OPTIONS TRADING COURSE

1. What Are Options?

What are options contracts? To a beginner, the world of options trading can be very complicated with a lot of moving parts. In fact, there are numerous terms to become aware of. However, if you focus too much on trying to learn exactly what every term means then your head might spin.

As a result, you might end up walking away from options all together. That’s why we tried to simplify things in our basic online options trading course compared to what you’ll find in other options trading courses. 

It’s important to focus on the big picture and the overall concept with options; rather than focusing too hard on what every single term means. In this case, each term is a piece that completes the overall puzzle but it’s more important to see how the big picture comes together when trading options. Hence, this is key with being successful with trading options!

The puzzle pieces will come together the more that you focus on the overall concept with options and get through learning all the options training terminology. In addition, taking our basic options course helps to bring it all together.  

2. Why Trade Options?

Why trade options? That's a question that many new traders ask. They seem so complicated, so why do it?

Well, there are several different reasons why people trade options. One is to hedge against existing positions in their portfolio. If your portfolio is mostly bullish and then the market turns bearish, many traders will take bearish options positions to hedge against the markets and capitalize without necessarily having to sell their current positions. Other tactics traders employ is to sell covered calls.

Another reason people trade options is for speculation. Many traders buy and sell options contracts purely for profit. They are good technical chartists, so they trade options contracts for profit. Trading options allows you the ability to profit whether the market is bullish, bearish, or trades sideways.

Credit spreads and iron condors are good strategies to employ when the markets are range bound. We will teach you those strategies in our advanced course.

3. Call V Puts

Calls and puts make up the basic components of an options contract. Calls mean that you believe that the stock is going up and puts mean that you believe the stock is going down. Obviously, you don't want to just guess the direction that a stock is going to move. Technical analysis plays an important role in determining the direct that an options contract is going to move. It's also risky to just buy naked calls and naked puts.

Credit spreads help take away a lot of risks that are associated with trading options. We teach you how to trade the different spread strategies in our second course.

How to Grow an Options Account

Options trading is a fantastic way to grow a small account. In fact, you can trade the large stocks without having to spend as much money. However, it's important to remember that there are more moving parts to an options profit and loss potential than a stock.

Hence the importance of taking our free options trading course for beginners. Therefore, you learn how to protect yourself using different techniques as well as grow a small account trading high priced stocks along with the smaller priced ones as well.

In fact, options trading is a great way to make money no matter what the market is doing. As a result, why options trading holds such an appeal to many traders. It's a very popular stock market trading technique. Take our advanced options training course above.

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1. Intrinsic Value V Extrinsic Value

Extrinsic value and intrinsic value play an important role in options basics. Intrinsic value is the in the money portion of an options contract. Extrinsic value aka time value is the difference between the price of an option (premium), and it's intrinsic value.

2. Strike Price: At the Money, in the Money, out of the Money

Options strike prices make up the price levels of an options contract. In the money contracts are the most expensive because they have a better shot of intrinsic value at expiration. Out of the money options contracts are the cheapest because they are less likely to expire in the money or have intrinsic value, which make them cheaper due to time decay or extrinsic value.​

3. Open Interest & Implied Volatility

Open interest is the amount of options contracts that are currently open and haven't closed yet. It's important to choose options contracts that have a high level of open interest, so you'll have liquidity. Volume also plays a critical role in the liquidity of an options contract.

Implied volatility (IV) and historical volatility (HV) are also very important terms to know with options contracts. IV measures the volatility of the underlying stock. It's the markets forecast of a potential move in a stocks price. Implied volatility plays an important role in the movement of an options contract.​

4. How to Read an Options Chain

Learning how to read an options chain will be very important when trading options. There are a lot of moving components to options contracts which take a bit of time to learn.

An options chain can seem intimidating at first. You'll see things like expiration dates, several different strike prices, weekly options contracts, monthly options contracts, probability ITM, probability OTM, price, mark, and net change. We will teach you these different options terms and show how to read them on an options chain.

5. Options Greeks: Delta, Theta, Gamma, Vega

Options greeks such as delta, theta, gamma, vega, and rho make up other critical components of an options contract. Option greeks seem a little bit complicated and take a bit of time to learn but their importance when trading options can't be understated.

Community

Trading can be lonely. You're sitting in front of a computer, many times by yourself. That's why having a good community can be a great resource for traders. In fact, it helps you feel a little less alone. As a result, the Bullish Bears have just such a community on Facebook.

It's a safe place where you can ask questions or just have that camaraderie of being with like minded traders. We do our best to keep trolls, spammers and pumpers out to make it a safe place for our community members. 

We have three trading rooms available to our members; a day trade, swing trade and future trading room. With options you can both day trade and swing trade so you can choose which trade room (or both) you want to participate in. It's a great place to practice what you learn from our basic online options trading course. 

​​​​Live Streaming

The Bullish Bears team also lives streams for a couple hours each morning in our trading room where they show different ways to trade options. In fact, we're all about giving a hand up and not a hand out within our trading service. We aren't a stock pumping service. As a result, you're in full control of your trading which is how it should be. Make sure to take our free options trading course before trading with real money.

If you want to rely on someone to tell you when to get in and our of a trade, you'll forever be chasing someone else's profit. Hence why we're big proponents on learning the tools you need to trade on your own. We have lots of free stock trading materials on our website. We will also be adding options trading classes at night for new members to be able to ask questions.

1. Practice Paper Trading Options

We offer a real-time stock alerts service to our community members. They are actionable trade alerts, which include entries and exits. We post these alerts on our private Twitter page. We are a diverse trading community and our mods post different types of trade alerts. Some are shorter term swing trades and others are more longer term. We trade only the best setups.

It's important to remember that the best traders in the world are successful on trades between 60-65% of the time, and that's why it's important to have proper risk management techniques in place. These strategies will be provided with our alerts, and we also teach them in our basic free options trading course as well as our trade room. 

Also, several times per week, we post stock watch lists with our trading alerts "setups" for our trading service community members. Again we're not a stock pumping service. Therefore, our alerts "setups" aren't like traditional alerts. Our "setups" are different from our real-time trade alert service. Make sure to read about our different alert services and how they work above. 

2. Daily Watch Lists & Trade Alerts

With our "setups" we give you a list of stocks to keep an eye on. These are stocks that we've mapped our support and resistance on as well as looked for patterns. Our trading alerts setups aren't buy signals however. They're just levels to pay attention to because again, remember, you're in control of your trading choices.

You decide whether you're going to take a trade if an alert setup fires off. Practice trading our watch lists after taking our online options trading course. Check out our stock picks service.

3. Watch Us Stream Live Each Day in Our Trading Room

Our YouTube channel has a stock watch lists playlist where you can watch us build the nightly list with alerts. In fact, there are thousands of hours of videos for you to look over if you want to see the psychology behind our picks as well as how we set our trade alerts.

Our swing trade watch list is made with options in mind. Therefore, each stock on there has the ability to trade options so keep that in mind when you're setting up your trading alerts for the following day.

When you're ready to take your trading to the "Next Level" we offer an upgraded video library that will help you go more in depth with options. Our "Next Level" Stock Training teaches you options the way that they were meant to be traded. We teach you the top techniques in our advanced options trading classes, including which strikes and expiration dates to buy.

Bookmark our swing trade watch list page:

Stock Watch Lists 

How do you make money trading options? Study, study, study! Looking to learn stock trading? Watch all of the videos in our free options trading course and other stock courses multiple times if needed. We also teach candlesticks patterns, day trading and swing trading in our free trading courses.