Title : Get Rich With Options: Four Winning Strategies Straight from the Exchange Floor
Author : Lee Lowell
List Price: $39.95
Street Price : ~$26.00 ~ $28.00

Starting with the title of this book, I was not happy. The title sounds too much like a 2am infomercial than a good book on options trading. At first , you think maybe just the title is ‘hype-y’, but here is a quote from inside the flap:

Lowell explains the only four options trading strategies that actually work: buying deep-in-the-money call options, selling naked puts, selling option credit spreads, and selling covered calls.

He gave a fifth “bonus strategy” which is ratio spreads.

Really? The only strategies that make money? I don’t know a lot of professional option would use these strategies. Oh wait, there is one I know who used those strategies. Niederhoffer. He sold naked puts ( which is the same as covered calls ). We all know what happened to him.

Now the book was not all ‘hype-y’. The author did do a good job of simplifying options, and gave some good tips on trading options. But claiming these are the only four option strategies that work, was a little over the top for me. I should mention that covered calls and naked puts have the same return profile so it is only three strategies anyway.

The thing to remember is that this guy traded commodity options on the floor of the New York Mercantile Exchange (NYMEX) , which are a different beast than equity options. He was pretty light on the money/risk management side of things. I do give him credit for talking about DITM calls which is not really discussed in options literature.

Bottom Line : Cannot recommend this book other than light reading for an option trader. If you are starting out, there are much better books. If you already know what you are doing, this book will not teach you much.