The Bible of Options Strategies: The Definitive Guide for Practical Trading Strategies [Hardcover]

Guy Cohen (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: April 17, 2005 | ISBN-10: 0131710664 | ISBN-13: 978-0131710665

"Guy Cohen is the master when it comes to taming the complexities of options. From buying calls and puts to iron butterflies and condors, Guy explains these strategies in a clear and concise manner that options traders of any level can understand. His chapter on options and taxes is especially welcomed (and needed). The Bible of Options Strategies is a straightforward, easy-to-use reference work that should occupy a space on any options trader's bookshelf."
–Bernie Schaeffer, Chairman and CEO, Schaeffer's Investment Research, Inc.

"The author delivers clarity, insight and perception making learning about options a joy, and practicing the art of making money that much easier: truly a bible from a guru."
–Alpesh B. Patel, Author and Financial Times Columnist

"Guy Cohen truly makes learning about options easy in this fact-filled guide. Bullet points make for a quick and enlightened read, getting to the heart of what you really need to know about each options strategy. This book is a must for any serious trader's library."
–Price Headley, Founder, BigTrends.com

Pick the right options strategies...implement them step-by-step...maximize your profits!

Introducing today's first and only comprehensive reference to contemporary options trading!

OptionEasy creator Guy Cohen identifies today's popular strategies...and tells you exactly how and when to use each one and what hazards to look out for! It's all here....

• Basic Strategies including

  Buying and shorting shares, calls, and puts.

• Income Strategies including

  Covered Call, Naked Put, Bull Put Spread, Bear Call Spread, Long Iron Butterfly, Long Iron Condor, Calendar Call, Diagonal Call...

• Vertical Spreads including

  Bull Call Spread, Bull Put Spread, Bear Call Spread, Bear Put Spread, Ladders...

• Volatility Strategies including

  Straddle, Strangle, Guts, Short Butterflies, Short Condors...

• Sideways Strategies including

  Short Straddle, Short Strangle, Short Guts, Long Butterflies, Long Condors...

• Leveraged Strategies including

  Call Ratio Backspread, Put Ratio Backspread, Ratio Spreads...

• Synthetic Strategies including

  Collar, Synthetic Call, Synthetic Put, Synthetic Straddles, Synthetic Futures, Combos, Box Spread...

...and many more strategies...

Plus essential tax-saving information, and more!

• No other book presents this much authoritative, current information on options trading strategies

• Covers all of today's best income, volatility, leveraged, synthetic, and sideways market strategies

• Discover why each strategy works, when it's appropriate, and how to use it—step by step

• Includes a full chapter on tax issues associated with options strategies

• By Guy Cohen, whose OptionEasy application has helped thousands of traders achieve breakthrough results!

The Bible of Options Strategies is the definitive reference to contemporary options trading: the one book you need by your side whenever you trade.

Options expert Guy Cohen systematically presents today's most effective strategies for trading options: how and why they work, when they're appropriate, when they're inappropriate, and how to use each one responsibly and with confidence. The only reference of its kind, this book will help you identify and implement the optimal strategy for every opportunity, trading environment, and goal.

© Copyright Pearson Education. All rights reserved.

Editorial Reviews

Review

" Guy Cohen is the master when it comes to taming the complexities of options. From buying calls and puts to iron butterflies and condors, Guy explains these strategies in a clear and concise manner that options traders of any level can understand. His chapter on options and taxes is especially welcomed (and needed). The Bible of Options Strategies is a straightforward, easy-to-use reference work that should occupy a space on any options trader’s bookshelf. "

--Bernie Schaeffer, Chairman and CEO, Schaeffer’s Investment Research, Inc.

 

"The author delivers clarity, insight and perception making learning about options a joy, and practicing the art of making money that much easier: truly a bible from a guru."
–Alpesh B. Patel, Author and Financial Times Columnist

 

"Guy Cohen truly makes learning about options easy in this fact-filled guide. Bullet points make for a quick and enlightened read, getting to the heart of what you really need to know about each options strategy. This book is a must for any serious trader's library."
–Price Headley, Founder, BigTrends.com

 

 

About the Author

Guy Cohen is the author of the best-selling trading books: Options Made Easy and The Bible of Options Strategies.  He has extensive experience in the options and stock markets and his clients include NYSE Euronext, the largest stock exchange in the world. Guy is also the creator of trading products Flag-Trader, OptionEasy, and Illuminati-Trader.  Specializing in trading applications Guy has developed comprehensive trading and training models, all expressly designed for maximum user-friendliness. An entertaining speaker, Guy has an MBA (Finance) from City University Cass Business School, London.

© Copyright Pearson Education. All rights reserved.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

chapter one of Bible of Options Strategies [PDF]

• Hardcover: 400 pages
• Publisher: FT Press (April 17, 2005)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0131710664
• ISBN-13: 978-0131710665
• Product Dimensions: 9.5 x 7.2 x 1.2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.8 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.4 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (64 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #34,496 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

A true innovator, Guy Cohen is the creator and originator of Flag-Trader, The OVI Index, Illuminati-Trader and OptionEasy. He is the author of the best selling trading books "Options Made Easy", "The Bible of Options Strategies" and "Volatile Markets Made Easy" (FT Prentice Hall) and has extensive experience of derivatives and stock markets.

Guy's specialism is in stock market trading and he has created numerous online applications for stocks and options traders, with his hallmark being his user-friendly approach and liberal use of illustrations. His clients include NYSE Euronext, the largest stock exchange in the world and FT Prentice Hall.

Guy is also the author of "Your Gut Feeling", which details his complete recovery from a severe case of ulcerative colitis, how he has helped others, and how anyone else can duplicate his method.

An established and entertaining speaker, Guy has an MBA (Finance) from City University (Cass) Business School, London.

For more information about Guy's trading products go to http://www.privatetradersclub.com.

For more information about "Your Gut Feeling" go to http://www.yourgutfeeling.com.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

92 of 95 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Definitely a reference book, not a manual, April 12, 2007

By 

Bryan Cass "Bee Ry Boogy" (Victor, NY USA) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)    (REAL NAME)   

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: The Bible of Options Strategies: The Definitive Guide for Practical Trading Strategies (Hardcover)

Guy Cohen lays out just about every option strategy that you could make work, given the right market conditions and your tolerance for risk. I would certainly put this book in the "Reference Book" category -- something that you would take out on occasion to answer a query about how a certain trade is placed or when it's a good strategy to use.

I started out with the intent of reading it from cover to cover. But I have to admit that I ended up skipping a lot of the material after reading the first 100 pages or so because it gets somewhat repetitious. So this indeed makes a good reference book, say, when you hear someone mention a "Long Put Condor" and wonder what it is. Or if you forget what market conditions (volatile, neutral, etc) would be required for a Bear Call Spread to work well. Also, I do appreciate Guy's organization of strategies by Risk/Reward, Direction, Volatility, etc. That makes it easy to get a short list of strategies given your own trading style and the market conditions.

What I found missing that I wish was there is information like how far from Option Expiry should this strategy be placed, what is an optimum range of IV for the underlying stock for each type of strategy, when should the strategy be repaired or exited? How do you repair it, or leg in or out successfully?

Also, I still do not understand what the little charts mean at the end of each strategy. I understand that they represent some kind of profile for each of the greeks, but there's no scale or indicators on the axes, nor can I find an explanation of what the dotted, dashed and solid lines mean. Maybe it's just me, since I've only been trading options for about a year now. If you're an experienced option trader, you'll probably know what they mean.

68 of 75 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Systematic Options Coverage, August 25, 2005

By 

Craig L. Howe "The Pointed Pundit" (Darien, CT United States) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The Bible of Options Strategies: The Definitive Guide for Practical Trading Strategies (Hardcover)

Options trader Guy Cohen has captured the beauty of options as a flexible trading vehicle with this book.

He reduces more than 60 options strategies strategy into five key areas:

1. Income strategies
2. Volatility strategies
3. Sideways market strategies
4. Leveraged strategies
5. Synthetic strategies.

Even the newest trader will find his insightful explanations of the most complex strategies clear and concise. This would be the book to have by your side if you were looking for a definitive guide to contemporary options trading if it were not so poorly edited. The mistakes distract from what would be a masterpiece on options trading.

18 of 18 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Options Reference, December 2, 2008

By 

Maxim Masiutin (Chisinau, Republic of Moldova) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The Bible of Options Strategies: The Definitive Guide for Practical Trading Strategies (Hardcover)

This hardcover should not be your first reading about options. It assumes that you are already familiar with options trading, and just want a reference book at hand.

For each strategy, e.g. "Short Iron Butterfly", there is a description, context (outlook, rationale, net position, effect of time decay, appropriate time period to trade, ways of selecting the stock and options), risk profile, Greeks, advantages and disadvantages, ways of exiting the trade, and an example.

However, the ways to select an option are not always adequately covered. For example, in the "short (naked) put" strategy, the author simply writes "Give yourself as little time to be wrong". The concept of Annualized Premium is not covered, there is no method given to select the best option from different strike prices and expiration dates. 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.

You may keep this book as a quick reference, but if you didn't read anything about options yet, I have some recommendations. If you are not quite familiar with the stock market, I would suggest "The Options Course" by George Fontanills and Richard Cawood. If you did buy stocks already, then skim through Trading Options For Dummies by George A. Fontanills; or Options Made Easy by the same author as of the reviewed book.