Best Book in Options for value investor?

Mohamed Elfaki Oct 30, 2021

Hello everyone

what are the top books you recommend for me to learn Options?

that will help me to learn how and when to sell PUTS.

Thank You!

Mohamed

Praveen Chawla Oct 30, 2021

Just do it. Once you lose a sizable chunk of cash you will learn a lesson you will never forget. Consider it as a tuition payment to Mr. Market. Good luck.

Pritam Dhavale Oct 30, 2021

@Mohamed, I understand your idea especially being an investor myself. I have tried to look for books written on Options concentrating from the value perspective. I have not come across any specific book or worth recommending that caters to value investors (unless there is something already published that I am not aware about)

I can share my experience with writing puts and issues I faced and hopefully it may be of some help to you at the same time I may get some good advise from others on the issues I faced.

I do sell puts at or below the intrinsic value of the stock. (I don't want to get into the details of strike price and duration, want to keep it simple). Most of the time, I end up collecting premium but over the years I have realized that I would be much better just buying the stock and holding. Buying and holding compared to selling puts would generate much superior returns.

I have also experienced while selling puts, even if the stock price dips below the strike price of the option I sold, it is not necessary that I would be assigned as many times the stock price would bounce above the strike price by expiration. And in this case I would loose a golden opportunity to buy the stock well below the intrinsic value because my allocated capital was stuck with the sold put.

I understand and empathize with your thinking, as value investor most of the time I would be sitting idle waiting for the stock to reach intrinsic value, selling puts could be a "good" way of allocating part of the capital to generate extra returns.

I welcome input or feedback from fellow investors on the issue I have listed here.

Thanks