Option

There is a lot of day trading hype books but this is a decent little book. The price is fair and the book is worth every penny.

If you are looking to trade then you better figure out the psychology part in your head first. If you cannot take small losses then don't try active investing - you will lose all of your money.

Everybody knows how to buy but many people freeze when it comes to selling.

Easy to read, gets technical without going overboard. Nice touch to keep going back to the psychology of trading as well. However, in her stock selection criteria she recommends using industry/group leaders from IBD (Investor's Business Daily). That would severely limit your trading opportunities and confuses trading with investing, something newbies should be VERY clear on. A good starting point but if you are serious buy additional books as others here have suggested.

Awesome book. Easy to understand. Of course, prior to reading this, I read many other trading books, so I was already familiar with much of the terminology. It cleared up some things I didn't quite understand in a more simplistic language than the other books I was reading. It summarizes trading in relatively few pages. If you want more in-depth knowledge of a specific strategy, then you'll have to buy other books. It's a great beginner book. My husband and I are making money, not guessing but using the technical analysis she uses. We have gotten more heavily into candlesticks and love it. She explains it fairly simply. Good book. She is a good writer. We also purchased her Day Trading book. Both books are similar.

I have reviewed many of the formulas in several sections of this book and have found a number of mistakes. As a result, I can trust no formula from the book without reviewing the literature or some other source.

The author does not use consistent terminology throughout the book. Rather, the terminology of the original journal article is used for each pricing model. This makes referring to the articles convenient, but then you don't need the book if you're going to the source...

I have used few of the computer programs offered, but the ones that I have used have had terrible inefficiencies. For example, a bisectional iterative search was used, which is very simple to write but is also very inefficient. There are many other simple and more efficient alternatives.

This book is a genious in the making. I myself have lots of notes on option formulas, however, this book represents what I've wanted to put together for a long time now. These formulas are also the closest I've seen to how the street actually prices options.

============================== Please don't post this section: ============================== Amazon - how can I get in touch with the author? I have written all these pricing formulas in Javascript, I need to know if this is ok.. Pls help

Have you ever wished someone took all the significant option formulas of the last 25 years and packed them into one volume? Is your calculus rusty? How about putting the formulas into Visual Basic so they can be employed directly in Microsoft Excel spreadsheets or Access databases. This is the main appeal of Option Pricing Formulas, which fills a void in current option literature. As option players became more computer literate an anthology of coded option theory was clearly needed.

The book covers everything from the tried and true Black Scholes and Cox/ Rubenstein formulas to the more exotic worlds of barrier and currency translated options. Software is included with the Visual Basic code as well as preprogrammed Excel files. Think of it as a cookbook for the technically oriented option trader.

Too simple. Explain simple points in length boring stories. It wastes my money and time.

I generally will not trash a book that is targeted at the novice but this will be an exception. First, I am a novice at options investing so should have been right in the middle of the target market for this book. Fact is, I learned more just searching the Internet while I was waiting for the book to arrive than I learned from the book. It is just too simplistic. All the knowledge contained in this book could have been conveyed in a 20 page pamphlet rather than this 300+ page puff piece with its wide margins and large fonts. A true disappointment.

As an experienced options trader , I am familiar with the concept of writing covered calls to increase your returns. My main objective in buying this book was to be able to write in the money calls to improve my premiums in addition to avoid limiting my profits by mistiming the option sale resulting in the call option being excercised. Although this book explains the covered call concept well and is good for beginners as many reviewers mentioned it does not specifically address the technical indicators needed to assess the trend of a stock to allow a person to choose the right time to take action. My experience has shown that to be successful in writing calls you must be able to spot reversals in the trend of a stock.
Althouh some general aspects of timing are addressed in chapter 13 "timing the market vs time in the market" they are too gneral and not useful in implementing the strategies at the right time.
Many investors do not realize that a covered call strategy by itself would have cost you significant profits during the strong market of the late 90's and it is only good as long as the stock you write calls on does not move up strongly through the strike. A strategy like this without balance in using puts in combination would have resulted in severely limiting profits through the bull market.Although the author intended the book to be just for covered calls showing how a combination of puts and calls can be used together would be useful. Some of the fluff in the book could have been replaced by more meaty chapters.
All in all a good book for beginners.

Too bad I can't give minus stars... minus 5 would be giving too much credit. Seven bucks down the toilet in my opinion. WTF, being macho is fine but little Dickie must wear a size 38 hat to match his IQ.
Full commander in the Navy, huh? Now there is an example of the military state of incompetence that Dickie tries to present. The book itself is pure formula fiction with Dickie as the rogue hero and the rest of his two-dimensional characters inserted merely to prop up his over inflated ego. As a veteran of SpecOps myself, I think Dickie is FOS (look it up in the glossery). His tactics are a sham, his mission is covert yet he brags to everyone he meets that he is a SEAL. If this work of fiction is based upon his personal experiences, as he claims, then it's a miracle that he and his team are still among the living. Option Delta is now lining the bottom of my trash can. Shame on Pocket Books and Simon & Schuster for publishing such garbage.

Dick Marcinko never stops the action, and knows how to write a real page-turner. This book is no exception, and my husband and I argued over who got to read it first (we ended up trading off each day). However, I found the plot line to be "SSDB", i.e. Same Stuff, Different Book. Billionaire badguy plots international realignment of power and damage to the U.S. Rogue Warrior steps in and saves the world from the bad guys. Dick, your books are fun to read, and I have no plans to stop buying them, but next time, could you try for a little more originality in the story line?

Another outstanding, highly motivational piece of Roguish action from good ol' Demo Dick, my favorite author. I had the pleasure of reading this book right after graduation from the USAF Security Forces Academy at Lackland AFB, TX. In retrospect, it's apropos that the main villain is a German, seeing how Germany is proving to be such an unreliable "ally" in our current War on Terror.

Here is my take on Mr. Abell: he is the Tony Robbins of the trading world. He is the feel-good psychology guru of trading. If you want to know what's in his books, and how to enjoy similar success, here is the formula:

First, start with a handful of old-as-dirt trading cliches (cut your losses, let your profits run, be confident, etc.). Come up with a bunch of analogies to dress up these old cliches and say them in new ways (for example, 'you can't score touchdowns if you don't have the ball' or 'when you start feeling bulletproof, that's when bullets pierce flesh' etc.). This should cover the first 30 pages or so. Second, find a couple of friends or acquaintances who you can pass off as successful traders (they might not be able to trade their way out of a paper bag, but it doesn't matter because no track records will be posted). Interview these 'traders,' and have them make similar observations. This should get you well past the 100 page mark- maybe even further if you are using nice sized print and putting plenty of space between the paragraphs and bullet points. Third, spice up the visual presentation by occasionally mixing in charts with the text. It doesn't really matter if the charts have anything to do with the stuff you wrote; people just like to look at charts. (You might want to add some technical notes, though, to add credibility.) Then, finally, if you still need more filler to get to the publishable stage, add in a chapter or two of public information- on the different exchanges, lists of different stocks and futures you can trade, details of order entry systems- basically some free info that takes up space.

If you follow this tried and true formula, you too should be able to crank out close to a dozen books on trading. And there will always be a fresh crop of beginners, not yet beat over the head with rehashed trading rules, to rave about how good your books are and what insight they hold.

Howard Abell again stresses the psychological aspects of day trading. People who could benefit from an attitude adjustment regarding their trading should read this book, but those wanting a lot of detailed trading methods should try others, for example, Raschke or DeMark. instead.

The value of this book comes from the interviews with 8 successful day traders. The author asks them the same set of keys questions. Their answers are both similar and different: their mindset is similar, but the way they trade can vary widely.

Buy this book if you want to understand the attitude required to day trade, but don't look in here for a magic system to get rich. One major lesson of the book is that there is value in finding it by yourself, in an almost never ending process.

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.

This text contains wealth 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.

I really liked this book. Devoting itself to internet trading and options it introduces the reader to how to research a trade, apply option strategies and find a broker.

It was refreshing to see Mr. Fontanills put his neck out and give an opinion on subjects such as brokers, web sites and rank them for the reader. I have used his suggestions of research tools and have had some success already.

I liked the fact that he does not promote himself but instead gives a candid review of his successes and failures as he learned to become a successful options trader.

The A-Z of Cyber trading is a complete summary for the reader and designed to be all the option trader needs to know. He does not spend time going through Internet basics assuming that the reader knows that.

A valuable resource for any option trading that wants to get the edge for trading online.

Read the book twice. Jay says in 200 pages what it takes others 500 pages to say. Its cut to the chase baby. If you want straight talk, thats that fact jack, then this is the book. Add the video and join the chat service (Jay is a coach, like Bobby Knight, if your screwing up he lets you know about it!!) and you might have a chance to succeed. Face it, no matter what system you choose, most daytraders fail, Jay provides simple yet effective methods for scalping or swinging intra-day but you must follow them, get greedy or loose focus and your toast.

I have only been a chat subscriber a short while, but he has honed my skills, helped me to stay focused and learn the techniques. As far as the daily calls on the website, I've seen them all called live and they are real. However,I dont take those trades unless I know the stock. Thats one of his techniques. Your basket stock, pick one stock and learn that sucker forwards and backwards and quess what, it becomes your personal ATM machine, yea baby$ Stray from your basket and quess what, ya go home red.

If one were to follow the advise in this book, they would be successful. The author leaves nothing to chance and is trying to teach the reader that he too must leave nothing to the whim of the market. The premise on which this excellent book is founded is to react to the market and not forecast it. As Jea Yu points out, it is harder to do than you might expect. The battleground is really the "baggage" that we all bring to the table - our ego's, our budget and most of all our bad judgment. This is a great book and teaches a winning style, if the trader has the discipline to follow it.

A novice should probably read that fluffy Toni Turner book to get an idea of the lingo, but no one should contemplate day trading without reading Lu. This book is a detailed description of the intricacies of no-nonsense, hardcore daytrading, written by a consistently successful practitioner.

I have read dozens of books on trading and this is the only one that I read again within one week of finishing it for the first time. It's simply too good to store on a shelf. Read it, learn from it, read it again, profit from it.

To use an old cliche, the small amount of money spent on this book will be the best investment you'll ever make. I'm not kidding. Read Toni Turner's sappy book if you must, if you're new to the game, but don't open an account until you read Jea Lu. His explanation of Level II screens, the use of stochastics and moving averages, and his advocacy of zero-emotion trading are all gems, which alone would be worth the price of the book.

I'm currently re-reading it, cover to cover, for the third time.

I received this book as a gift from a friend. I have just lost 25K trading futures with an unscrupulous broker. As I read through it I found everything that the broker had done wrong, and I also saw my poor reactions. It was amazing! I could definitely tell that the author had experienced both sides of the futures investment world, so I bought copies of every book in the series and I have not been disappointed.

I bought this book along with the companion guide and it was great. This book was small and I would have been disappointed had I not bought the companion guide too. The author was here in San Francisco doing a seminar and one of the things that he focused on was that trading was simple.

The hardest part is managing a trade and that no matter how many people say his original book is too short...everyone still keeps making the same core ten mistakes.

But I will say the companion guide to the book more than made up for it. Its almost 300 pages long and filled with the practical side of the information provided in the first book.

I am going to buy the third book in the series.

Futures, options, derivatives have all been subjects I was afraid of learning about. I thought they were complex and impossible to get a handle on. When I decided that this might be an investment for me- I researched and stumbled across this book.

It was clear and concise. The author emphasized in the intro that this book was supposed to be a supplement to any system I may already be trading and that it was his practical wisdom from being in the business for 10 years, both as a traded and broker.

I took his statements at face value and was not disappointed! I was delighted at the simplicity of the ideas he presented and the concept of trading with a plan really changed my thinking. I liked the book and will be checking out his other books.

This book provides a healthy dose of practical wisdom for options traders so that they don't blindly follow their mathematical models into oblivion. The author (Taleb) has a PhD in finance, but also has traded in the pits, he knows both theory and practice and where they diverge.

Taleb focuses on hedging, which is a trader's main task when running a large portfolio of options. Instead of using a flood of equations, Taleb relies on charts, graphs, and tables to make his points. Most of the equations & heavy mathematics are relegated to the appendix, presumably because quants (or software) will price the instruments. He covers the behavior of the Greeks (delta, gamma, vega, theta, etc.) for vanilla options as well as behavior of exotic options, and delves into the practicalities of volatility, hedging at discontinuities, and various other topics.

The book is very popular on trading desks, and although I found it pretty good, I didn't find it to be outstanding. Also, notably, the book does NOT cover credit & interest rate derivatives at all; hopefully this will be corrected in the next edition.

So if you need a book on the practicalities of hedging a portfolio of vanilla/exotic options, then get this book. On the other hand, if you want some basic options theory, or want to focus more in pricing, or need a basic introduction, look elsewhere (perhaps to Hull's or Wilmott's books).

Yes, this book could use an editor - there are all sorts of errors everywhere. While it makes the reading pretty tough, I think this is really one of the most useful books on options around. It's a little like Campbell/Lo/MacKinlay's book on empirical finance, but with a more experienced and real-life perspective. It's a bit refreshing after all the copycat books on option pricing that still don't contribute much beyond what Hull has written. No question, top 5 in practical finance reading.

It is nearly impossible to write a book that is both mathematically rigorous and sufficiently down to earth to be accessible to the professional trader. This book is a step in the right direction. It maintains the mathematical accuracy and depth without bogging the reader down with technical derivation of formulae. At the same time, it is written by a trader whose experience in the real market compels him to constantly question the 'nice' assumptions used to derive these formulae.

Taleb is first a market practitioner who uses models and pricing formulae to enhance trading and not the other way around. If there is a discrepancy between theory and reality he doesn't blame the markets.

The book is very personal and leaves no doubt what the author's opinion is on VAR, continuous hedging and other sacred cows of modern finance. The debacle in the financial markets in 1998 and the apologetic excuses by famous traders and theoreticians indicates that there is more than a grain of truth in Taleb's skepticism.

The importance of this book is that whether one agrees or disagrees with Taleb, it forces the reader to question his basic assumptions and rethink common truths. The book is unique: it is stylish, philosophical, literary, and if one may say so of a hardcore financial book - it is very entertaining.

I really liked this book, but I had to ignore significant portions of it to do so. If you parse the new age inspired psychological section and the tepid discussion of technical indicators that are anecdotal in nature and unsupported by research (I have been spoiled by "trading classic chart patterns" and "practical speculation"), then you might like it too. While it may be unfair to compare this book to the others since this book predates them, I will be forever testing what I read by those standards.

I really value his anecdotal explanation of what he did as a market maker and how he traded. I think there is real value to know the mind of the market makers that have to make a living in the market everyday by accepting risk. If you can rework your trading to trade WITH the order flow that market makers have on their desk, it will be a much easier ride. Obviously, there is no way for a third party to exactly know what is on a market makers desk, it may be interpolated from their actions. This book provides a perspective that I have not found in other trading books.

I think I've read most of the books on daytrading out there. Too bad, I could have read just this one along with perhaps John Murphy's "Technical Analysis of the Financial Markets" and Velez and Capra's "Tools and Tactics for the Master Day Trader".

Josh Lukeman very unselfishly shares his valuable insight of the daytrading game. Imagine how powerful your trading would be if your last job was being a market maker for MSCO. Lukeman gives you that insight. Obviously, a few of the reviewers above didn't "get it" because they were too busy looking for a simple solution to their trading woes to support their beliefs that someone else (the market maker) is to blame for their losses.

If you're mature enough to accept responsibility for your trading, this book will give you the edge.

Of all the books I've read in the last year or so, "The Market Maker's Edge" is one of the best, if not the best. It contains specifics on how to trade, not just mechanics (e.g., buy when you see this or sell when you see that...) but reasons why. As most traders learn, there are two sides to every trade. This book explains the psychology at play on both sides.

There are other good books, such as Tony Oz's. But unlike Tony Oz, this book is a different perspective. Where most give generalizations, this book gives specifics.

Though fairly easy to read, I would not recommend this book as an introduction to trading. Otherwise, it is a "must read".