Options Strategies in Practice: Spreads, Income and Position Management
Learn to select, price, size and manage real option positions: vertical spreads, condors, calendars, earnings trades, the wheel, collars and rolling, with the numbers behind each decision and the German market context.
Self-study course Self-study course: written lessons, videos and downloadable materials for independent learning. There is no supervision, assessment, individual feedback or tutoring. Self-check quizzes are evaluated automatically in your browser — we do not see your results.
All 13 lessons free
Before you start
- The course Derivatives: Futures, Options, CFDs and Certificates (especially options basics, payoff diagrams and the Greeks)
- Comfort with percentages, square roots and simple tables
- A brokerage account or paper-trading platform that shows a full option chain
What you will be able to do
- Filter an option chain for liquidity and choose strikes and expiries with explicit rules
- Calculate IV rank, IV percentile and the expected move, and match a strategy to the volatility regime
- Build debit and credit vertical spreads, iron condors and calendars and compute maximum loss, break-evens and approximate probability of profit
- Evaluate an earnings straddle or strangle against the implied move and volatility crush
- Run a cash-secured-put and covered-call cycle with a cost-basis ledger and judge when it underperforms buy-and-hold
- Manage a book of positions with rolling rules, portfolio Greeks, a theta budget and a written playbook
Lessons in this course
Reading an option chain in practice: liquidity filters, strikes and expiries
Read bid-ask width, open interest and volume in an option chain, apply liquidity filters and choose strikes and expiries with explicit rules.
Implied volatility beyond the basics: IV rank, percentile, term structure and skew
Calculate IV rank and IV percentile, read the volatility term structure and skew, and use them to decide between premium-buying and premium-selling strategies.
Debit versus credit vertical spreads: probability, expected value and strike selection
Build bull call and bull put spreads with real prices, compute break-even, approximate probability of profit and expected value, and see why the two are mirror images.
Iron condors and iron butterflies: building, sizing and adjusting range-bound positions
Construct an iron condor and an iron butterfly from the chain, size them by maximum loss, and work through a concrete adjustment when one side is tested.
Calendar and diagonal spreads: trading time decay and the term structure
Price a calendar spread from two expiries, see how it profits from faster front-month decay and higher IV, and understand the diagonal as a capital-light covered call.
Straddles and strangles around earnings: implied move and volatility crush
Read the implied move from the straddle price, model the volatility crush after the report, and see why a correct directional call can still lose money.
The wheel: cash-secured puts, covered calls, cost-basis tracking and its weaknesses
Run a full wheel cycle with a cost-basis ledger, calculate premium yields honestly, and identify the market conditions in which the wheel underperforms simply holding the stock.
Collars and zero-cost hedges for a stock portfolio: pricing protection, choosing strikes and the upside you give up
Build a collar on a share position, price the protection, compare a zero-cost collar with a paid collar and measure exactly how much upside you sell.
Managing positions: rolling out, up and down, delta adjustments, profit targets and when to close early
Learn the mechanics and arithmetic of rolling an option position, when a delta adjustment makes sense, and why many sellers close winners early.
Assignment, exercise and expiration mechanics: early assignment around dividends, pin risk, automatic exercise and weekend risk
Understand how exercise and assignment actually work, when early assignment is likely, and how pin risk and weekend gaps can push a loss beyond a spread's defined maximum.
Portfolio Greeks: measuring delta, theta and vega across a whole options book and setting a theta budget
Add up the Greeks of several positions, beta-weight delta to one index, and set limits for daily theta and vega exposure that fit your account.
Trading options from Germany: Eurex contract specifications, portfolio margin, access to US options, PRIIPs restrictions and costs
Read Eurex option specifications, understand portfolio-based margin, know what PRIIPs means for German retail traders of US options and compare the cost of a trade in euros.
A written options playbook with a strategy-selection matrix by volatility regime and a paper-traded month
Write a one-page options playbook, build a strategy-selection matrix from volatility regime and market view, and run and evaluate a paper-traded month.
Python for Traders & Investors: From Price Data to a Backtest
Continue with Python for Traders & Investors: From Price Data to a Backtest to turn the rules from this playbook into code you can test on historical data.
View course outline