Like a few of you, I'm just learning the basics of covered call writing. And, as a result I have been looking for a text that is very basic, something on the order of this-is-a-put, this-is-a-call, this-is-the-CBOE, etc. And well written. I tend to get confused very easily (g).
I think I've found it, after some searching, in Michael Thomsett's Getting Started in Options (4th Ed). Fourth editions always sound like good things to me, particularly if the last edition is recent. This one is being published as I type. I've read a couple of chapters, am pleased. We'll see how it holds up in the 5th chapter on selling calls.
Some of you might find my path to Thomsett of interest. An earlier SI thread on covered calls recommended Harvey Friedentag's Stocks for Options Trading. I found it, as Frank has offered in a PM, both too easy and too hard. Friedentag has a section on basics which was much too basic for me but drops off the cliff when he gets to options in chapter 4. Badly written. I could get it with extremely careful reads but had to work much too hard to get there.
This thread's early recommendation of MacMillan's Options as a Strategic Investment sounded about right. Bought it, worked on it for several days. It's a wonderful book, the kind I'll keep on my shelf just to my right, for every options question I run into. But his assumptions about options knowledge are just ever so slightly beyond my knowledge. I can get it but again needed something more basic.
Found Bernie Schaeffer's The Option Adviser book at Barnes and Noble. Well written but lacks my basics. Or, if they are there they did not pop up while I sat in a wonderful overstuffed chair drinking a bit of Starbucks (too bad they don't have Peet's).
I looked over the material on the CBOE website which has been variously recommended. It is basic but a bit garbled. I can get it but writing is not done by someone paying attention to pedagogy. And, unless I printed out a helluva lot of pages, not very portable, at least not like a book. Perhaps there is a good options book downloadable to my Gemstar e-book.
So I wandered some more, found a recommendation for the Thomsett book on another SI options thread, bought it, and am reading it. Two chapters in, it appears to be both basic and well written. If anyone is interested, I'll let you know how it holds up.
John |
