Summaries and Customer Reviews are supplied by Amazon.com
Summary:
Use this invaluable tool to gain a competitive edge and avert bad investment decisions.
Well-known options strategist and instructor George Fontanills has updated his time-tested and bestselling book, The Options Course. The new edition improves and expands upon the original to help you avoid some common and costly options mistakes. The systematic, step-by-step approach, covers everything from basic concepts to sophisticated techniques and is designed for investors at all levels of experience.
Customer Reviews:
Average Customer Rating:
Options for the Very Beginners
Customer Rating:
This book is a very good start if you are not familiar with the stock and options market. It covers the initial things like how to select the broker, how to apply for a proper Options Trading Level at your brokerage firm, which kinds of orders exist (limit, market , etc). It is written in a very friendly manner, it is very easy to understand.
While the book is mostly devoted to teaching market novices about options, the author have decided to not focus on the fundamental analysis of the underlying securities (maybe due to the size constraints of the text). To fill this gap, I would recommend "The Only Three Questions That Count" by Ken Fisher in addition to this book.
If you are already familiar with a stock market, have a brokerage account, and just want to become familiar with options, I can recommend a shorter read by the same author: "Trading Options For Dummies". But if you have enough time for reading and is not frightened by large amounts of text, "The Options Course" is the best book for novices I've ever seen.
The only drawback of this book is that it does not address an important technique of selling put options as a way of buying the underlying security. Warren Buffett obtains most of his stock holdings through selling puts. He got most of his Coca-Cola Holdings this way, and, recently, Burlington Northern Santa Fe. If you are interested in this technique, you can find it in "Options as a Strategic Investment" by Lawrence McMillan, chapter 19, or there is a special book "Using Options to Buy Stocks" by Dennis Eisen.
Avg. at best.
Customer Rating:
Not great on information if you have more than a curosry understanding of options. I must admit, however, that many swear by this book--I just didn't get that much out of it. A better, albeit much less entertaining book, is Options as a Strategic Investment. Just be sure that you are purchasing the actual book and NOT the study guide.
Broad coverage, mostly good book
Customer Rating:
My background up until reading this book was a few years of mutual fund and stock trading in my personal portfolio, so my review is based on that. I had no previous options knowledge when reading the book.
I felt that George did a fairly decent job of covering a broad range of topics in this book (maybe too broad), from stock and option trading, to how to pick a broker. IMHO since it is attempting to be a fully-encompassing book, it should have covered tax implications and tax planning, maybe even the current tax laws to some extent. Somebody who is new to this and happens to do well financially w/a large sum of realized profits, or do badly and end up in the poor house, will be in for a not-so-nice surprise when they file their taxes.
The examples and rationale on options strategies were clear to me, though some of them necessitated a 2nd read until I could fully understand. One subject which he left me hanging on is implied volatility vs. statistical volatility (i.e. I was looking for some formulas and concrete examples on how to determine if a given option premium is underpriced or overpriced). Instead the book refers the reader to a premium website for that content (I assume there is a fee/subscription involved...self-promotion).
Practially, I have used some of the simpler options strategies, albeit in 1 or 2 options contracts at a time, and have found them to be useful. It is a completely different way of thinking, for example, to weed out the lousy companies and/or companies which are expected to face difficult circumstances in the future and to put a bearish trade in place. The drawback is, ATM and ITM options are not cheap realative to the stock price and each options contract is in a multiple of 100, so between any stock owned and the options contracts themselves, this is something needing a commitment of thousands of dollars (many thousands of dollars since you'd want to diversify your portfolio with a few holdings). You can quickly lose most/all the money you paid for the options contracts if you are not careful. I felt his historic examples of options plays in the stock market were optimistic ones in general...I wouldn't expect to have that much of a return on a regular basis. And personally I will never trade on margin or enter into trades with unlimited risk.
The main valuable thing that I have gotten out of this book is that options can be used as a means to manage risk, which is extremely important in a volatile stock market like what we have now.
Overall I learned quite a bit from this book, but it left me thirsting for how to value an option's premium as over/under valued and also very lacking on the tax implications.
The Options Course a great resource
Customer Rating:
If you intend to be a serious trader in the options market, this book is one of the "must reads." It has a basic approach to the subject matter yet delves into complex trading strategies in a way that is understandable to the novice trader. I recommend this book be studied along with "Option Volatility & Pricing" by Sheldon Natenberg.
this is crap
Customer Rating:
this is crap, after reading it you won't understand the first thing about options, some readers wrote or suggested that it is good for begginers, it's lie, get some decent books such as Hull's crap. Hull is considered by the way as an introduction!
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