Learning about options can be very difficult. I always like to say there are three difficult phases when learning how to trade options. The first, in my opinion, is learning about options, including the strategies and the greeks. The second is the easiest of the three, but by no means is it easy: learning when and what strategies to use based on the charts, time and volatility, just to name a few. And the last is the hardest: managing the trade.

Maybe you will never become a so-called “option greeks expert,” but you may just need to know one thing that might help you immensely and that is to spread it out. Here is what I mean. If you are concerned about one or more of the option greeks, consider a spread trade. An option spread that involves buying and selling either all calls or puts will always have positive and negative greeks.

Just to give you a quick example, let’s imagine you are bullish on a stock moving higher. A long call would be an option so to speak. But what if you are worried about time decay eroding your option premium? A long call has negative theta, so time passing will hurt the position based on time. You could sell a higher strike call option with the same expiration, which would add some positive theta to the mix. Short options (as in this case a short call) have positive theta. Time passing helps the position because it lowers the premium based on time. Now a trader will have less exposure to time and possibly positive theta because of the spread.

A spread trade is not the answer for everything involved with options. But knowing you can offset some potential positive or negative effects of the option greeks can give you more peace of mind during the duration of the trade.

John Kmiecik, Market Taker Mentoring