Learn Options Trading
We don’t educate. We train. There is a difference, and it is the whole difference.
Most people who set out to learn options trading start with information. You will finish knowing what a call is, what a put is, and what the Greeks are called. Then you will open a brokerage account, look at a live chain, and discover that you cannot actually do anything.
That is not a knowledge problem. It is a training problem — and they are not the same thing.
That quote is not a poster on my wall.
My sister Monica carried part of it in her purse. We found it there after she was killed by a drunk driver.
It has carried me every day since. So when I tell you that education and training are not the same thing, understand that it is not a marketing line. It is the sentence my sister thought was worth keeping on her, and I have never been able to put it down.
The world is full of educated derelicts. Aviation figured that out a long time ago. Nobody hands a student a textbook on the F/A-18 and then straps him into one. You get trained — briefed, demonstrated, corrected, repeated, debriefed — until the procedure is something you execute under pressure rather than something you can describe.
Education gives you information. Training gives you a skill. Everything on this page is built to give you the second one — because you did not come here to learn options trading in theory. You came to be able to do it.
Why Learn Options Trading From A Fighter Pilot?
Fair question. Here is the honest version.
I did not start on Wall Street. I started exactly where you are — a self-taught retail trader, learning on my own account, making every mistake there is to make. From there I went to Managing Director of a multibillion-dollar equity options volatility arbitrage firm.
I joke that I’m Valentine in Trading Places — the guy who comes in off the street and ends up in the room where the real money moves. People laugh, and then they realise why I tell it: I know what a retail trader needs, because I was one. Not a theory about what beginners need. The actual road, walked.
What You Actually Need To Trade Successfully
Everything you need to learn options trading properly comes down to three things, in this order. Skip one and the other two stop working.
Solid Training
A building-block approach — nine sessions built on the same methodology used to train fighter pilots and professional options traders. Each session builds on the last, basics through advanced tactics. Not a video library you binge and forget. Training.
A Tight Plan
Strategy, tactics, risk management, contingency planning, debrief, lessons learned. Every trade gets commit criteria, eject criteria and a defined exit — written down before a dollar is at risk. Pilots don’t fly from memory. They fly a checklist.
Practical Application
Live Trade Briefs. Watch real positions open with real money — strike selection, entry timing, risk parameters, management, in real time. Then you take the controls and do it yourself.
As an F/A-18 instructor pilot, that is the whole method in two words. I demonstrate. Then I give you the controls and you do it. Not a lecture followed by a quiz. A demonstration followed by your hands on the stick, with someone watching who has done it before.
That is exactly what the Live Trade Briefs are. The demo. The doing is yours.
Before You Risk A Dollar: Go To The Simulator
Here is the step almost every new trader skips, and it is the one that would save them the most money.
We did not go from the classroom to the F/A-18. Nobody does. We went from training to the simulator building — where we ran the checklists, ran the emergency procedures, and broke things that could be broken without anyone dying. Over and over, until the procedure was automatic.
If I had walked out of the classroom straight into a Hornet cockpit, I would have been dead five minutes after takeoff — assuming I was even lucky enough to get airborne. Realistically I would not have made it off the taxiway.
The safest way to learn options trading is exactly the same: fly the procedure where nothing is at risk first. Open an account with a broker that offers virtual or paper trading. Place the trade. Manage it. Take the loss. Debrief it. Then do it again. Only when the checklist is automatic do you put real capital on the line. The SEC’s investor resources are worth reading on risk before you fund anything.
How We Run A Brief: Strategic → Operational → Tactical
Retail traders usually start with the trade. That is backwards, and it is why so much retail analysis is really just a guess wearing a chart. This is the sequence we teach when you learn options trading with us — the way a mission gets briefed, big to small. Get this habit early and everything else you learn about options trading has somewhere to attach itself.
Learn that sequence and you will never again put on a position because something looked interesting on a five-minute chart.
Here is S/O/T running on a live position, with real money. Going into Nvidia’s August 2026 earnings we sold a defined-risk iron condor. Thursday the stock ripped 8.7%, blew straight through the top of our range, and closed above our short strike. Every tactical signal on the screen said eject.
We never touched it — because the operational layer already had Friday marked: Federal Reserve Chairman Kevin Warsh delivering the Jackson Hole keynote with inflation still running hot. Hawkish Fed, risk assets come in, and the most crowded name on the board comes in hardest. Friday the market sold off, Nvidia gave back 4.57%, and the position expired at maximum profit.
A trader working the tactical layer alone closes that trade Thursday morning for a scratch. That is the entire difference, and it is worth reading in full: Nvidia Earnings Options: The Iron Condor That Paid In Full →
More closed positions, tickets included, in the Trade Alerts archive.
The single most useful thing you can have while you learn options trading: 30 tactics, one page each, with max profit, max risk, break-even and exit criteria. Plus the 7-Step Trade Plan we brief before any position goes on. Both free.
Send Me The ChecklistFree Training Library
Free, and sequenced. Work these in order and you will learn options trading the way we teach it — the tactics below are drawn from the thirty in the checklist. Contracts are standardized and exchange-listed; the Options Industry Council is a solid reference for the mechanics behind them.
Common Questions
How long does it take to learn options trading?
Long enough to build a procedure, which is not the same as long enough to memorise definitions. Most people can learn options trading well enough to place a defined-risk position inside a few weeks of structured work. Becoming consistent takes longer, and it depends almost entirely on whether you debrief your trades or just take them. Nobody has ever managed to learn options trading purely by reading about it.
Can I learn options trading with a small account?
Yes, and defined-risk tactics are exactly why you can learn options trading on a small account. A spread caps your maximum loss at entry, so position size becomes a decision rather than a hope. What a small account cannot survive is undefined risk — naked short options, oversized positions, no plan.
What’s the best way to learn options trading?
In this order: training, then a written checklist, then repetition in a paper account, then live capital in small size, then a debrief on every trade whether it won or lost. Skipping straight to live capital is the single most expensive mistake retail traders make. The Cboe lists the contracts most retail traders use, and any decent broker will give you a paper account to practise in first.
When You’re Ready For Real Training
Everything above is free and it is genuinely useful. But reading is not training, and you already know that or you would not have read this far.
Options Weapons School is the nine-session build — the same block-by-block method used to train fighter pilots, applied to options. It is available on its own, and it is the fastest way to go from knowing what a spread is to being able to place one properly. If you are serious about learning to trade options rather than just reading about them, this is where you start.
Options Weapons School is also included with Full Throttle annual — and that is the one I would point you at, for one reason.
OWS on its own gives you the training and the checklist. Full Throttle gives you those plus the practical application — Live Trade Briefs twice a week where you watch real positions get opened with real money, then go apply it. Training, checklist, and the doing, in one place.
That is demo/do. That is how we produced fighter pilots, and it is how we produce traders.
The complete way to learn options trading with us: Options Weapons School on its own, or inside Full Throttle annual alongside the Live Trade Briefs — training, checklist and practical application together.
See Full Throttle Options Weapons SchoolWhat side are you on?”
President, No Fallen Heroes Foundation | Founder, Sacred Warrior Fellowship
