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Understanding Leaps: Using the Most Effective Option Strategies for Maximum Advantage

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Libro usado en buenas condiciones, por su antiguedad podria contener señales normales de uso

286 pages, Hardcover

First published August 1, 2002

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11 people want to read

About the author

Marc Allaire

8 books

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Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews
Profile Image for Yates Buckley.
711 reviews33 followers
November 29, 2018
LEAPS are financial options with long timescales and I thought I might understand more about how specifically this time dependence would affect the sort of strategies finance professionals exercise. Instead the book, for the most part, covers financial options strategies that are short term and only a small part of the book thinks about the cost of time.

Worth a quick read but not very illuminating...
10 reviews
January 31, 2021
I’ve read as much of this book as I want to read for now. I bought it for purpose of exploring several specific options strategies, so I focused on chapters germane to those strategies, and it was very helpful. I will save other chapters for another day, when and if I want to consider other topics, but I am done for now. In general, from what I have read so far, I think it is a good reference for anyone looking to understand how long term options can be used as a stock substitute.
Profile Image for Ulio.
49 reviews30 followers
May 5, 2021
Started interesting but ended up being disappointing.

So with any educational book what you get out from it is what are your expectations and how you much you already know about the subject. I feel like I was let down on both ends by this book.

The first few chapters are basic intro to options, I just skipped those as I been trading options for 4 years and have educated myself on the mechanics of options/greeks etc already.

There is a few chapters after that which are interesting. I think its 1-2 or chapters. Basically talking about the advantages of LEAPs or few mechanically/plumbing things about them that people might have not realized without doing some calculations. That was really interesting. Finding out the pricing % differential of ITM options between a 1yr leap and 2 yr leap. There is a few other things and that's it. I normally take notes from all reading and I had barely 1 small paragraph for this book.

After chapter 4-5 it just becomes a bunch of multiply leg option strategy instructional book. If you know how to do a bull put spread or why to do it, you can basically apply that all to leaps, there is almost 0 difference.

I was hoping the author would go more into historic and REAL EVENTS when leaps have performed better. What is usually historically high IVs/Volatilities affect on recoveries events on Leaps. None of that is to be found here. Multi legged leaps often are non feasible for average retail investors, I am an accredited/institutional investor and even I find them to have a lot higher risk than actual reward(no asymmetry) . I do think for straight hedging leaps or covered calls make sense but these are not groundbreaking ideas but the author does cover them.

LEAPs are one of the best strategies for trading/investing in my opinion and are still massively underutilized by retail traders/investors because of the high premium cost. I've had some of my biggest returns in trading/investing through LEAPs. Although I don't just use LEAPs, it's a small part of my playbook which often brings the most outsized returns. I could most likely write a better book on the utilization of LEAPs, the scenarios where they make sense and where they don't. The only thing Marc got write here is formulating which strike and which expiry.

There are so many great books on investing but so few good books about options for long term investors. This book has very few insights for investors or long term traders. Also if you want to buy this book in 2021(year of writing this) this book's physical is hard to get and quite expensive. The kindle version cost me $40 which if you have ever bought anything on Kindle, will know is extremely expensive. For me a book is a investment so I don't mind even paying $100+ for hardcovers but this book didn't have too many reviews so I decided to just check Kindle version instead.

I still gave this book 3 stars because there is actually some good stuff as I said about finding which strike/expiry to get and how to calculate it(just search option calculator). Pricing differential %wise on 1yr leaps vs 2yr leaps. As long as I learn even a small amount of information which can be actionable in my investing/trading(yes I do both), I am happy. My review was mostly negative because I think the author didn't truly show the wonderful possibility of LEAPs and how beneficial they can be to your portfolio. Instead just focused on multi-legged option techniques that have bad symmetry, require margin maintenance due to naked positions. Multi-legged strategy are used by 10% of option traders but 90% of the books about options are about low risk/low profit strategies of the ilk and even lots of them are high risk/low-medium reward which imo is the cardinal sin of trading.
Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews

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