Get Rich With Options by Lee Lowell

This week's featured book on options trading:

Get Rich With Options: Four Winning Strategies Straight from the Exchange Floor
by Lee Lowell
Wiley (January 2007)

From the publisher: In order to survive and thrive in today's financial markets, you must seriously consider the use of options in your investment endeavors. Options allow you to reap the same benefits as an outright stock or commodity trade, but with less risk and less money on the line. The truth is, you can achieve everything with options that you would with stocks or commodities—at less cost—while gaining a much higher percentage return on your invested dollars.

After numerous years as a market maker in the trenches of the New York Mercantile Exchange, few analysts know how to make money trading options like author Lee Lowell. In this well-rounded resource, Lowell shows both stock and commodity option traders exactly what works and what doesn't.

Filled with in-depth insight and expert advice, Get Rich with Options provides you with the knowledge and strategies needed to achieve optimal results within the options market. It quickly covers the basics—how options are priced, strike price selection, the use of Delta, and using volatility to one's advantage—before moving on to the four options trading strategies that have helped Lowell profit in this arena time and again.

Forget straight puts and calls, the fact is that nearly 80 percent of those seemingly simple trades expire as worthless. Here, for the first time, Lowell explains the only four options trading strategies that actually work: buying deep-in-the-money call options, selling naked puts, selling option credit spreads, and selling covered calls. Using them decisively, he says, is the fastest route to riches in the options trading game.

In addition to outlining his winning options trading strategies, Lowell also shows you how to set up your own home business with the best options trading software, tools, and web sites.

Get Rich with Options is packed with real-life examples of actual trades and detailed discussions of how options can be used as a hedging, speculating, or income-producing tool. With this book as your guide, you'll begin to see options in a whole new light and learn how to become part of a small group of investors who consistently win. 

Also available: Get Rich with Options (Kindle edition). Learn more about the Amazon Kindle, a wireless reading device.

The Volatility Edge in Options Trading by Jeff Augen

This week's featured book on options trading:

The Volatility Edge in Options Trading
by Jeff Augen
FT Press (January 2008)

From the publisher: In The Volatility Edge in Options Trading, leading options trader Jeff Augen introduces breakthrough strategies for identifying subtle price distortions that arise from changes in market volatility. Drawing on more than a decade of never-before-published research, Augen provides new analytical techniques that every experienced options trader can use to study historical price changes, mitigate risk, limit market exposure, and structure mathematically sound high-return options positions. Augen bridges the gap between pricing theory mathematics and market realities, covering topics addressed in no other options trading book. He introduces new ways to exploit the rising volatility that precedes earnings releases; trade the monthly options expiration cycle; leverage put:call price parity disruptions; understand weekend and month-end effects on bid-ask spreads; and use options on the CBOE Volatility Index (VIX) as a portfolio hedge. Unlike conventional guides, The Volatility Edge in Options Trading doesn’t rely on oversimplified positional analyses: it fully reflects ongoing changes in the prices of underlying securities, market volatility, and time decay. What’s more, Augen shows how to build your own customized analytical toolset using low-cost desktop software and data sources: tools that can transform his state-of-the-art strategies into practical buy/sell guidance.

Understanding Options by Michael Sincere

This week's featured book on options trading:

Understanding Options
by Michael Sincere
McGraw-Hill (September 2006)

From the publisher: Written by Michael Sincere, the best-selling author of Understanding Stocks and other popular investing books, this down-to-earth guide employs short, concise chapters to explain what options are, the various types of options, how to trade options, how to avoid investing mistakes, beginning and advanced options strategies, and much more.

Understanding Options tells you in jargon-free language how options are income-producing tools; how options can be part of an overall investing plan; the relationship between options and stocks; the pros and cons of options, how personal computers have made options easier than ever to understand and use; and much more.

Options Made Easy: Your Guide to Profitable Trading by Guy Cohen

This week's featured book on options trading:

Options Made Easy: Your Guide to Profitable Trading
by Guy Cohen
FT Press (July 2005)

From the publisher: Options trading offers unparalleled opportunity for rapid profit, but most options guides are difficult to understand and even harder to use successfully. Not this one. Options Made Easy has earned a worldwide reputation for simplicity, clarity, and practical value. In this thoroughly revamped Second Edition, renowned options trader Guy Cohen delivers even more of what makes this book so valuable: better graphics for easy visual learning, updated hands-on examples that walk step by step through real trades, and the clearest plain-English explanations of trading techniques you'll find anywhere. Unlike its competitors, Options Made Easy, Second Edition shows you how to design your own trading plan for high probability trades and consistent profits, offering proven strategies you can begin using right now. Best of all, Cohen teaches through easy-to-understand charts and graphs, not complicated math! Coverage includes: filtering for moving stocks; selecting the right strategy for each situation; bull call and put spreads; covered calls; straddle/strangle; volatility and sideways strategies; trading and investing psychology; and much more. This edition also contains a completely revamped introduction to the Greeks-- the standard sensitivities to options risk characteristics that every trader must know.

Also available: Options Made Easy (Kindle edition). Learn more about the Amazon Kindle, a wireless reading device.