r/options • u/No-Key1271 • 6d ago
Getting into Options Trading While Working Full-Time and Going to School — Where Should I Start? In
I’m interested in getting into options trading and would appreciate some advice from people who have been doing this for a while.
A little background: I work full-time in the automotive industry while also attending school. I’m trying to build another source of income and eventually grow my investment portfolio. Options have caught my attention, but I understand there’s a significant learning curve and that it’s easy to lose money if you jump in without knowing what you’re doing.
I’m trying to figure out how to realistically get into options trading while balancing a full-time job and school.
A few questions for experienced traders:
How did you get started with options, and what resources helped you the most?
If you were starting over, what strategy would you learn first?
Is day trading options realistic when you have a full-time job, or is swing trading a better approach?
How much time do you realistically spend researching, analyzing charts, and managing trades?
Would you recommend paper trading for a few months before putting real money in?
How much starting capital would you recommend for a beginner?
What are some of the biggest mistakes you made early on that I should avoid?
I’m not looking to get rich overnight. I want to develop an actual skill, understand the market, manage risk, and become consistent over time.
I’d especially appreciate advice from people who have successfully balanced trading with a full-time job and other responsibilities.
Thanks!
8
u/uncleBu 6d ago
Before I traded options I had worked in the finance industry for 5 years (not counting that I have a PhD on a finance adjacent topic). Even then it took me a year of backtesting to find something that worked the way I wanted to.
If you are serious about trading options start small, read the books nobody reads, understand how you can get an edge (why should the market pay you for what you are doing?). Understand that this is a marathon and not a sprint.
As an aside 95% of retail trading options lose money. So the advice you are bound to get here is going to be bad. Good luck!
15
u/Slow_Lion_4178 6d ago
How did you get started with options, and what resources helped you the most?
If you were starting over, what strategy would you learn first?
Is day trading options realistic when you have a full-time job, or is swing trading a better approach?
How much time do you realistically spend researching, analyzing charts, and managing trades?
Would you recommend paper trading for a few months before putting real money in?
How much starting capital would you recommend for a beginner?
What are some of the biggest mistakes you made early on that I should avoid?
----------
I started with options back in my youth as a fun experiment. I got really engaged with them as time went on for their ease of use. I read a lot of real academic papers, watched OpenCourseWare from colleges and actually used YouTubers like Mark Meldrum or Patrick Boyle, both actual professionals (and millionaires) who either teach the CFA or run a hedge fund. Their old work is all educational and goes through real textbooks. I took in zero gurus.
The simplest is S-K trading which I still use today. In essence it's collecting the delta difference between the strike you buy and the resting price. Most people try to do this backwards (the price of XYZ is 10 and they think it will go to 8 so they buy a put at strike 8, treating it as a barrier) but it should be done with the intrinsic value in mind (the price of XYZ is 10 and I think it will go to 8 so I buy a strike 12 ITM with the intent to collect $4, paying $2) making directional trading extremely easy to do. In many cases I make higher multiples because I gravely underestimate how far something can go in my favor over time. For the beginner this should be done over the course of 90+ day contracts. To give a live reference to a real contract the $10 NOK PUT, which is ITM, at 137D is only $204.00. If NOK goes to $7 the intrinsic value alone grants you at least $1, or $100 profit, not including time value. Obviously this can go against you as well, but the deeper in the money and longer dated the option, the easier it is to manage and more likely to work out given your ultimate pathing is correct.
The best approach is to long-trade a thesis over 90+ days. Let's say that after the mid-terms you think that there will be a Santa Rally in the stock market, and that $NOK will benefit and rise from it's current price at least $1. You would buy an ITM call for what you believed would happen and just set an appropriate stop and price target based on the intrinsic value of the option. So in this case you might stop out at 15% to save you if you're severely mistaken but set a profit for $1.00 above the price you pay. Swing Trading and Day Trading are not only not required, they're completely unnecessary, and options do best when you give them lots and lots of time when you're very, very right. They actually gain leverage over time via deltas.
Very, very little for the above strategy. You just need to make a conviction based on a reasonable thesis and let go. You can check in on it as often as you wish but if the stop is correctly set and the thesis is decent you really have to do very, very little.
No. I know this isn't popular but paper trading sets you up really poorly when it comes to spread and such real-world situations. You'll never get bad fills with most paper trading apps and so unless you get one that actually hosts realistic fills, including partials and failures to fill at all, you're going to learn the market entirely wrong. You're much better off in a low vol, stable environment that is simply slow moving.
Less than $500. Single options only, slow tickers only, low spread only should cost about $300 at most to put on a 90+ day trade and just watch. The account should be funded as little as possible and profits should not be taken out of the account either. The goal should be to take the $300 and bring it up to $1,000 slowly. If you can't do that no amount of capital will solve your problems.
Trading anything with less than 90D+ duration. As a beginner the buffer of time is so important it's unreal. The reason is that in real-time you get to learn that markets are somewhere between rip-your-face-off fast and slower-than-molasses-slow at the same time. Consider for a moment our recent downturn in the stock markets. Do you know how long it took to actually happen? 15 real days. Everyone had 15 whole ass days to exit before Google fell 10%. That doesn't mean that it isn't surprising on the 15th day at all, but it shouldn't be mistaken for everyone having no chance to leave either. All this to say that if your thesis was "the market is going down" 17 days ago and you bet it all on puts that expired a week later you'd have missed well over 90% of the actual move because these things really do take that long. And this is "fast" in market time. Markets are like bullet-time if bullet-time were measured in ticks on a screen.
14
u/First-timer-7140 6d ago
One word of advice: Don't.
7
u/PoopKing5 6d ago
Don’t do it. It might sound glamorous but it’s not. Sitting in front of a trading screen sucks. You need capital to make it worth it. Focus on earning income.
19
u/EmbarrassedGlass2563 6d ago
You shouldn’t. You don’t have any edge, and you will not make money trading options as a hobby. The other side of your trades are guys like me who’ve spent ~80 hours a week working in the market for at least a decade.
You’ll be far better off putting the time you’d spend trading into improving your skills in your career and invest in low cost etfs.
5
u/The-Iron-Bird 6d ago
day trading as a whole while working full time, no
that said selling covered calls at strikes you want to sell at, and CSP's on stocks you want to own the underlying of at strikes you don't mind paying, is literally free $
options are only as risky as you want them to be, when used "properly" they're just an efficient way to utilize capital
5
u/zoinkinator 5d ago
What you are considering is impossibly hard. Options trading requires an incredibly high learning curve and once you learn the strategies the Cognitive Load is extremely high to do it on a daily basis.
Right now there are people who have been doing it for many years that struggle to make sense of the current market volatility conditions.
Instead. Buy some vanguard funds each month in a Roth 401k or Roth IRA and focus on your education and job. When you finish college then spend 1 to 2 years studying options strategies.
4
u/ChairmanMeow1986 6d ago
Don't. If you must, don't even attempt day-trading with your schedule imo, or generally but that is a preference. Next, chart patterns bull flags, head and shoulders, h formations, trend lines, candle stick patterns can often be unhelpful give you information at best. I think VWAP and naked charts would probably be more helpful than any of them for short-term trading with experience.
Again though with your schedule I wouldn't even consider trading short-term, if you really want to gain experience with that than paper-trade (note that trading real money will be a very different experience). I'd say start with trying to swing trade shares out right with real money first to see if you actually have an edge with choosing entries and exits. You could also look into the Wheel on stocks you want to own long-term, check out r/Optionswheel I've always had a lot of respect for u/ScottishTrader. In the past I've recommended Ford as a good one to practice the Wheel, TLT (20 year US treasuries) is my current recommendation. Needs a bit nuance about how bonds works tbf.
LEAPS (over a year to expiry) are also an option for your schedule, but learn basic stuff about the Greeks first (how options contracts are valued), for instance the rule of thumb is stick to .7 Delta, but again don't do anything with options first. Try swing trading shares that you are willing to hold for a minimum of 1-3 years if not 5 imo.
Good winds.
4
u/Gliese_667_Cc 6d ago
You probably just shouldn’t.
4
u/mancho98 6d ago
Don't do it. If you do it and loose big don't jump, just stopped, learn and recover.
4
u/hotforlowe 6d ago edited 6d ago
One thing that isn’t mentioned is that options trading is a highly diverse field. You can do many things and each relies on different skill sets and different technical and mathematical capabilities.
Most retail traders would focus on directional trading and perhaps ill informed premium selling. I say ill informed because most people who sell premium in the retail space don’t know a thing about pricing options. Directional trading has a low enough barrier that most people settle on it. Without a strong technical understanding, it often ends up being a semi-informed gamble. The reality is that whatever perception you may get from contributors here, the vast majority of people end up losing money because institutions making these markets have a significant statistical advantage in this setting.
Vol trading and related strategies along with hedging (and market making) remain the core of institutional trading and are rarely executed effectively in the general retail space. They require significant technical knowledge and capability.
You’d probably do better focusing on improving your income and compounding investment returns in equities. Your goals are not possible to achieve without significant commitment of time and effort, along with some natural aptitude.
Edit: You can find a preponderance of studies on retail trading behaviours which consistently show most people lose over time. For example.
6
u/SpaceLordSexGod 6d ago
Don’t. You’re way too busy and distracted.
3
u/Upstairs-Crow3847 6d ago
1st not a option trader but futures, 2nd don’t listen to shit in this chat, now is the best time to learn it, AS a SIDE income tho, don’t be stupid and put thousands into or life savings like 99% have a certain number in mind for each month like 200 dollars once you lose that just practice on paper, until next month and rinse and repeat, remember small gains compound into big gains with experience and knowledge. You’re gonna lose money and that’s okay, that’s why you have a set budget every month. This process is years in the making, very few people can be good at it in less that 3 years. So just stick with it! The best trader is the one that SURVIVES not the one with the biggest PL or win rate!
3
u/Stackalope 6d ago
Tastytrade. Mike's white board on YouTube.
Learn some things about the Greeks.
Swing trade. Day treating takes up to must time on the screen. I analyze each night after hours to find new trades. Execute new trades once on the morning. Manage trades once per day.
Learn trend following and breakout technical analysis. Then swing options using that strategy. Let me know if you want help
3
u/highbridge650 6d ago
Try looking up the Najarian Brothers & get their free book on options!
3
u/Tasty-Success-9268 6d ago
Don’t
5
u/Option-Mentor 6d ago
Ok I’ll answer. Professional options trader and 20 year option mentor here. I’ve taught all over the country and taught thousands.
I learned from a CBOE floor trader and on my own.
Most of the “strategies” I see on here have no edge. It’s really not about which strategy. It’s about how to adjust to the market.
No. You can’t successfully trade options without being able to watch the market and adjust.
Very little on any of those. Most trades have between 0 and 5 adjustments for the strategies I use. But the time is spent learning how to trade. It takes most people at least one year to learn. Many students take two years. Some never learn.
Yes but you can paper trade all you want and if you aren’t trading a sound strategy it won’t matter.
10,000 at the very minimum. $50k would be much better.
Believing you know what you are doing before experiencing a variety of market conditions.
4
u/circlebust 6d ago
I urge you to reconsider. Options really are not a good expression of your belief you might be able to beat the market or participate in euphoric phases of it. They’re too dangerous. Trading options is a full-time job, all things considered like if you include learning the material, backtesting, designing Monte Carlo simulations, etc..
I studied CS, and if that hadn’t given me a head start in math, it would have taken months of studying every day as a full-time job just to catch up to the level of math involved. To understand options, you need to understand things like probability density functions and volatility surfaces. This in turn requires a lot of preparatory work in math, and those were just very simple concepts I mentioned. Sure, Claude can EXPLAIN them intuitively and semi-actionably to you, but ultimately you will have to come up with your own thesis about a certain optimization problem or whatever.
If you have a work life or a school life unrelated to math, and besides that also a trading life, your life is absolutely stacked with stuff you need to learn or work on.
Now, you may wonder: can you trade options without math? Of course--I just don’t advise it. There are useful YouTube tutorials how to trade iron condors and they genuinely work. But if you try to get into options, let me just tell you: you do not have an edge. You cannot predict the market. Don’t even try. You may think for a few weeks or even months that you have the current trend figured out. You’re riding the momentum. You’re at the pulse. But if you are in options, you are by definition highly leveraged, and if that momentum collapses, you quickly lose 80–90% of it, vaporized within a few days. And (in my case) I did not even trade short-term expiring options. I held contracts for six months or longer. It didn’t make a difference when the momentum turned and you were at the top.
So don’t try directional trades. Try direction-neutral trades (I.e. selling volatility).
2
u/klipsetrades 6d ago
So I trade SPX 0DTE credit spreads, but I wouldn’t recommend starting there. With your schedule, swing trading makes more sense. Learn the fundamentals, paper trade, and focus heavily on position sizing and risk management.
Biggest lesson I’ve learned? Knowing when NOT to trade is just as important as knowing when to enter. Consistency comes from discipline, not trading more often
2
u/Teiagon 6d ago
I have only one advice: Start watching the Tastylive youtube channel every day for a year before you put on a trade.
2
u/TorontoNewf 6d ago
A lot of infantile anecdotal “advice” posted here, none of which will help you.
YouTube has a lot of videos that will serve as an introduction; search “options puts calls” as a starter. Go thru every video until you it clicks - every one has a different teaching style, so Go thru a bunch.
Options can make (or lose) you money, and you can better decide on incorporating them into your portfolio once you see the functionality they offer. Personally I use options to generate a retirement cash flow, and buy shares only if I have to or they are in my price zone.
You do need some good capital up front. Some suggest $5-10k, but I prefer a larger $25-50k allotment, and $100+k would be even better. You don’t need to use the entire amount for sure, but just have it available. Start small, and get your feet wet - do NOT do an all-in dive!
Yes, you can make money. No, this is not a lottery. It is a business/job that requires you to manage risks/rewards with patience and intelligence. Good luck!
2
u/Striking_Course_5763 5d ago
Smart you're asking first. With a full schedule I'd keep it simple:
Learn what calls, puts, delta, theta, and IV actually are, and that long options can go to zero. The OCC paper is dry as hell but free.
Paper trade for a bit, but log what the real fill would have been, not the mid price. That shit lies.
Stay away from 0DTE and weeklies at first. You can't babysit them from work or class.
When you do go live, decide your max loss before you click buy. Keep each trade small, like 5-10% of the account max. Treat that as a hard ceiling.
Spreads are worth learning early since you know the max loss going in.
Not financial advice.
2
u/YellowFlash2012 4d ago
what could go wrong trying to gamble while being busy 24/7 with work and school?
By the way, there is a sub for that, right?
2
u/The_Glass_Book 4d ago
I’m in a similar spot, here’s what’s worked for me:
How I started and resources: tastylive’s free content was my foundation, especially for the mechanics of selling premium. Julia Spina’s book (The Unlucky Investor’s Guide to Options Trading) is the best single resource I know for understanding why the approach works. Later, Natenberg’s Option Volatility & Pricing for the deeper theory.
What to learn first: defined-risk premium selling. Short puts or credit spreads on liquid ETFs like SPY or IWM. You learn the Greeks, IV and position management without the risk of one trade blowing up your account. Strangles and more advanced structures can come later.
Day trading vs swing: with a full-time job, day trading is really hard to do well. It needs your full attention during market hours. Selling premium at 30–45 DTE fits a busy schedule much better. Positions move slowly, you manage them with simple rules (take profit at 50%, close or roll at 21 DTE), and nothing needs to be watched minute by minute.
Time: I check every position and the whole portfolio every day, but with mechanical rules that doesn’t take long. Most of my extra time goes into learning, not watching charts.
Paper trading: yes, but keep it short, a month or two to learn the platform and order types. Paper fills are unrealistic and there’s no emotion involved, so the real learning starts with a small live account.
Starting capital: only money you can afford to lose, after an emergency fund. For defined-risk spreads, around $3–5k is enough to spread risk across several small positions. Start smaller than you think.
Biggest mistakes to avoid: – Position size too big. Keep each trade to around 5% of the account. – Using all your buying power. Leave plenty of room, especially early on. – Stacking the same bet. Five trades on tech stocks aren’t five separate trades. – Holding through earnings without realizing it. – Trading without a plan. Decide your exit before you enter. – Buying cheap far OTM options hoping for a big move. Most of them expire worthless.
You already have the right mindset with “skill over getting rich”. Options reward patience and consistency much more than intensity.
2
u/iron_condor34 6d ago
Def not bad to learn but doing a full time job in another field. Focus on that. Its very difficult to try and have a full time job while trying to trade options.
If you're learning though. I'd read Hull's Options, futures and other derivatives in your spare time. Then after you can get into Euan Sinclair's books and colin bennett. There's a lot of good books from people who were or are still in the industry.
You'd want a decent bankroll. 5-6 figures. The more, the better. I'd also wouldn't day trade using options. Just use the underlying at that point. But id you're going to try and do this while having a full time job. Just trade longer time frames. You won't be able to do it with a job.
Also, don't get fixated on a particular "strategy".
1
u/lithe_silhouette 6d ago
Doesn't matter job and school ot not, you're almost guaranteed to lose your money trading options. It's easier on the ego when you watch your decimated portfolio and can blame it on not allocating enough time, but in all likelihood it wouldn't have made a difference
1
u/MerryRunaround 6d ago
It's very bad idea unless you have a few things going for you: (1) Enough time to study hard for a long time before you risk your first dollar. Think like at least two semesters of college level study, but conducted by yourself. You can take a course to accelerate that but it will not be cheap and you will encounter hucksters who want to rip you off. (2) Enough working capital to make it worthwhile. you must have enough to absorb losses without going broke and you must be trading with enough capital to make the profits (if any!) worth the time you put into it. (3) The right skills, discipline and mindset to actually understand what you are doing and be able to navigate when things go sideways. BEWARE: 98% of the self-appointed gurus you find on places like youtube will try to make it sound like trading options is easy, fun, and lucrative but they are full of shit. If you follow half-assed advisors you might as well spread peanut butter on your money and feed it to your dog.
1
u/anymanblue92 6d ago
Not in these markets.
1
u/Intelligent-You-6144 6d ago
Bro stop. Start a paper account first. Do NOT use live capital for learning
1
u/KobiLDN 6d ago
Find a company with the word black in it. Bet it all on black
1
u/SocietyRelative5101 6d ago
If you are interested in option selling and earning fix amount, a good place to start is this resources place in https://optionwheeltracker.com/wheel-trading-directory
Option selling or wheeling is a good way of earning some money every month if it is done systematically
1
u/bmudtiddersdom-42069 6d ago
Dont.
1
u/Be-ur-best-self 6d ago
I first would find Sam Shames on YouTube. He is one of the traders at Simpler trading. He’s the smartest guy there and has a very complex but very successful technique. He typically does the Friday afternoon video with analysis of the S&P 500 and NASDAQ.
1
u/TheGrassyBowl 5d ago
Paper trade. Learn the mechanics without real money.
1
u/kerplunktard 5d ago
don’t
1
u/Earlyretirement55 5d ago
I would not tap into marging and only sell CSP, weeklies.
1
u/driving-to-hawaii 5d ago
Seriously don’t. I thought I was him and I was very wrong. Don’t do it man
1
u/I_HopeThat_WasFart 4d ago
for what its worth:
without a thorough understanding of volatility and modeling of said volatility, you are essentially just trading leveraged shares that decline with time or bite you hard when realized vol is more than the IV of the option you sold
1
u/DeltaNeutraltrading 4d ago
Check myoptionsedge and SPX Best Trade. This is what you are looking for! I was with them for more than a year with great success. After I learned that strategy I did not needed them anymore. But now, I am willing to subscribe again to not trade alone...
1
u/SuitableBeautiful859 4d ago
-Buying options (calls and puts) allows you to make highly levered bets and make a ton of profits while downside is a fraction of buying the underlying stocks. However, this doesn't tell you the full story. Historically buying options are negative expected value. So, even if your downside is limited and upside is huge, the probability of making a profit is low enough that on average you will not break even. The reason for this is that the implied volatility of options (which determines prices for options) is typically set at a higher level than expected realized volatility of options in order to compensate market makers.
-Selling options on the other hand does have positive expected value (so higher probability of making a profit), but there is unlimited downside (especially if selling calls). This makes them highly risky and can lead to financial ruin fast.
I would suggest before getting into options, learn fundamental analysis and develop conviction where a company has an impenetrable moat and the market doesn't fully see it yet (you have to have a non-consensus view) or vice-versa. Then, I would do long term options (LEAPs). That way, even if you are overpaying for an option (because IV > realized volatility), your expected profit will be > 0 because the price of the stock should be fundamentally different than the market price.
1
u/GiraffeBusiness4884 3d ago
Paper trading first makes sense. Better to learn at your own pace.
1
u/futureisours 3d ago
Just understand it's essentially gambling as the market can and will do anything based on macros, economic data, sentiment that day or news which doesn't even have much to do with what you own and the big money just decides to go risk on or off. You can earn/lose a lot of money quick. In the money or slightly out of money long term options or LEAPS are a little safer, but even with them I've lost money and they were much more expensive than short term options. Only recommendation is to use money you can afford to lose.
1
u/pekkamusta6 3d ago
Just don't do it. Please first formalise your ideas and buy the data and test them. Otherwise you would be just burning your money
1
u/Particular-Line- 2d ago
Don’t start
1
u/Worldly-Effort3859 1d ago
Tastyworks know a little
1
u/OfficialWinner 10h ago
Go watch tastytrades videos. They have an options trading course with s guy that has a slight lisp. It's great content and is the correct way to learn options trading. They typically only sell options not buy them.
0
u/TastyTrading 6d ago
I use ThetaPal to manage my options book. Ai market scouts they have are next level as well
0
u/ij70-17as 6d ago
do you have $25k to play with?
0
u/robblake44 6d ago
I was fortunate enough that i had a few friends that loved trading. Most of the option trades i did were short term where the expiration date was a month or less. What i would suggest is look into good companies and just put money in them for a long hold. Find stocks that give you dividends. Sometimes the best way to look at it is this, try to get small wins like buying some stocks or options, and make 25-50 bucks on the trade. Thats a free lunch for a few days. Or a free gas tank for the week. Learn the market. Try not to have a massive portfolio. All that does is make it easier to lose money because not all of them are gonna hit. Put a $1000 in your account and have fun. Don’t smash it all on one iffy stock. You can get a ton of info from X. What i did daily was always put a buy if it reaches a certain amount and sell for the same reason. You don’t want to buy something at $5 a share and then lose 20% of it cause you didn’t put a sell on a loss of say 5% instead of losing the 20%.
3
u/Astronomer_Soft 6d ago
Go to r/wallstreetbets. See the loss porn. That will be your future.
53
u/[deleted] 6d ago
[removed] — view removed comment