The Short Book On Options is just that – a concise easy to understand primer that first teaches the basics of stock options and then offers a hands-on approach to using options in a conservative manner.

Beginning with a description of what an option is and how an option works, The Short Book On Options takes the reader on a journey from learning the language of options to being prepared to trade. The book provides detailed answers to these important questions:

• What are the steps involved in trading options?

• Why would you want to sell a stock option?

• What do you have to gain?
• What do you have to lose?

• How do you choose which option to sell?

The Short Book On Options is especially useful for long-term buy and hold investors, owners of a self-directed retirement plan, investment club members or anyone who wants to increase the performance and safety of his/her investment portfolio. The author teaches a conservative strategy focusing on profitability and safety.

By the time you finish reading this book, you will be eager (and prepared) to make your first options trade.

Mark Wolfinger has been in the options business since 1977. He started as a market maker on the trading floor of the Chicago Board Options Exchange. He also worked for trading companies as an off-floor trader, trainer of newly hired traders, and risk manager. He now serves as an educator of public investors, showing them how they can intelligently and conservatively use stock options.

Born in Brooklyn, New York in 1942, he currently resides in Evanston, Illinois with his life partner Penny and their two cats. He received a BS degree from Brooklyn College and a PhD from Northwestern University.

This book presents a simple technique for using stock options that you can apply to your own stock portfolio.  Under most market conditions, if you adopt this strategy, you can produce substantial additional income.

Most of the investing public is unaware of the potential benefits to be gained by the conservative use of stock options. Many do not know that stock options exist.  In easy to understand language, you learn a low

risk strategy for the options markets and how to consistently achieve a rate of return on your investments that is probably much better than you earn without the use of options.  This strategy makes your overall portfolio safer by providing some insurance against loss.  This is a real benefit in those years when the market declines.

This book is for you, if you are a buy and hold investor.  You learn how the buy and hold investment strategy can be improved by adopting the methods taught in these pages, as investors who use options have an edge over those who don’t.

This book is for you, if you are an investor who does your own research and decides for yourself which stocks to buy.

This book is for you, if you are a member of an investment club.  As investors interested in growth and who carefully research which stocks to own, investment club members are in a position to benefit from the use of call options.

This book is for you, if you have a self-directed retirement account.  The investment technique taught in these pages is the only options strategy investors are permitted to use in retirement accounts, as it is the only strategy considered sufficiently conservative for such accounts.  It is especially useful for these accounts, where earnings are allowed to compound year after year.  If you take advantage of the strategy outlined in this volume, those extra earnings make your financially secure retirement more likely.

Some people make a living by promoting options as a get-rich-quick mechanism.  Others make outrageous claims about potential profits and charge exorbitant fees for seminars.  I make no such claims.  I am only telling you that by using options there is a high probability your investment account will be more profitable, than a similar account that does not use options. In order to gain this additional income, you must give up something.  This book includes a discussion of what you have to sacrifice in order to obtain the benefits of using options.  This very conservative option strategy has some risk, and that risk is described in this book.

The strategy taught in this volume is not for everyone, but if you invest in individual stocks, this book will be an eye-opener for you.