The Options Playbook

Options volume is on pace to top 18 billion contracts this year.
A decade ago it was 4 billion.

Retail investors are now over 30% of daily volume, up from about 10% before 2020.

Millions of people are using an instrument almost nobody explained to them. The materials out there are either a screenshot of somebody turning $800 into $40,000, or a textbook full of Greek letters and math that assumes you already know the answer.

So I wrote the guide I wanted when I started: Plain English, no math you need a whiteboard for, built around the boring structures that have worked for decades.

An option is insurance. You pay a premium for protection, or you collect one for carrying an obligation. Everything else is machinery on top of that.

This playbook covers the durable, income-producing uses. No spreads, no exotic structures, nothing expiring the same day. Three primitives, sequenced so each one earns the next.

Here’s an exerpt:

• Every column of an options chain, translated, so you can size up a trade in about thirty seconds

• The Greeks without the math, with delta reframed as share equivalence

• A full chapter on theta, and why the same contract is a reasonable purchase at 18 months and a donation at 18 days

• The covered call, including the case against it. Strip the ten best trading days out of each year and Bitcoin’s median annual return flips from roughly +90% to roughly -25%. A covered call program on an asset like that pre-sells the exact days your thesis depended on

• The cash-secured put as a limit order that pays you to wait, with a side-by-side of what each one earns across four market outcomes

• Two worked LEAPS examples where the expiration was chosen after the thesis rather than before it

• The five ways beginners blow up, named so you can see them coming

• A 90-day sequence that starts with reading one chain daily and doesn’t touch real money until day 61

One question runs underneath all of it: am I the renter or the landlord here? Own an option and you pay rent that accelerates toward expiration. Sell one and you collect it. Time works for exactly one side of every contract.

The lever is real. Use it like an owner.

The playbook is free while BitFinance is free. Download it below.

Matthew Snider is the founder of Block3 Strategy Group, author of “Warren Buffett in a Web3 World,” and publisher of the BitFinance newsletter. He holds a Series 65 and MBA, and has been an active participant in digital asset markets since 2015. This article is for educational purposes only and should not be considered financial advice. Always consult with a qualified professional before making investment decisions.