Chicago Mercantile Exchange has estimation that over 80% of all options is expiring worthless. Those who are selling options or option writers collect the premium paid by the option buyer. Trading options strategies’ option writing is often used for hedging purposes and reducing risk. The option writer has unlimited risk and yes, a limited profit potential. You see, trading options strategies are not too perfect at all. The premium of the option minus commissions is just insignificant. In appropriate conditions that are necessarily considered are selling out-of-the-money options instead of buying them. Why?

In trading options strategies, when selling out-of-the-money options, time value works beneficially. The buyer of the option pays a premium for that option. The longer the buyer holds the option, more time decay works against him more importantly as the option approaches the expiration. Over time, the option will lose 100% of its time value.

Along with time decay, trading options strategies in option selling make small traders to often purchase options. According to history, small traders, as opposed to the large commercial or fund traders, are on the losing side of the trade. Statistics show that small traders tend to buy options, as among the most common is the call options.

Options sellers do not have to be concerned so much with the place where the price will go. They actually need to consider more importantly where the price will not go. Trading options strategies need to focus on the highest probability of expiring worthless. Heritage West has the fundamental and technical analysis to project the general direction of the fundamental futures market, where options will be sold.

With trading options strategies, you surely know how important time value is. As an option seller, time value is you product. As time passes, the option’s time value will erode. The first stage may go slow, but it will later on accelerate towards the end. The movement in the futures market can temporarily have an effect on the value of the option too. Higher movement can temporarily propel the value of the option higher. Futures prices moving lower will hasten the drop of the option.

In trading options strategies, volatility is among the most important factors to consider when determining which options to write. It is the measure of the rate and magnitude of change in the price of an option, relative to the change of the underlying futures contract. Once volatility is high, the premium on the option is directly proportional to it. There are option traders who don’t understand how volatility influences the price of options and how to utilize volatility to gain profits.

Trading Options Strategies are too sensitive issues to study. Nonetheless, once you come to understand any of them, as starting with option selling, it will be a good start for your success.

My pal was a normally a mild-mannered sort – very reflective, always weighing the consequences rationally before acting. In short, a logical thinker.

Imagine my dismay when that one phrase, “trading options”, triggered this unprecedented tirade. You’d think I’d insulted his family or something even worse.

After a few seconds had passed, I realized the reason for my friend’s outburst. He, like so many other investors, had only lost money trading options.

Why? Because he’d never discovered the number one option trading secret: 3 out of 4 options expire worthless. You read that correctly, when you trade options as a buyer, you have a 25% chance of making money, and a 75% chance of losing money.

This is why professional traders and investors favor the option strategy of selling options, rather than buying them, in hopes that the trade will go their way.

“Wait a minute. How can all of those options just expire worthless? I’ve seen ads for 100’s of option strategies and trading systems on the internet. They can’t all be losing money.”

I had to smirk. Now I really had him thinking. He knew that I hadn’t yet told him the big “secret behind the secret”, but he couldn’t quite put his finger on it.

“I have one word for you, my doubting friend”, I said,…”Time”. “When you become an option seller, you have time working FOR you, instead of against you. The reason is simple – as puts and calls get closer and closer to their expiration date, they lose their time value, due to “time decay”, or theta, the Greek letter that option traders use to denote the % of change in time value of an option.”

This is true of any option, no matter if you’re buying or selling call options or put options, or using a covered call strategy. It’s one of the big secrets of options investing that doesn’t get written about too often.

Because of the power of time decay, you can actually guess wrong about the direction of the market, or a stock, and you’ll still make money selling a call option or put option, as opposed to the buyers on the other side of the trade, who not only have to guess the stock’s future price movement correctly, but must do it BEFORE the option expiration date.

This helps to explain why even conservative investors use the covered call strategy, which is widely considered one of the most conservative option trading strategies around.

To sell covered calls, you must own at least 100 shares of the underlying equity, since each call contract corresponds to 100 shares of the underlying stock.

This is a tool you can use to hedge your portfolio, and lower your risk, by receiving “call premium” money, which lowers your break-even cost basis.

Selling covered calls is a short-to-mid-term option strategy you can use to double and triple your yields on new stock purchases, and/or to earn more income from your existing portfolio.

Often times, people have just enough information to be dangerous…to themselves and their financial future. When they don’t find success, they find themselves paying the same high price for an alternative service or seminar. In order for people to have a full understanding of the options market, they need to speak with a professional who knows how they think and operate.

This is the one thing missing from many options seminars today. The course material is not always drawn up by a professional, but rather someone who has text book answers to standard market material and is in the business of making money. This can make it very difficult for the novice investor or trader who is looking to get their money’s worth out of the seminar. Options trading is not something that can be learned in 5-7 days. People who believe it can are either trying to sell you something, or do not have enough experience to advise you on how to trade options.

Do yourself a favor and seek out as many opinions as possible when choosing an options trading platform. There are many small differences outside of commissions that the less educated will not be aware of. One example is charting options. Most retail investors lack the most needed skill when it comes to getting the best entry prices on options, a chart. Would you buy a stock without looking at the chart? Probably not! This is the type of information you need to be educated on to find success in options trading.

To learn more about options trading go to http://www.stockmarketfunding.com