Live data from Hacker News

No, You Aren’t Going to Get Rich by Options Trading

jacobin.com

21–30 of 223 posts

Re: No, You Aren’t Going to Get Rich by Options Trading

#22

> My position, to be clear, is not a patronizing one that posits people can’t do as they please with their money, but rather that a game of Russian roulette wouldn’t be so thrilling if you found out it was a full clip. Might I suggest to the author posting some evidence/data that shows retail options traders getting burned? Burned in the sense of having no returns to speak of. Obviously, they're getting burned on bad…

My theory is people are seeing the 'winners' post their gains on social media (like reddit /r/wallstreetbets) and so they try and go in and see if they can do the same thing. A lot of these people are in experienced and may not know what they are doing, with many losing money in the process

WSB also has a culture of essentially celebrating big losses. There's no shortage of examples of people losing their entire investments. It's a weird culture.

Re: No, You Aren’t Going to Get Rich by Options Trading

#23

Very few get rich trading options. Most are no better and no worse off. Some people get completely wiped out. There is nothing wrong with buying low-cost index funds and holding them long-term. That's how you build wealth.

> There is nothing wrong with buying low-cost index funds and holding them long-term. That's how you build wealth.

Given how prevalent this advice is these days, the indexes are arguably over-priced.

Re: No, You Aren’t Going to Get Rich by Options Trading

#24

You're probably not going to get instantly rich doing any kind of options trading. The story of an average guy who randomly makes a big bet, times the market perfectly, and quickly turns a few thousand dollars into a few million happens once in a while, but is incredibly rare. That said, some kind of options trading can be less risky than just holding stock because you can do things like collecting premiums until you…

> There are low risk strategies […] that basically guarantee you income for doing nothing

Listen to yourself.

Re: No, You Aren’t Going to Get Rich by Options Trading

#26

Very few get rich trading options. Most are no better and no worse off. Some people get completely wiped out. There is nothing wrong with buying low-cost index funds and holding them long-term. That's how you build wealth.

> There is nothing wrong with buying low-cost index funds and holding them long-term. That's how you build wealth. Given how prevalent this advice is these days, the indexes are arguably over-priced.

Agreed. But elder millennials will probably be the "boomers" of the index fund trend and will be selling them for retirement before the bubble pops.

Re: No, You Aren’t Going to Get Rich by Options Trading

#27

Very few get rich trading options. Most are no better and no worse off. Some people get completely wiped out. There is nothing wrong with buying low-cost index funds and holding them long-term. That's how you build wealth.

> There is nothing wrong with buying low-cost index funds and holding them long-term. That's how you build wealth. Given how prevalent this advice is these days, the indexes are arguably over-priced.

That doesn't necessarily mean people follow this advice. It requires patience and discipline to do this.

Re: No, You Aren’t Going to Get Rich by Options Trading

#28
The way to get rich by options trading is to make a market in them, to aim to be as neutral as possible on your greeks and to take bid/ask spread, and to do this with extremely high-quality real-time risk analytics systems, first-line trading oversight and second-line risk management oversight. In other words, it's to be an equity volatility trading desk.

Re: No, You Aren’t Going to Get Rich by Options Trading

#29
Honestly this is why after dipping my toes into this some time back (along with some very limited time spent in crypto without any kind of derivative shenanigans) I came full circle back to index funds and just putting what I can away at the end of the month.

Are index funds going to make me crazy-bonkers-rich? No, but neither was anything else in all likelihood.

What they’re brilliant at is giving me my time and attention back. They’re low risk/reward, and they’re boring. Just like me, as it turns out. Toast to Jack Bogle.

Re: No, You Aren’t Going to Get Rich by Options Trading

#30
Frankly, just reading the headline, I disagree. First of all, yes in a broad sense most people are gonna get fucked trading options if you don't know what they're doing. I know what I'm doing and my strategy is exclusively long equities. But you can absolutely make metric fuckloads of money trading options and there are some trades out there that ain't that hard to figure out. For example, you can print money on a regular basis trading puts on UVXY when volatility spikes. You just need to understand what you're doing. Now trying to predict earnings and all that bullshit -yeah that's a suckers game. But there are plenty of options strategies that can make retail traders a lot of money.

(BTW you may ask why I don't trade uvxy options if I'm so confident in its profitability - well I can't conduct the above mentioned strategy without violating regulations because of my occupation. But I did prior to my employment and consistently made double digit % returns in 1 trade every 2 months or so.)

Post reply on HN