150 of 154 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
excellent tutorial for investment using options, February 11, 2000
Options are a very powerful tool in investing. Any stock investor is running half blind if they do not consider using options as part of there investment strategy
This book is a great place to start for anyone who wants to have an understanding of what options are and how they can be used as both speculative and conservative investment tools.
The author provides a very through tutorial on what options are, what they are used for and how you can used them in your investment strategy. Many examples are presented to insure that each topic is fully understood. In fact there are so many examples that you may want to skip one here and there after you already understand the subject described. However, these examples are great in illustrating the various topics presented.
The book will be useful for both beginners and more advanced users who wish to know more about the various techniques used in options trading. Having said that, if you are a very experienced options investor who is looking for complex strategies, you would probably be better of with a more advanced book.
The ideal reader of this book would be a person who has been doing some stock trading and is now ready to move to more complex (and potentially rewarding) options based trading.
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63 of 63 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
Fair but Not the Best, October 11, 2004
This review is from: Getting Started in Options, Fifth Edition (Paperback)
Explaining options from the ground up is hard, and Thomsett gets most of the particulars right... but the book itself is not well designed, making it harder to read than need be. Since no beginning options book is perfect, this one is worth buying. No matter where you start, you'll need to read more than one book.
Getting Started in Options does have some very strong points for beginners... presenting the results of a complex trade in a table format (if the stock goes to $40, you make $X; if it goes to $45, you make $X...) instead of the usual cryptic risk profile graphic is good. On the other hand, there's peculiar misinformation such as the claim that the "striking price" (read strike price) is always divisible by 5. Not true, options come at 7.50, 12.50, 17.50 etc. strikes. And then there are the weird post-split prices. The major points are OK, though.
However, the reviewer below, who complained that she (he?) stopped reading when Thomsett told her that if she bought a put she wanted the stock to fall, which outraged her, was completely off base. She needs to read this book again, or another. Puts have multiple roles, and Thomsett give several uses. Thomsett started with the simplest case, trading puts. You certainly do want the stock to drop when you buy a put in that case. But if you owned the stock or similar stocks before buying the put,that's a different purpose with a different objective. That's a hedge, which is an insurance move, and the reviewer is right... we usually don't want to collect insurance.
But this is the kind of mistake that can happen when reading this book, and it is more the publisher's fault than the author's. It's a case of very poor design and somewhat tatty organization. Wiley is an indifferent publisher... if a manuscript comes in strong, OK, but if the author needs a professional editor, Wiley's not the place to find one. In this book, some key points will sail right by the beginner, others are hard to find. I have the third edition, which even has barely readable light green type.
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25 of 25 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Start here if you are new to options or to review the basics, September 17, 1999
I love the "Getting Started" series on Options, Stocks and Online Investing. Getting Started with Options led me through the basics of learning about Options and with the information I was able to do my first Option trades. I made a little money and lost a little money - but I felt as though I had basic knowledge to work with. One would still need to learn more to successfully trade options ~ but this is definately the place for a beginner to start. I highly recommend it!!
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