The Options Playbook by Brian Overby

This week's featured book on options trading:

The Options Playbook
by Brian Overby
TradeKing (September 2009)

From the publisher: The Options Playbook was created to demystify option trading and teach investors different option plays for all market conditions. No confusing jargon. No unnecessary mumbo-jumbo. Just clear, easy-to-understand explanations of more than 40 of the most popular option strategies broken down into a play-by-play format including:

• Play Name: Long Call, Short Call Spread, Iron Condor, etc.
• The Setup: The goals and reasons to run each play
• Who Should Run It: Rookies, Veterans or All-Stars, based on degree of difficulty
• When To Run It: Describes each play as bullish, bearish or neutral
• The Strategy: A detailed overview of each strategy, their risks and the specific costs associated with multi-leg strategies.

For the first-time option trader The Options Playbook features a "Rookie's Corner," addressing the basic definitions and concepts you need to understand this market, tips to avoid common beginner’s mistakes, and suggested strategies to "get your feet wet."

For more experienced option traders, an expanded section on implied volatility explains how this handy variable can be used to find the potential range of the stock over the options life. A detailed section on pricing variables (Greeks) helps you understand how an option’s price is affected by changes in market conditions. You will also learn how time decay and a change in implied volatility can affect your trade after it’s in place and how to recover if things don’t go according to plan.