Not a bad book, but it was written when the web was new. It's not about options as much as it's about where to trade them and how to open an account. If you're looking for an old how-to on getting an account setup and some basics of options, good book. If you're looking to compare BSM, Monte Carlo and Binomial methods, take a pass.

FRom your description this sounded like a very good book since I am interested in trading options. Lo and behold I find out this book was published in 1999 and in 8 years lots of new things have been developed. You should have mentioned in your promo that this book was written 8 yrs. ago. I got ripped off. Just be honest with your descriptons. Les Lerner

This text contains a lot of information on online trading in general and trading of options in particular. But be careful, you need to know more than that to succeed in this business. Although this book will tell you how to go about placing your orders and which option strategy is good for which situation, making money comes down to predicting the behavior of your stock price and volatility, something you will have to learn elsewhere. Incidentally the book was most likely written to increase subscriber base of the author's website, so don't let your guard down.

First 8 chapters give you a very superficial introduction to the options trading and some strategies. Let me repeat - very superficial. If you want to learn that matter, you definetely need another book.

So, I was trying to get usefull info on the WEB resources. Let me tell you - two years make a big difference in the Internet world. Many sites do not exist. Some of them have nothing in common with the description, which you find in a book. Chapter 9 - "cybervesting from A to Z" is a complete waste of time and is full of frustration. It guides you through interfaces of nonexisting web pages. The pages, which, according to th author, answer the crutial questions of a trade. I lost most of time just to verify nonexistence of the referenced resources.

I won't pretend to be an expert option trader. I'm in my third year of seeking a bachelor's, and the degree will not be very finance or investing related. This is the first book I read about options, and it successfully heightened my interest by introducing me to some basic option strategies. Another success of the book is the advice it gives on how to initiate and monitor trades throughout the trading day.

Unfortunately, the only people with time to check these complex positions each and every minute are multi-million dollar hedge fund managers (such as the author). The rest of working class America and I can only check our investments on occasional evenings. My guess is the average reader does not have the time or the stomach to sit on pins and needles every day wondering if it's time to exit their risky positions. The only advice the author lends about early exits from trades is that if the stock looks poised to move against you then get out.

Also, the author tells us to start looking for trades based on increased media coverage, high volume, and/or price volatility. This sort of herd following mentality is what I think leads to the massive market swings which cable commentators and industry insiders pretend to understand but incorrectly predict on a daily basis. If the author could truly capture these wild swings, writing this book would not be necessary.

Even the author's own website (after buying expensive extra services) does not search through all optionable stocks to find volatility skews that would make the pie in the sky trades illustrated throughout the book possible. The "platinum" site lets you pick a stock and then see what you can do with it. The odds of randomly finding a stock where you can risk less than $75 and possibly gain over $400 with a 15 point spread of profitability (chapter 8, long condor), are close to a needle in a hay stack.

Applicable advice to average investors is something this book truly lacks. Modifying simple stock ownership with options is not discussed. All of the option strategies included contain absolutely no stock positions (long or short). Trading within IRA's was important before the maximum contributions started being increased, but now they will become more important than ever. I suspect the rankings of brokers in the book and on the author's website are based more on advertising compensation than usefulness to individual traders. The rankings refuse to recognize the lowest-commission-charging online brokerages, and left out completely is the issue of assignment and exercise fees. Assignment and exercise fees can range from 15 to 30 dollars - per contract ... emphasis on per contract. I chose my current broker (not on any ranking list) only because they do not charge those fees.

In a final derogatory note, the seventh chapter contains text that contradicts itself when explaining the ratio call spread and the call ratio backspread. I had to reread the chapter a few times to sort out where the errors are, and what those positions entail.

Again, the book did shed light on an area of investing I knew little about, and intrigued me enough to want to learn more. Yet by sporting a sexy neon cover and depicting life from the point of view of someone managing millions, this book and others like it will probably keep average people thinking of options as risky, scary, and strange. Other than giving me a basic understanding of some common ways to trade, all this book really accomplished was motivating me to write a better one.

This book is only a decent overview of options trading. Its pluses include its concise descriptions and profit/loss graphs of different option strategies and invaluable information on finding an online options broker. HOWEVER, it leaves the reader with unrealistic expectations (like all of Fontanills' and Optionetics' materials) in that ALL of the trades in the book are profitable. Take it from someone who has learned this personally -- options trading is NOT a "get rich quick" scheme. Should you choose to try it you will have MANY unsuccessful trades. A book which is very easy to understand, yet which provides valuable guidance on WHAT CAN GO WRONG is Max Ansbacher's _The New Options Market_. I sincerely recommend that book because it is able to describe the pitfalls of options trading in a manner which I've not found in other books. Good luck!

I bought the book after reading others' good reviews here, and was fully expecting a wealth of options strategies and most importantly, personal experience and insights from such a celebrated option trader-author. However, IMHO, this book turned out to be a combination of

- superficial introductory text to 'online investing' (from Chapter 1 to 4), which is more suited to a Finance 101 course of high school students, if there's such one. - a decent list of option trading strategies (Chap 5-8) - an extremely rich list of online resources for financial web sites, online brokerages, and other sites geared for options trading. The extensive listings are surely impressive, however, as another reviewer pointed out, can get outdated easily.

It is certainly not a bad book, but I usually buy books because I expect to find more insightful writing which is not readily obtainable from the web. To this front I was a bit disappointed in this book. To me it seems that the author practiced a low-cost approach to make money out of this book by just compiling a long list of online resources and writing some very basic educational text, instead of sharing his trading strategies and experiences. Maybe this approach is good for a beginner who has not started stock trading yet, but for a typical stock investor/day trader who is trying to diversify into option trading, there is room for more value-added discussion.

At the same time, the author seems to be keen on promoting his Optionetics website, which itself is pretty impressive (if you pay to subscribe the Platinum service).

All in all, the book is a pretty good reference to get started, simply because it has a wealth of pointers to online resources, and a decent listing of option spread strategists. But if I get more experienced in options trading, I'll look for a better book to keep.

I was disappointed that perhaps half of the book is about brokers, yet there is nothing on which brokers allow options trading within IRA's

The book is clearly written and it solved many of the mysteries I had concerning trading options. An excellent feature of the book is that it gives the addresses of many online sources for stock or option information.

This book is absolutely superb, and is a must for the new options trader. Having just recently upgraded my online trading account for options, this book is indispensable to me.

The writing is clear and concise. The information at the end of the book - an everything you ever wanted to know about online resources (web sites for options trading) - is worth the cost of the book alone.

Not only does the author document all of these web sites (a couple hundred of them, if I'm not mistaken), but he even gives candid ratings for them too.

This book is almost like having a personal options mentor at your side.

Before reading this book, I was almost totally ignorant of options and option strategies. With the information I gained from Fontanills, I now trade options online and I've actually managed to make money in a declining market.

This book is excellent in every regard. It presents numerous basic and not so basic strategies and explains them in clear terms with illustrative examples including graphs and calculations of theoretical trades.

Just as important is the section with no nonsense ratings of online brokers from the perspective of their ability to trade options. Through this review I was able to find a broker that actually had their own floor traders, rather than one that farms out its option trades. This is important as my trades generally come back with prices better than I expect.

He has terrific sections on online resources for information on options and providers of data and charts. There is also a helpful glossary of trading and market terminology.

Overall, this is a must have reference for anyone who is new to options or has a basic understanding and would like to learn more. It is also helpful if you have traded options before through a broker and you would like to switch to online trading.

Finally a book you can sink your teeth into and getstarted. I've read dozens of trading books where you finish and youwonder what your next step should be. Here the author gives detailed examples of strategies. There are also very few typos or mistakes which to me is most infuriating. You buy a "how to" book and you need a decoder ring to try and figure out what the author really meant because they didn't bother to proof the book. Not so with this book.

Chapter 9 was so refreshing! Here the author walks thru step-by-step what his typical trading day would involve. No "well-chosen" examples to fit the author's purpose, just fundamentals that he looks for and where online he looks.

The web site reference section alone is worth the price of the book. For me it well save hundreds of hours of World Wide Wait (WWW) searching for relevent sites with good, useful and reliable information. The reference site also had pricing info for those sites that weren't free. It also gave me an idea of what's available out there, Online!

There was a lot of educational sites for those remaining questions, like the break down of the "Greeks". These would of been too much to cover in this book and I'm glad the author didn't try to.

This book is a great first-step for ONLINE Option traders.

Good Luck Trading!

PS The author doesn't self promote. He mentions a couple of his own sites amoung the hundreds of sites he references. The reference would be less than complete if he had left out his own sites.