Introduction
When it comes to Options Trading, many traders may ask Questions like: “What is the most successful options trading strategy?” or “What is the safest Options Trading Strategy?” or “Is there any No-loss Options Trading Strategy?” All these questions and many others may arise, especially for novice traders who are about to start options trading and seek a safe, guaranteed profit or zero-risk options trading strategy. If you have such questions in mind, too, read this article till the end.
What is the Most Successful Options Trading Strategy?
To answer this question, we first need to understand the function of the Options Trading Market. Trading Options like any other kind of trading, such as Forex Trading, Stock Trading, and even Real State Trading, involve high levels of risk, which means that when you step into this market, what is inevitable is losing money. You cannot find a trader who admits that he has been trading for a considerable period and has never lost a trade. This is impossible!
So Concepts like “Most Successful Options Strategy”, “No Loss Options Trading Strategy”, “Zero Risk Options Strategy”,” Safest Options Trading Strategy”, and other concepts like these are over-exaggerated. You can never find a strategy with Zero risk or no loss or guaranteed profit. But there are some strategies that are safer than others, or they are less risky compared to other strategies. Forget everything you see as an Options Trading no loss strategy since this market is so risky, and losses are an inseparable part of this business.
What to look for?
They are some strategies that can help you make more profit more quickly. These strategies are considered “High Win Rate Trading Strategies.” As the name expresses, these strategies allow you to have more profitable trades, but it does not mean you won’t have any Loss Trades while using these strategies. In other words, the number of profitable trades is much more than the number of trades that close as a Loss in a high-win-rate trading strategy.
What is the Best High Win rate Strategy?
As we explained earlier, there is no such concept as the “best strategy” in the financial market. Each person needs to choose and customize the Strategy according to his goals and character and meet their needs the best. All strategies could be profitable if the trader has a deep understanding of that Strategy and customize it. The following explains some of the most popular and time-tested strategies. You can choose one and do backtest and forward tests to see if it is a good strategy for you.
Before introducing the strategies to you, you must know that there are different types of trading, which we are going to briefly discuss first:
Long-Term Options Trading: Long-term trading in options refers to positions held for longer, usually days, weeks or even months. In this way, traders will speculate on the price movements of an underlying asset during a longer time horizon by trading long-term trading options. When the option expires, they predict whether it will increase or decrease in price compared to its current level.
Short-Term Options Trading: On the opposite hand, short-term trading in options refers to a strategy where the trader seeks to profit from short-term price movements of options contracts. Short-term traders aim to profit quickly in a relatively short period, ranging between seconds to days, compared with longer investors who hold positions on an ongoing basis.
Swing Options Trading: Swing trading is a market strategy involving short- to medium-term price movements or “momentum” in the markets. However, swing trading is often associated with traditional financial markets rather than options. Shorter timeframes and binary outcomes are usually the focus of binary options trading.
Day Trading Options Trading: Trading strategies that involve opening and closing options positions within the same day are called daily trading in options. Day traders seek to capitalize on the sharp price movements of options contracts and use intraday trading opportunities.
Now that we have learned the different types of trading let’s go through some of the most used Options Trading strategies:
Long Call Options Trading Strategy
A long call option simply means that the buyer has the right, but not the obligation, to buy the stock at a strike price in the future. Long calls are an advantage because they allow planning so you can buy stocks at a lower price. For instance, you might buy a long call option to anticipate an event such as the company’s earnings announcement. While a total return on a Long Call Option can be achieved, the losses are restricted to premiums. Therefore, the maximum loss that the buyer of the call option will bear is limited to the premium paid for the call option even if the company does not report an upbeat earnings beat or one that does not meet market expectations and the price of its shares falls.
Short Call Options Trading Strategy
According to its name, a short call option is the opposite of a long call option. In this Strategy, the seller promises to sell his asset at a fixed strike price in the future. Option sellers mainly use short-call options for covered calls or contracts where a seller already has the underlying shares. If the trade does not go according to plan, the call helps ensure they do not suffer losses. For example, their losses would double if the call order were uncovered (i.e., they did not own the underlying asset for their orders), and the asset would decrease significantly in price.
Covered Call Options Trading Strategy
The term “Covered call” means a transaction in which an equivalent amount of the underlying security is owned by investors selling cover options. To execute this, an investor who holds a long position on a specific asset then sells call options on that asset to generate an income stream. The cover is the investor’s stake in the asset, meaning that if the buyer of a call option selects to exercise it, they will have shares delivered by the seller.
Long Straddle Options Trading Strategy
A “Long Strangle Strategy” is to buy a long call and put an option in it simultaneously. The fundamental assets, the strike prices and the end dates of both options are identical under this Strategy. A neutral strategy aiming to profit from a highly volatile market when investors are convinced that price movements might be significant and could rise or fall significantly is called the Long Straddle Strategy. This volatility is likely to arise in the context of budgetary statements, company results or significant market news and events.
Long Strangle Options Trading Strategy
The long strangle Strategy is similar to a long straddle, where you buy both call options and put options with different strike prices. It benefits from significant price fluctuations but at a lower initial cost than the straddle.
Bull Call Spread Options Trading Strategy
The Strategy covers purchasing call options with a lower strike price and selling options contracts with an upper strike price. When the trader foresees a slight increase in the price of his underlying asset, he uses this option.
Married Put Spread Options Trading Strategy
A Married put spread is when you buy an option with a higher strike price and sell one with a lower strike price. When traders expect a moderate decline in the value of their underlying asset, they use it.
Iron Condor Options Trading Strategy
An iron condor is an options strategy that consists of two puts, one long and one short, two calls, one long and one short, and four strike prices with the same expiry date. The iron condor will receive a maximum profit when an underlying asset is closed between its middle strike prices at expiration. To put it another way, the objective is to profit from lower volatility on an underlying asset.
Protective Put Options Trading Strategy
A protective put, which is supposed to protect the downside, can be introduced for stocks, currencies, commodities and indexes. The protection is designed to act as an insurance policy and provide downside protection in case asset prices fall. A protective put is primarily a risk management strategy that uses options contracts by investors to guard against losing their ownership of the stock or asset.
During a hedging strategy, an investor shall buy put options in exchange for fees referred to as premiums. Put strategies are pessimistic strategies in which traders imagine that the price of an asset will fall over time. Protection puts are common in cases where investors continue to hold a positive view of the stock but wish to guard themselves against potential losses and uncertainties.
Butterfly Spread Options Trading Strategy
The term “butterfly spread” refers to the option strategy that combines bull and bear spreads with fixed risks and capped profits. Such spreads are designed to be market neutral and shall pay out the most when the underlying asset moves no later than option expiry. These are either four calls, four puts or a combination of the put and call options with three strike prices.
Calendar Spread Options Trading Strategy
Buying a call or put option for an expiration month out of reach while simultaneously selling calls or puts closer to the final expiry month will enable you to enter your calendar spread. To put it another way, a trader is selling an option that expires next February and, at the same time, buying one that expires every March, April, or any subsequent months. This trade is usually profitable because the option sold has a higher theta value than the option bought, which means that the option sold will experience a much faster time decay than the option purchased.
Ratio Spread Options Trading Strategy
A ratio spread is a neutral options trading strategy in which a trader holds an unequal number of long and short or written options at the same time. The name is derived from the structure of trading where there are several short positions to long positions, with a specific ratio. Two to one, where there are twice as many short positions as long, is the most common ratio. Conceptually it is similar to a spread strategy, in which short and long positions are available for the same type of options or calls on the same underlying asset. The difference is that the ratio doesn’t have to be between one and two.
The mentioned strategies are only a few examples of an options trading strategy. Each Strategy’s risk/reward profile is unique and suitable for the various market conditions and investor objectives. Before starting to trade options, it is essential that you have a deep understanding of the characteristics and risks related to each Strategy.
What helps you the most is finding the Strategy that suits your personal goals and standards. These technical strategies can be 10% effective in your profitability. The rest, 90%, depends on your risk and money management strategies.
In the following, we will explain more about risk management strategies to help you effectively employ them.
What is a Risk Management Strategy?
The systematic approach to identifying, assessing, and mitigating risks associated with trading options contracts shall be described as a Risk Management Strategy for Options Trading. Measures to protect against potential losses and to preserve capital while taking advantage of the potential gains offered by options trading shall be implemented.
Risk management strategies for option trading begin by identifying risks relevant to Options contracts. It also requires understanding the risks associated with a given asset, e.g., market volatility, price changes, and possible adverse events. Furthermore, particular risks are considered, such as the time decay risk, implied volatility fluctuations, and the potential for options to expire from money. The risk management strategies of traders can thus be adapted according to identifying these risks.
How Does a Risk Management Strategy Work?
The risk and return are inextricably linked. There is a certain level of risk involved in every investment. High Inflation Markets can come close to zero, like United States Treasury bills, or Very Low for Emerging Market equities and real estate. The risk is quantified in absolute and relative terms. Investors could find it helpful to understand risk in its various forms to take advantage of opportunities, trade-offs, and costs associated with several investment approaches.
Risk Management and Volatility
The risk of investment is that the anticipated outcome will be different. Such a variation can be expressed in absolute terms or by comparison to another benchmark, such as the market price. The fact that the deviation may represent a certain level of an anticipated outcome for your investments, regardless of whether favorable or unfavorable, has generally been accepted by investment professionals.
One is expected to take more significant risks to get a better return. The idea that a higher level of risk signals an increase in volatility is also widely accepted. There has yet to be a clear consensus on reducing volatility, even though investment professionals are constantly looking for and occasionally coming up with ways of doing so.
The volatility an investor should be willing to take is determined mainly by risk tolerance. This is based on the level of tolerance investment professionals have for their objectives. Standard deviation, a statistical measure of dispersion concerning the central tendency, has been one of the most commonly used absolute risk metrics.
In general, the risk management strategy of options is aimed at minimizing possible risks and preserving capital while taking advantage of opportunities offered by option contracts. Traders may more easily navigate the complex nature of options trading, and their total risk-reward ratio in option portfolios will be enhanced when they understand the special risks associated with them and take steps to mitigate those risks.
Every trading strategy could be lucrative if customized based on your needs and desires. You must pay close attention to risk management because what guarantees your profit in this market is risk management, not the technical Strategy you use.