Options for the Stock Investor: How to Use Options to Enhance and Protect Returns [Hardcover]

James Bittman (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: May 18, 2005

McGraw-Hill’s classic options bestseller, Options for the Stock Investor, has been updated to reflect changes in the options market. This extensively revised second edition features all-new material describing electronic trading, decimalization, and single stock futures, along with increasingly popular vehicles such as stock indexes, LEAPs, and exchangetraded funds. The CD-ROM contains all-new OP-EVAL II software, which eliminates guesswork while providing handson information on spreads, position Greeks, and “what-if” forecasting and graphing features.

Editorial Reviews

From the Back Cover

[BACK COVER] [CATEGORY] Investing [CORNER CUT/READING LINE] Includes powerful Op-Eval4™ option analysis software [HEAD] Praise for the 1st Edition:

“The thoroughness of the coverage makes this exceptionally valuable reading for the … investor who’d like to add some sophistication in establishing and managing his stock holdings by using options.”

--Technical Analysis of Stocks and Commodities

[HEAD]

Straightforward option strategies that reduce your risk and increase your profit potential in virtually any investing or trading program

Options for the Stock Investor, Second Edition introduces you to the many ways you can use options to generate guaranteed cash flow, lower the cost basis of your stocks, increase your trading leverage and profit potential, and more.

Updated from its bestselling first edition to provide you with new option techniques and strategies, this comprehensive handbook explores:

• Risk-reduction strategies for conservative investors, including buying calls and covered writing
• Profit-generating strategies for aggressive traders, including vertical spreads, straddles, and strangles
• Flexible strategies for improving your risk/return profile, including covered straddles, covered combos and ratio spreads

Options for the Stock Investor, Second Edition details how investors can use options to effectively control the risk of holding stock positions, and outlines aggressive strategies traders can use to improve their leverage and profit potential.

[FLAP COPY]

Over the past decade, the best selling Options for the Stock Investor has shown thousands of stock investors how to use options to protect their portfolios from bad earnings reports, management miscues, and other unexpected events. Over that same period, scores of new trading rules and products have made options more viable and valuable for trades as well as investors.

Options for the Stock Investor, Second Edition, is updated and expanded to detail the many ways in which options can help you improve your investing performance over both the short- and long-term. Featuring a number of new strategies you can use to enhance your investment performance, whatever your investment style, this hands-on guide provides you with:

• Step-by-step explanations of what options are and how they work
• Detailed examples of option behavior in a wide variety of market environments
• Diagrams to help you visualize the profit or loss potential of every trade before you place it
• Insights into the psychological differences between investing and trading
• Examples of ratio spreads, and how they can be used as a “stock repair” for long positions or as a riskier, more high-profit, strategy for advanced traders
• Strategies for using options to improve the performance of exchange-traded funds, stock indexes, LEAPS, and other popular investment vehicles
---- ----- ----- [BOX]

Op-Eval4™ software, provided free with Options for the Stock Investor, allows you to apply option-pricing formulas to options on individual stocks and indexes, and options that are subject to both American-style and European-Style exercise. The features and capabilities of this program increase the transparency of each option trade you make, allowing you to analyze option prices, calculate theoretical option values, graph numerous option only and option/stock strategies, and more.

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An all-stock strategy has become far too uncertain for investors looking to improve stock market returns while protecting those returns, especially with the numerous risk-controlling tools that are available to those investors.

Options are the most versatile and valuable of those tools. Options for the Stock investor, 2nd Edition, shows you how to master the mechanics of options, develop realistic expectations of options behavior in virtually every type of market, and incorporate the protection and profit potential of options into your overall trading and investing program.

James Bittman is senior staff instructor at The Options Institute, the educational arm of the Chicago Board Options Exchange. He has been a successful options trader for more than two decades, and is the author of Trading Index Options, and Trading and Hedging with Agricultural Futures and Options and co-author of Options: Essential Concepts.

About the Author

James B. Bittman(Chicago, IL) is senior staff instructor at the Options Institute, the education arm of the Chicago Board Options Exchange, and the author of several influential books on options.

Product Details

• Hardcover: 256 pages
• Publisher: McGraw-Hill; 2 edition (May 18, 2005)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0071443045
• ISBN-13: 978-0071443043
• Product Dimensions: 9.1 x 6.2 x 1.4 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.4 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (4 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #115,795 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

7 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Straightforward - the finest attribute of this book, March 29, 2010

By 

Dennis R. Jugan (Johnstown, PA United States) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: Options for the Stock Investor: How to Use Options to Enhance and Protect Returns (Hardcover)

I recently added "Options for the Stock Investor" to my financial trading and investment library, hoping it would keep its promise describing it as logically written in a systematic and straightforward manner. I'm pleased to say it HASN'T DISAPPOINTED.

Unfortunately, this book hasn't received the attention it deserves among the many books devoted primarily to intermediate options traders/investors. I've always felt that options were explained in a much too "matter of fact" manner, where the most practical information is inadvertently ignored, obscured or non-existent.

Anyone trying to learn stock options is arguably bombarded by fearful information and disorganized, incomplete explanations. This short but concentrated book cuts through the many counterintuitive aspects and implicit contradictions involving stock options.

Beginners need only go to the Investopedia and similar sites on the internet to reinforce the Introduction and supplement their exposure to the language of options.

I've seen some of the worst. This book ranks highly among the best.

17 of 25 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars The Great Value of Properly Traded Options, December 6, 2005

By 

Alaric Meeus (Maryland) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Options for the Stock Investor: How to Use Options to Enhance and Protect Returns (Hardcover)

In the past I had lost money virtually every time I ventured into the option's market. Thanks to this book I now understand what I had been doing wrong. It completely opened my eyes. I now understand how the market works. More importantly, I now know how to use options to my advantage. I still don't score a hit every time, but since reading the book I have realized a substantial net profit.

0 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars comprehensive, easy to grasp concepts, September 12, 2010

By 

Randall R. Horadam "Randy" (New Braunfels,TX) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: Options for the Stock Investor: How to Use Options to Enhance and Protect Returns (Hardcover)

This book is a good place for a beginner to start. I have just started the book, however, like the fact the author is teaching new information with clear facts and examples.