I have several books on options, but this is the one book that I keep on using. Most option books spend too much time on how to price an option. Unless you are active in thinly traded options, the market will dictate the current market price. This book gets right into why you are interested in options. Each option situation is broken down so anybody with a basic understanding will understand. For each situation, he discusses the Greeks (the new hip way of talking about options), risks, pros and cons, as well as an example. The only subject this book seems to fall short is what to do when your position is not going your way and how to minimize your loss.

I have a coworker that is interested in options and this was the only book I suggested he read.

This is more a dictionary of options strategies than a regular book. But it organizes and explains each strategy well.

This book is a complete description of all option strategies. It is totally organized. Each strategy is described in exactly the same manner to facilitate comparsion of one strategy to another. It should be on any option player's bookshelf as a quick reference and guide.

If you need a reference to look up those obscure option trades, this is the book for you. The author does a great job of organizing the book by strategy, risk, style, volatility and other useful categories. You begin to see a trend with the types of trades presented and your investment style. This book was very useful in helping me determine what level of risk I am comfortable with for the type of trade desired. Studies suggest 80% of stock options expire worthless. This book will help you understand what it means to be on the other side of those trades - the one collecting the premium. The book does not use real life stock examples or show P&L from actual trades. I'd recommend Jeff Augen's book for a study on hedging and advanced option trading.

I bought this book for the princely sum of about $35 after reading parts of it in a library and using some of the ideas even before I bought the book.

I am a reasonably experienced (but conservative) option trader who now executes maybe 100 to 200 options trades a year and have traded options for about 15 years.

I found this book to be in an amazingly simple format with very concise descriptions of option strategies that have been so arcanely described in other works that I am really impressed.

I also added a couple of the described strategies to my repertoire which (whether through luck or experience or combination), returned about 50 times the cost of the book in the first month of trading alone. And much more since.

However, anyone who trades options should really understand the risks of option trading. Thankfully, this guide tells you which types of strategies have unlimited loss potential. Unfortunately and necessarily, it is up to the reader to exercise good judgment, understand the markets in general and do basic research in connection with evaluating trades.

Maybe because I am a speed reader I didn't note typos or editing errors that affected my evaluation of this tome.

Extremely detailed manual of options trading. This book has become one of my standard reference manuals for options trading strategies. Well written. This book is for traders who understand the basics and want to get into the more sophisticated options trading strategies used by the pros.

easy format. thorough information on every options strategy. i suggest reading an options trading overview book first. however, this is an excellent reference.

The only comprehensive book that lets you choose between several option strategies. The best book if you are about to form your system to be profitable in the options market. The best part is that it is written in a pattern. Once you understand the pattern in first two three pages of the book rest of the book follows the same pattern and saves a lot of time.

This book describes almost every imaginable strategy with options. It is very clear and provides the esentials . On the other side it does not discuss in great detail any of them. I think it is a good complementary tool: maybe the first book to look for when you want to analyze a new strategy.

A very very good book divided by kind of strategies: vol, direction, risk or reward capped or not A very good book for those who want learn a lot of options trading strategies.

it's good. There's lots of info in it and it's presented in a clear, consise way that is easily understood and implemented. By applying the strategies presented, I've already made enough money to retire RIGHT NOW and live a comfortable life in Beverly Hills!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

It is a very good reference book. Very concise but too little insights for it to be a guide.

This could be a great book, but with so many typos I can't give it a higher rating. Does anyone know what date the corrected version has?

I have bought 2 of Cohen's book. The Options made Easy and this. There are so many type of strategies but we only use a handful of them in our daily trading. My favors strategies are Long Call Spread, Long Put Spread, Covered Call, Protective Put and Long Condor as well as Buttery.

I read lots of article which is freely available in the Internet. All of them showed you how to enter a trade. But none of them is as complete as these 2 books. So much so about when to enter, how to create the strategies, the B/E point, the Greeks symbols and etc. But none of them show you enough how to exit a trade step by step in different scenarios! Yeah, including these 2 books as well.

For example in the Sideways Strategies. All I see are these "With This Strategy, you can simply unravel the spread by buying back the options you sold and selling the options you bought in the first place" or "Advanced traders may leg up and down or only partially unravel the spread as the underlying asset fluctuates up and down. In this way, the trader will be taking smaller incremental progits before the expiration of the trade"

I would prefer example a Long Call Condor with multiple scenarios :
ABCD is trading at $52.87 on May 17, 2004
Buy the June 2004 45 Strike call for $8.52
Sell the June 2004 50 Strike call at $4.82
Sell the June 2004 55 Strike call at 2.34
Buy the June 2004 60 Strike call for $0.98

Scenario A) If the underlying is trading at $53.80 at expiration I am getting my profit as planned. Should I wait till the position expire on the expiration date? Or should I close the 45/50 before expiration and let the 55/60 expire worthless? Or unravel the position just before the expiration? Show me the best option to get my max profit!

Scenario B) If the underlying is trading at $49.30 with 7 days to expire. Should I close the entire spread. Or should I close 1 and let the other expire worthless to mitigate my losses and hope it will move into profit for my remaining spread/leg.

Scenario C) If the underlying is trading at $56.20 with 7 days to expire. Should I close the entire spread. Or should I close 1 and let the other expire worthless to mitigate my losses and hope the price for the underlying will fall/up will mitigate loss with my remaining spread/leg.

It's obviously lot of scenarios and how the individual trader deal with the trades. But with different scenario provided with example, we can learn and create our own style of trading.

Everyone know how, when to jump in, but forget how, when, to exit to harness or mitigate your profit or losses. Well this book just not enough for you if you are intermediate and hope to be expert especially on the advance strategies.

The layout of these 2 books is much better and easy for the eyes compare to "Option Volatility & Pricing" from Sheldon Natenberg.

If you are new to option trading, this is a very good book. It explains all the different kinds of strategies and when to use them. Excellent book for an option trader to have in their library as a reference book.

This is a heavy duty options book but don't let this scare you off. The only prerequisite I would say you need is some basic options understanding/experience and you also need to be interested in learning more about options strategies. When I first got this book I thought "Wow! This reminds me of some of my economics text books from college." But I soon found this book to be well organized and chocked full of great information and far more interesting than any college text book.

I have to warn people that this is not a book to teach you the fundamentals of options trading. You need to have learned the basics already.

I won't go into all the details of what this book covers since many other posts have done that. But I do want to say I really like this book. It has now taken up permanent residence on my desk because I use it so much.

I really enjoyed this book and continue to do so. As others have commented, it's not a cover-to-cover type of book, but I can reference any strategy so easily and get the salient information I need at the flick of a page.

I've also got the author's other book (Options Made Easy) and there's something different about the way he explains the subject of options that I previously found much more difficult and now find remarkably easy. Great book.

This book is an excellent reference book for options traders, novice and experts. It describes in great detail most of the strategies for trading options. I like the structure and the organization of the book. It helps easily locate a stragety based on several criteria, like your trading expertice or your perception of where the underlying stock is going.

I'm dissapointed at the amount of errors in the book. I've only read 2 chapters so far and have found, not only mispelled words, but errors related to the description of the strategy, risk and reward calculations and inverted names (call instead of put, for example).

If not for the errors, I would have given 5 stars to the book.

A large volume that covers just about anything you want to know about charting. I was most interested in Elliott Wave info and it has a good section about EW. For the options trader, this is the book to study.

I meet Guy during SF Money Show,it was a good experience.

One thing that i notice from most of options book, they are all talking the same thing, mostly strategy description, including this book. What i want from this book is more explanation towards when and how to the strategy should be applied when fundamental, TA and sentiment comes to picture.

I did learn a lot of reading this book. I have read a number of options book but what I liked the most about this book was the method that it used to cover the option strategies by grouping them. Also by covering the variables for each option strategy in the same manner.

I use the data in this book in another manner as well. Often different groups UBS etc ask me to invest in some product that they have developed. I graph the the possible results and then compare that graph to the graphs at the back of this book to find the closest option strategy. I then read up on that strategy establishing where it works best, worst etc. This often gives me some insight as to where if any the product might fit into my investemnt portfolio. This is not the only selection criteria but it helps.

This book is an excellent reference source, that describes the different strategies based upon your outlook (Bullish, Bearish, Neutral), the implied volatility, as well as your experience level. Although I have over a decade's experience in utilizing options in my portfolio, I am still at best, an advanced novice when it comes to entering and executing spread/hedging strategies.
I highly recommend this book. Buy it and keep it in your library. You WILL keep referring back to it. For a more theoretical options overview, I recommend Sheldon Natenberg's book Option Volatility & Pricing: Advanced Trading Strategies and Techniques.

I love this book. I take it everywhere and use it everyday as reference.

I think the title is very appropriate. There is no other definitive, dictionary-like book about options like this one.

Great instant reference guide to options. Shows which options to start with and explains all the information about each strategy. Very difficult to find such a book with all the bits and pieces included. Excellent

A must on your shelf. If your interested in the ins and outs of options this is a great book to have handy. My advise get it use it.

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.

I bought this book along with the author's other book and I have to say they work great in tandem together. This one is more of a reference dip-in-and-out type of book, which is ideal for sitting on my desk ready for evaluating a particular strategy in quick time. A liberal use of graphics and pictures will ensure that this book will be right up your street.

I bought this book along with the author's other book and I have to say they work great in tandem together. This one is more of a reference dip-in-and-out type of book, which is ideal for sitting on my desk ready for evaluating a particular strategy in quick time. A liberal use of graphics and pictures will ensure that this book will be right up your street.

I am very pleased that I purchased this book.I can see this book helping me in the long term as well as the short term.It has all the basic stategies as well as the advanced.It should be a welcome addition to anyone learning to trade options.The best part, now the book is on sale I purchased in Jan.at a different price.But it still is a very good buy at any price.

This book is an outstanding resource for both bginners and novices. There are so may examples and strategies that it is clearly a true resource that will be used over and over again. This book has the unique ability of TEACHNG the beginners the risks, rewards, and "How To's" which I wish all the books I have purchased had provided. My copy is now two years old and looks like an old rag because of the references I use it for. If anyone is thinking of trading oprions, this book should be required reading.

Don't spend your time looking for a better tool. This one will have 90% of the answers you will need to understand option strategies, terms, and risk reward charting.

The perfect How, when & Why of defineing option strategies. A very easy to read and understand the many different option stategies. This is a permanent desk top reference. A must have for the serious option trader.

This book provides exactly what every casual to semi-professional options trader needs. If you want to know all of the various options trading strategies and when/how to employ them, this book is for you.

It is especially good for folks that need a quick refresher every now and again as to the risk profile and appropriate timing of specific trade strategies.

I've read and reviewed many books about options on my web site. Guy's writing and organization is tops.

The Bible of Options Strategies is a tremendous resource. Guy defines over 60 spreads and positions. Even better, each strategy is categorized by Your Proficiency, Direction, Volatility, Risk/Reward, and Type (income or capital gain).

Let's say you were looking for a strategy for: Proficiency (Novice), Direction (Bullish), Risk/Reward (capped/capped), and Type (income). You would find that "Covered Calls" meets all these criteria.

The Bible then takes you through all the steps to initiate and manage the strategy.

Every strategy has thorough descriptions including advantages and disadvantages so that the reader can make informed decisions best suited to their trading style.

I strongly recommend that any options trader have this book, along with Options Made Easy. Guy's site: [...]is also an excellent resource of educational information

This book has it all with the strategies outlined in a very concise manner. Not only is every strategy listed with a nice synopsis of each one, an example of a trade is listed on every one. Also, every advantage and disadvantage of each strategy along with an exit strategy should the trade start to turn south. The nice thing about it, is it is so easy to look up a strategy you might want to try without having to comb through the entire book. And each one is listed by type of investor, aggressive, income, etc.
I dont read this type of book to critique it for typos as one reader mentioned. I want information on each type of trade and it is given in detail. I have read many other options books, and this one seems to be the best.

A no-nonsense, no-introductory-material reference library of option strategies. Cross-referenced by goal, risk tolerance, strategy type, name, and more. Herein one easily can find each strategy described with its theoretical outcomes, its benefits, and its drawbacks. Order entry and exit procedures and Greeks also accompany each strategy.

For an introduction to options investing, see the author's prior book.

So many financial books are hard to follow. The author usually gives a vauge idea of what they do to make money in the market. The process is given in easy to read examples of what you do if you think (A) is going to happpen you do this (B).
The expirance and risk assesments are one of the better ideas that the book offers.
The process to minimize losses are one of the processes that has helped me quite a bit.
If you truely read this book practice the trades and put the examples into a real life transactions you can pass on all the seminars that promise to make you money for a few thousand dollars.

This is the continuation from "Option Made Easy..." by the same author.

Nice reference book for dipping into any options strategy you can think of. The illustrations and explanations are very efficient which means I can pick the book up and get the answers I need very quickly.

This is a fantastic book that enables you to look at any options strategy you fancy and pick out the salient points, including a worked example for each one.

Definitely a dip-in type of book, each strategy follows the identical template so it feels very familiar once you've read through a couple.

Great use of illustrations, really helpful for understandng risk-reward and the Greeks for any strategy. Amusing use of icons too - shows you can have a sense of humour even when describing the serious topic of options tradng!

What I really liked about this book is that it's almost interactive. You can literally dip in to any strategy and find out what it's all about in seconds. There are 7 different tables of contents so you can find any strategy by chapter, by your level of experience, by market direction, by volatility, by risk/reward payoff, and by type (income or capital gain). This makes the book incredibly easy to navigate whether you're a beginner or reasonably experienced, particularly as around 60 strategies are covered.

Every strategy is constructed in modular format which means once you've done one you'll be able to navigate any of the others with easy familiarity.

The graphics are phenomenal - I've never seen the Greeks explained so elegantly and succinctly - and I find myself using this as a reference book over and over again.

This definitely is a reference book - though some may like to read it cover-to-cover, for me the main value has been in dipping in in out.

This is an ideal reference book for just about every options strategy I could ever think of. Compared with other options texts I have read, this definitely comes under the heading of "Reference Books". I can imagine that this must have been a very ambitious project as every effort has been made to make the book user-friendly and as interactive as a book could possibly be. By this I specifically mean the layout, the liberal use of diagrams (especially good for explaining the Greeks) and even the use of the simple (and sometimes humorous) icons (the stages of evolution are used for each strategy's level of appropriateness for your level of trading experience - the monkey icon for beginners I found amusing!).

At the end there is a chapter on taxation for options traders, which gives a useful introduction to that particular minefield - at least I understand now why my accountant charges me so much for my annual trading audit!

All in all a great book that gets to the point and gave me exactly what I wanted, and therefore highly recommended.

The author gets right down to business. He details out everything you need to know about specific trade strategies, from what, why, how, when -- everything! An excellent reference manual for all trading levels -- a must have on your book shelf!

I borrowed this book from a friend to evaluate before making my own purchase. On first glance, flipping through the pages, one sees liberal use of graphs and icons in an organized layout, and text nicely formatted into groups of lists, a good structure for a reference book. Strategies are grouped from novice to expert,
with some intriguing spread variations presented.

However, upon reading selected sections, I found technical errors/typos as well as an awkward and ungrammatical prose style in places. An example of a technical error: in the preface, when the option greeks are being defined, GAMMA is defined as the second derivative of DELTA - it is not - it is the 2nd derivative of the underlying asset's price, and the first derivative of delta. The section describing the selling of naked (short) puts uses the `capped risk' icon (albeit with a footnote); the `unlimited risk' skull and crossbones would have been a better choice - while the footnote warns it can be considered unlimited, a reader glancing through the icons might miss this point. Better to be more conservative. In the calendar spread section (a basic and useful spread), volatility is marked as N/A, with no mention of whether the options' volatility should be in the low or high end of their range, an important consideration.

For the novice trader, in my opinion, this is a potentially dangerous book. Insufficient discussion of money/risk management (though one could argue it is an advanced text and the reader should already know these things - still, a brief discussion wouldn't hurt). Some riskier trades are not necessarily marked as such (as above), though if you read the text or graph captions, caveats usually appear. (Kind of defeats the purpose of using the icons, though.) [For the novice options trader, a book titled `The Options Course,' 2nd ed., by a different author, also sold by amazon.com, might be a better selection.]

For the experienced trader, the book does present some intriguing advanced spread strategies not covered elsewhere (so far, that I have seen). Note that I said `intriguing' - I make no statement of their relative usefulness - we hope many are - but that is for you to decide for yourself. If you already know about money and risk management, and know how to create and read a risk/reward graph, this book can give you some new ideas. For each spread, how the greeks vary in value with changes to the underlying asset's price is shown graphically, a very nice way to convey the information. However, given that there are fundamental errors/typos elsewhere, if graphs were inadvertently switched, would anyone have noticed? (...and there are hundreds of them!) The wary reader is advised to double-check the information presented (for example, plot your own r/r graph if you have access to 3rd party software and verify the information).

The subject matter presented is heavyweight technical material, and appears to have been beyond the capabilities of the editorial staff to evaluate (if a technical expert was employed, s/he wasn't sufficiently technical, or didn't pay enough attention to details). Apparently, even the professional reviewers cited on the cover assumed the basics must be right, but got caught this time!

If Prentice-Hall cleans up the typos and grammar for a 2nd edition, and can find a way to independently verify the technical data and graphs presented to ensure quality, this book could make a significant contribution to options education. [By the way, I bought the other options book, but am passing on this one for now.]

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.

While I think this book has useful information in it so far I've been disappointed because it is riddled with typos. There were several typos in the preface and once I got into the book the typos continued.

It's as if it was proof read by a non-native speaker or wasn't proofed at all. Some of them aren't simply gramatical typos either for instance call was used where
put was the topic.


Having said that the book is improving my bottom line by giving me some useful ideas for options trading. It's a definite plus for the library of an options trader.
Michelle Ress