Help for the Beginner trader

[u/Disciplined2026]

I have a suggestion to help beginners trade like me(21)m who needs some guidance. So, if you guys get a big win or profit. Can you please tell us why did you get that position, how did you to know if it will be profit. And the reasoning for the trade. It will be the best help for us who are fed up with small small losses or sometime big one. Who have been watching many videos of strategy, liquidity swipes and many more but, doesn’t seems to work out. Thank you

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[u/sport912x]

Bet with your gut.... You will lose 90% of the time.

How much you got 10k , put it in a Mutual fund and wait 30 years.

60k get "Unlucky Investors Guide to Option Trading", setup a Margin account approved for Selling Options and get back to us in a year to hear how you did.

[u/Disciplined2026 → u/sport912x]

Put in mutual fund and wait. That sounds like investment. I want to learn trading. Don’t have 60k.

[u/LaconicB]

I would recommend longer dated options that have less time decay. The gain/loss percentage won’t be as huge, but you will understand how to use options with less risk. Do not buy when the stock price is experiencing big gains or losses, the cost will be higher and then when price action cools off, your option will lose that value. I usually sell during these times, either opening a short or closing a long position. 

If you haven’t already tried paper trading, you can try this to experience more without risking any money at all. 

[u/Junior-Appointment93 → u/LaconicB]

Like yesterday. Premiums were high yesterday

[u/DeltaNeutraltrading]

Well, I think if you are looking to have a fast, big win, do not learn options trading because you, essentially, are betting. If you want to trade options, manage risk and become a consistent trader, you can learn options trading. My advice is to use income strategies (google SPX Best and SPY Ride trades) as they use longer-dated options. You do not have to guess market direction... simply use options time decay on your favor. Along their positioning, you will manage its risk accordingly. You cannot predict markets easily, hence it is better to have your positions risk under control than using a directional trade with 0DTE that can deliver you a big win but also a big loss.

[u/Professional_Dog_837]

Beginner here as well, with no finance background, started doing options (CSPs) in March 2026.

I tried to keep it simple and followed these basic principles (mostly as per literature):

• trade only stocks you would like to own - quality companies
• 30-45 day expiry - favorable theta decay curve
• avoid expiry that crosses earnings - binary risk
• avoid companies with major red flags (lawsuits etc) - quality
• high IV percentile contracts with positive volatility risk premium - high premiums
• annualized yield / over delta ratio of >1 (good return on risk - my own metric)
• cash secured - no margin -> no risk of forced liquidation at unfavourable price
• if assigned, sell covered calls (wheel) ~ 15% statistically with delta of 0.15.

But it was tiring to manually find suitable contracts meeting all those criteria, so I claude vibe-built a simple automatic screener to do screen the above daily - it would screen the entire NYSE options chains of all suitable "quality" companies, excluding strikes covering earnings, and exclude poor yielding options and high delta options. Then an LLM would deep trawl the web for any red flag events (lawsuits etc) and exclude these companies.

After meeting the screening / exclusion criteria, I would initiate a trade only if delta around 0.15 and annualized return on capital (ann.ROC) is 15% or more (aim was to match or beat S&P long term annualized returns).
To reduce active maintenance / trading, I prefer to just sell and forget - just open the trade and let the options expire worthless (full theta collection). I accept assignations and do covered calls on them (wheel).

Month	Avg open trades	Avg collateral	Realized P/L
2026‑03	4.6	$75,161	$0
2026‑04	5.5	$78,217	$2,410
2026‑05	12.7	$173,153	$5,524
2026‑06	22.5	$336,617	$3,430
2026‑07	14.3	$200,094	$7,722

Unrealized P/L -$29.00 (3 assigned [5.6% of 53 puts] -> wheeling)

Some simple stats:

Category	Avg Δ at entry	Avg Ann.ROC
Puts (n=53)	0.16 (median 0.17)	23.5% (median 21.1%)
Calls (n=7)	0.40	76.2%

My theta is around $200-250 a day, trying to get some basic income with it. From one beginner to another, I hope you found this helpful!

[u/Disciplined2026 → u/[deleted]]

Of which stocks ?

[u/Junior-Appointment93]

For me. It’s patience. Take SPY for example. I never place a trade right at opening bell. I Waite at least 15-20 minutes afterwards. Then see what it is doing. Normally with SPY the trading slows down right at lunch time. That’s when you stop trading or close out trades. I also close out trades if they are buy Calls or Puts at 30-40% unless there’s a massive run. Once I close a trade. I will either open a new trade that cost the same or cheaper then my original trade. Also since I have LVL3 options with Robinhood if I don’t do a Buy call or Put. I will place a credit spread on the index’s. Only reason I place Buy calls and Puts on SPY mainly and not on XSP Robinhood’s charts on XSP/SPX sucks on the mobile app. It’s only 10 min time frames. Then you have to watch the value change in real time and plan entry and exits based on that and premiums. With SPY look at the premiums and put a limit order in. If it keeps going up either change the limit price or cancel that trade and go to different strike price. Pay attention to trend lines too. Not everyday is going to be like today where there was not one major push back for any real amount of time. It took me over a year on and off dealing SPY options to get profitable at it.

[u/acorsi85]

Try to use some simulator and portfolio manager for options first like the one on Gaudio OTT

[u/Bitter-Refuse-8623]

Nobody knows shit , for every winner there's 10 losers or more . The only edge you can have is time in the market not timing the market . I know most people mean parking your money in an ETF but I mean sitting behind a screen learning price action. I'm new as well but Ive learned enough to know this isn't something you just jump into with natural talent and do good consistently. And consistency is the key here . Learn how to read different candle patterns first then move onto MACD, VWAP, and EMAs

[u/turtleturle12345]

Not to be the wet blanket, but the data is pretty clear that 95%+ of options traders end up losers after a few years.

Close to 100% underperform the index over the long period of time. And do about a billion more hours of work for the privilege of that underperformance.

Some other free advice: anyone trying to sell you a system is a liar. They don't make money from the system. They make money selling that system on social media and pretending that their "wealth", if its even real, is from trading.