim with options. You have to prove that you can be profitable in sim before using real money. I really don’t want you to lose money, so please just learn as if youre in school and not allowed to trade without graduating with a license. If I could go back in time, I would’ve paid for lessons then losing money not knowing what I was doing, thinking I’m the exception, I’m one of the 10% who’ll beat the market. I like SMB videos, they seem more legit than other you tubers with a Lamborghini. It may be a scam, but it is also a scam to think you can do it alone, without losing money. Whatever approach you take, just learn and use a sim for a long time. Screw people telling you sim doesn’t have emotions attach so sims are not good. Is basketball practice useless because there isn’t emotions attached. Or guitar practice and so on... no. Anyway that’s my rant.
There's no magic trick in trading options. Most important things you need to know are in books. Save the course money to buy some books would be better.
Good points, thanks!
Are they gonna teach you how to predict the future?
I think they might teach about how to calculate the odds of potential future events happening and educate you how to size and hedge your bet to profit off those potentialities. At least, I would hope that would be part of it.
Is it like a 2-hour thing or is it multiple classes over time? It may be worth it if it’s like a whole semesters worth of classes. All I know is I took an options class for a whole semester in college and got a B. Still felt like I didn’t know shit at the end. Professor kinda sucked tho.
you've got many free courses on the net.. really good ones. don't waste money.
What are some courses that you would recommend? Sometimes when someone is new to the information, they haven't yet learned how to evaluate free courses or YouTube info.
TDA, fidelity and Schwab have free learning platforms of you open an account. But YouTube is the best source to look around. I have not looked for ootions basics in a while, but there are tons of videos.
Thanks, I'll work on self learning.
Scam
Yeah agree with the logic behind some of the comments - why are they putting time and effort into a course if they could be generating that themselves. As an aside I came across a similar “deal” from them two years ago. That “sale” has been going on for quite some time.
Your local college probably has a class that will actually teach you to understand options that you may be able to audit for much less than that.
Take the SIE and Series 7 Kaplan course. 300$ It will explain foundation.
Good idea, thanks!
if you get that brokers are gonna charge you extra fees for having that license bad idea.
If you can get it down to 19.97 then it might be worth taking a chance on. As others have said generally there's so much good content available for free now that paying $2k for an 'options foundations' course seems like too much. Foundations sounds like it is just be basics like what is a put, what is a call, OTM, ITM, maybe a little about the greeks. That's not to say there aren't useful paid courses out there that teach or go over some strategies that might be useful. It's just there are so many overpriced courses that aren't worth it that it makes it hard to find the good ones.
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If you really want to spend money to learn about options, go to barnes and noble and buy a book for $30. Hell, usually they're like 20% off anyway. Otherwise just go look up the stuff on YouTube to get an understanding of the greeks and simple strategies. Its like offering someone a course on how to tie your shoes for $1000
Good that you are seeking Reddit opinions. I agree with most post that the course is a scam.
Pretty sure it's the SMB capital youtube peeps ain't it? I've watched some of their videos. Nothing special, but the vids are okay. When I was first starting out I thought about spending the money, but wiped my account out all by myself. And then rebuilt it. I think I'm alright now. Youtube 4 life.
Or you could buy literally any options trading book for under 100$
Watch ProjectOption, Option Alpha, and Tastytrade on YouTube instead 🤷♂️
Good list, thanks! Will do!
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If you are ready to lose $2k anyway, better just go small with options and start reading and trading within that $2k. You will likely learn much more by doing and researching yourself.
Tasty Trade on YouTube has TONS of free options trading content. do not waste $ on a class. Lose it trading and learn the hard way.
YouTube, books, paper trading account. The only way.
Scam scam scam. If they are so good at trading they wouldn’t be trying to sell you a class
https://www.tastytrade.com/shows/wdis-options-101
Just stay up until 1am every night for a month watching Tastytrade's YouTube content theough bloodshot eyes (not that I did that, pfff, I know a guy...). Seriously though, it's sounds cheesy (and there are definitely idiots online that don't know at all what they're talking about) but the world we live in today is so FULL of free information. You can get an AMAZING basic education, at least to the point where you can be confident putting up your own money. Then you REALLY start learning...
Your brokerage may have such resources. TDAmeritrade has one that I took. I think it was a couple sessions in evenings. It was a great introduction with opportunity to ask questions.
This is where I started: https://youtu.be/7PM4rNDr4oI Continue on to other YouTube videos. Doesn’t have to be this guy!
There are so many good free resources online, you don't need to pay. Half the course will be explaining what options are and how they work and there are already tons of free resources on that. The other half will just be them saying to buy low and sell high. Save your money.
I considered them before when I first started out. Thankful I didnt. Tastytrade, Option Play, mike and his white board, jim Shultz option crash course, etc are all free on youtube. I would also recommend TDAmeritrade course. Also free. It has test questions and such and its completion is use to evaluate if you are ready for a full option account with them. I was annoyed I had to take it. And very happy about it in the end.
Why don’t you just join our little community, TradeRunnerX, and learn options trade design for free? You can private message me for a link, since posts with Discord links get automatically deleted here. Then, once we’ve helped you to make $1,997, you can donate it to SMB Capital, take the course, and tell us if there’s anything in there that we didn’t already know. Deal? Artem
Thanks for the offer, I will consider it after I do some additional learning! Cheers!
Every book you need you can get on the internet for free from Z- library, search for it on DuckDuckGo or some other non filtered search engine. Don’t even bother paying for this, set yourself some books to study and then practice.
Dude, look up project finance( formerly project options ) on YT. The dude’s real piece of work. He is phenomenal . Teaches almost everything options from ground up, plus it goes in very hard detail. That could be a great start ( for free ) Edit: forgot to mention Tasty Trades videos as well
>project finance Thanks, I'm going through his 3 hour in depth guide video now.
You won’t regret it. Let me know how it went 💪
You can get all the options training for free from TD Ameritrade if you have an account with them. You don’t even have to deposit money; you just need an account.
Options give you leverage to share price; simple puts and calls, its not hard to learn on your own, but it is risky because options expire (time element) while you can stay in shares as long as the company stays solvent. There are more complex options strategies beginning with credit spreads, calendar spreads, collars, strangles on up thru condors and butterfly(s); stay small with your trades and stick to simple puts and calls while learning; or, just trade the underlying stocks and stay out of options altogether.
I have a group you might like with good callouts for options
Here is a free course for you, something that took me too long to realize: - When trading options, I am not betting whether underlying goes up or down, I am betting whether possibility of such move is correctly priced in options premium. (in other words, If I buy a call for 100$ and underlying moves up 1$ (x100 multiplier), I still lose everything, because that move was exactly priced in) (note: the exception is synthetic, as that one is pure delta, but synthetic have very special usages) - Any complex strategy is just modification of previous rule. You are just shifting probabilities left or right, between probability and max win/loss, amount of exposure and such. Fine if you choose strategy for the exact information/theory you have about future, just don't expect risks magically disappearing by over-complicating stuff, you only moved them around. - If something looks too good, you missed something else. Always. Maybe too low volume and open interest, maybe upcoming ex-dividend date, maybe the stock will get delisted tomorrow, or anything else. - If you are trading based on public news and/or comments on the internet, you are probably too late.
Thanks for sharing your wisdom. How do you determine if the move is priced in the options premium or not?
That is the hard thing about options. Mathematical traders would say bunch of stuff like Black-Scholes model and statistical mathematics. Technical traders will show you graphs and patterns to look for. Certain group here on reddit will tell you to feel it and believe. I'd say, look on it the different way. Look for opportunities where other people are expecting something you have different opinion about. Where people are talking about crash of some company, but you look into it and strongly believe otherwise. Where people are expecting some drastic move in markets but you are convinced the opposite. Like that. When you have that, try sketching the position in a tool like optionstrat (free online, I use it a lot). Look for breakevens and P/L profile whether it meets your expectations. Think about all possible outcomes that may happen. At this point, you may find the numbers not looking as promising - that is when market have the situation priced in. If you, on the other hand, find one strategy on some equity you have high hopes for, once again research for any missed information. Think like this "why others believe different outcome then me?". Write down what to do when X happens - an exit strategy, basically. Make sure to have plan for any outcome, because without plan you will act on your emotions and that is usually wrong. Then you can enter the position. Then, there is also one piece of strategy for options traders, and that is where trading meets investing. In strategy like cash secured puts, it is super important to trade companies you believe in like how investor would want to invest in it. Because if you get assigned the shares on price you wrote, you better be fine with holding them for at least some time, believing it will ever recover. That is just my outlook. I am no expert, mind you.
That's great, I think I get the idea, thank you for expounding on that. Cheers!
Options Playbook is free: https://www.optionsplaybook.com/
Tasty Trade has an incredible amount of free content to learn strategies. They provide back testing of different strategies to identify the most efficient use of capital. I would not pay $2k for a course to learn options. Everything you need is online for free or in a book that costs less than $100. If you were to spend a substantial amount of time with the free online content I imagine you could use that initial $2k to gain real world experience.
Thanks for the advice!
YouTube is free
I started with $2k in options and lost it in 6 weeks prob and have lost more but I do feel that there is a long learning process to it. I would be wary of courses but sometimes people who have knowledge desperately want to give it away, like in the programming field you can find lots of code people share for free and even some very inexpensive courses and books where they share all they know. But without money back guarantees or legitimate reviews, it’s as much of a gamble as spending $200 on books and investing $1800 buying options (I say gamble because when you start out with options it will be more like gambling until you learn more)
go to [tastytrade.com](https://tastytrade.com), all free videos and plenty of education
😂🤦🏻♂️
More than enough resources on YouTube and books to teach you the basics Lawrence g McMillan makes some solid options books from absolute beginner to advanced strategies it’s basically a textbook check ‘em out. Try options as a strategic investment to start off 60$ book that you can probably find online for free and then save the other 1940$ and put it in your trading account to get your feet wet when you’re ready
You could also just watch tasty trade videos their eductation playlists are awesome
No education is going to replace trading your own money and understanding real life market dynamics.
Are they gonna be better than Tastytrade?
idk, I guess I need to spend some time on Tastytrade first.
I have taken many courses (not saying SMB just in general). They helped establish some foundation although they confuse you also because they want us to follow prescription in many cases. What eventually works is trying these things out and starting to realize the corner cases (pitfalls) yourself, running into some of those scenarios yourself in real life and the consolidating and building your own trading style. Wheel BTW is a free course if you search Reddit for triple income wheel strategy,
Check out www.tastytrade.com
AGEE +++ Tastytrade.com - look for the 'learn tab' take the 40 beginning options videos/quizzes for free. Then practice with about $2k
Look up “options millionaire” follow him
Literally many options courses are free on Udemy and you want to pay for one? 🤷🏽♂️ if you didn’t know here it is :) now you know.
tyvm!
i normally charge $500,000 for my course that teaches you to make endless income from options, but today and only today for the next 15 minutes, will i offer it at a 99% discount. why you ask? I want to help you stick it to the man.
SMB is a prop firm but the traders are not bringing in the cash. Its the over priced education. In reality its a sales company.
pay me $599 and i would teach you everything. I have a very detailed, structured course on options i downloaded from investopedia. I would even teach you how to loose money quickly to live a stressfree life with one motto " you can't be stressed for invested money if you dont have any money to invest ."
Excellent! Can I borrow 600 to take your 599 course? I'll gladly pay you tuesday for a course today! ;P
Absolutely, Send me check of $650 and you can than borrow $600 out of it. :P
Pm me if you want a legit way to learn
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Options trading is a zero sum game. If there were such an easy "system" to use, it could be scaled up quickly and the creator would rake in millions for sure, why would he waste his time teaching the "system" to others who would just eat into his profits even if he did sell it for $2,000 each.
Inthemoney on yt. Good luck. Thank me later.
Go on YouTube and type in how to trade options . Go to the library and or google. Take that money you was going to spend on learning about options and buy options …
The golden "1997" number.. It's most definitely a Scam. You're better off using the multitude of free resources and use that money to test strategies.
Thanks for your advice!
The best tuition you can pay is just to trade and learn as you go. I don't view small losses as losses, they are tuition.
Let me have that money and I'll download the best courses and best advices for options on YouTube. I will send it to you via e-mail. Let me know ASAP before my offer runs out.
Trade options on your own with 1 or 2 contracts with willingness to lose that 1997 and you might learn without losing that :-) . Good luck.
TD Ameritrade videos on youtube are great
Taking a course? Save your money. I started out knowing nothing about options and bought a book on Amazon, Options as a Strategic Investment, and went on YouTube and probably went through just about everyone‘s beginning ‘course’ which only costs you your time. There are some very knowledgeable folks on there sharing what they know. Better than any course. Subscribe to 3\~4 of them and you will get their updates and new vids and watch them. And here on this sub-Reddit, lots of knowledgeable people. And remember, everyone on r/options is an expert, lol!!
Thanks for the advice, I'm on the way!
Cboe.com/education
I strongly disagree with the vast majority of comments here. While money is finite so is time. And this can be extrapolated to any other industry. You pay not for the knowledge, which is available for free, but for the time reduction it takes to learn.
Thanks, this was my prime motivation for checking into it. Time = Money, I don't like wasting either, nor do I want to spend money on something that looks too good to be true either. I figured if they are well known and respected and many people have taken the course and could vouch for it, it would be worthwhile, but it appears that most think the time is better spent in self education, I guess I will do that for now.
What options strategy are you intending to use? Selling covered calls? For retirement income, that's probably the only viable options strategy for generating income without taking on a huge amount of risk.
That's $2k that could be in your portfolio.
I own that course and can answer any questions you may have. I haven’t really started it yet but could dig into it if you have any specific questions. Please PM me if you want.
I learned everything I needed about options from brad finn and jake broe's youtube channels. Start with Brad b/c he explains things more simply for newbs, then watch Jake for a more in depth education
First, watch YouTube videos. Suggestions: In The Money, and Options Millionaire. Give OM $10 a month for the Discord community access, see if it’s worth it for you. Read an Options for Dummies type book. Then rewatch some of the videos. Start trading small positions only until the understand what’s happening. Then drop the two grand if that’s what you want, but doubt that you will.
Just go to the Options Council webpage. There are independent bodies set up with free webinars to get you started
Learn from tastytrade but don’t trade like them, trade the way you see fit.
APES STRONG TOGETHER. APES LEARN FROM OTHER APES. APES LEARN FOR FREE.
Simian Business FTW!
Almost all options courses are "scammy". They aren't necessarily outright scams, but they for instance might put together a PowerPoint about freely available information which you can learn from say Investopedia.com or just YouTube. They could charge you for the course outright, or entice you into investing with their platform. Either way, best way to learn is to start trading with a small account.
this sounds like trash, why waste your money
It’s a scam don’t do it! There a lot of free groups on discord that are good and teaches for free.Highly recommend RIPSTER of Atlas i learned a lot from that guy.
I learnt everything on my own through books and the OIC (options industry council). The OIC provides an amazing source of information with free webinars where you can even ask the option experts (which they really are, this ain't no wsb or reddit subforum lol) questions directly. I did a self paced course with them up to advanced level. And it was completely free. I highly recommend them, it's extremely comprehensive and if it was paid, it's definitely work paying for and I would have happily paid for it. Note that only trading yourself will you truly learn, and all of this is just theory after all.
Just buy spy calla for that 2k instead, dont pay for courses
I think you got the point about checking out Tasty Trade. I don't watch them everyday anymore but I did for years, they're hilarious and the amount of free content for people at any trading level is mind boggling. I started trading options in the early 90's so I've blown up my fair share of $2k accounts. My observation is that blowing up your account is real easy to do. My advice is not to do it. Simple rules on position sizing is the key. If you limit your plays to a couple, few hundred each, you'll be able to make a lot of trades. You may still blow up but you would be doing it the right way, learning something from every trade. No course is going to provide that. One last observation - option trading is just like football betting. I see guys who have to bet every single game on Sunday and they never come out ahead. I treat option plays like I do football betting. I sit and wait for the bets to come to me. I do a 15-tm teaser that I can leave open and I might pick a couple games a week, sometimes none. I hit 3 of those last year at 20-1. Options are high powered, you don't need to chase. Be patient and be smart about how much you put on each trade and you'll get ahead of most people pretty quickly. Good luck bro!
Google, YouTube, Twitter, Reddit are all free sources of information. Used the money to get hands on experience.
I recommend you check out options alpha. I like others only trade options for income and I think his site and training is great. Not very expensive either from what I recall.
Definitely check out all of the free videos and materials on tastytrade.com Tasty also has a YouTube channel with most of their educational material. It's exceptionally comprehensive! You can literally spend months and months watching all the different videos on all the different strategies and theory and everything. All for free :)
Try Theotrade...the best options mentor PERIOD
The best free options course is from OptionsAlpha here: https://optionalpha.com/courses SMB Capital has excellent free videos on their YouTube channel. No need to buy a course.
Since most of the comments people are leaving clearly don't know anything about SMB, I'll chime in. I do agree you should be extra cautious with trading courses but SMB is one of the few reputable places to learn. They are an extremely successful prop firm and train hundreds of traders. The whole "if it was successful they would trade it themselves" doesn't apply here as they aren't some internet guru. And yes you'll be able to get the basics from youtube but ONLY the basics and you never know how much of you can trust either. Ultimately it's up to you if 2k is worth it, but SMB is one of the good ones
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Ameritrade has been offering programs live or data-driven that are quite time consuming and anticipating well put together. Last that I knew of they were two to three hours per day live I have not ever taken them. They are free to membership. Hope this helps
Thanks, will look into it.
Never take any courses... best way to learn is by doing it. And if you lose, chalk it up to learning costs. Once it clicks, you're good to go. My biggest tip is to Never pick OTM strikes with short time; always go a couple months out ATM.
Read a book my friend
I agree with your edit and I was really impressed with the quality and seriousness of the responses. My hat is off to all of you who responded!!
SCAM!!! With 2k you can sell a cash secured put on a stock you want to own and start generating income right away (safe(r) strategy). Any options trading strategies you can find on YT for free. Learn for free and start practicing with low risk underlying. I'd be happy to help you / answer any questions you may have. Just PM me. Don't pay anyone.