Option trading books

Hi all,

I want to learn more about option trading. And since in trading there are always a dozen 'do-this-and-get-rich-quickly' shitty books I need your advice on some decent literature about option trading!

Any tips?

Thanks!

43 Comments
 

Greetings Ted! I will pass on 2 that my bro has passed on to me. Sheldon Natenberg - Option Volatility and Pricing. Anthony Saliba - Option Workbook.

 

How much do you know to start? You should get the basics down first, go through either Wilmott or Hull's books to get some basic foundational knowledge.

"When you stop striving for perfection, you might as well be dead."
 

Option Volatility & Pricing: Advanced Trading Strategies and Techniques - Natenberg Option Volatility Trading Strategies - Natenberg Dynamic Hedging: Managing Vanilla and Exotic Options - Nassim Taleb Options, Futures, and Other Derivatives - Hull

These were all required reading when i was trading. Id also advise reading any white papers on types of vol models that you can find (jump to diffusion, tri-nomial, whaley, SABR, etc.).

 

Good overview and walks you through trade structure with examples, when to use, risk profile and very easy to read.

http://www.amazon.com/Commodity-Options-Trading-Volatility-Lucrative/dp…

This one is like reading a math book, dry and difficult to follow along unless you are taking notes. Advanced but you'll have a very deep understanding of your risk and how best to adapt your position.

http://www.amazon.com/Options-Trading-Adjustment-Perception-Deception/d…

 

As suggested above, white papers are great way to find info, and just simply googling will find you all kinds.

"When you stop striving for perfection, you might as well be dead."
 

i have the internationel edition you can find on textbookx.com, great book, one of the best investments you can make

------ "its the running joke now, we now have fair trade with china so they send us poisoned sea food and we send them fraudulent securities."
 

anybody take this course, with the above textbook? I know its not really relevant to ibanking but how hard was the class in terms of difficulty understanding the concepts?

 

Is this only for a very limited time? I'm at school right now so I'm hoping this doesn't expire by the time I get to my computer... good find though.

shorttheworld... and the lowest price we could find for this download.

Oh they couldn't find it any cheaper than that? Weak sauce. I want to get paid for reading this book, damnit...

If your dreams don't scare you, then they are not big enough. "There are two types of people in this world: People who say they pee in the shower, and dirty fucking liars."-Louis C.K.
 

generally speaking, Hull is more advanced than Natenberg though natenberg's book goes into the details of certain strategies more. the book most referred to in energy circles is probably the one by Edeland (which is slightly more technical than Hull)

 

Hull is good, but Natenburg will get you much farther into volatility which is much more important for an options trader than Black-Scholes and the modeling aspects which Hull covers. Read Natenburg, selectively read parts of Hull related to options (there's a lot which you will never use or hear about).

 
Best Response

At some point in time, someone labelled Hull as the holy grail for options. But it is neither a)too quanty as the above said nor b) a great book for learning how to "trade" options. For options, read the following in this order:

Intro to Option Trading by Frans de Weet Euan Sinclairs Option book (the bigger of the two, he has a small crap one as well) Dynamic Hedging by Taleb

Thats all the theoretical knwledge you need, the rest is gained by using your creativity and thinking about situations you cna make money in, and experience of trading. Theres some stuff you will never learn in books, and one of those is learning how to manage a book of risk.

 
derivstrading

Thats all the theoretical knwledge you need, the rest is gained by using your creativity and thinking about situations you cna make money in, and experience of trading. Theres some stuff you will never learn in books, and one of those is learning how to manage a book of risk.

This. There is no substitution to learning from the trading day.

 

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