Chapter 27: Where to Get Help

Book: Understanding Options 2E

Type: Chapter 27

Difficulty: Beginner

Reading time: 8 min

Core idea

Options education does not stop with a book. The market changes — new products launch, regulations shift, volatility regimes turn over — and every trader needs an ongoing source of fresh material. Fortunately the best options education is free: the Options Industry Council (OIC) and the Chicago Board Options Exchange (CBOE) maintain libraries of courses, calculators, and live webcasts, and most major brokerages run their own education centers. The premise of this chapter is simple: use these resources, paper trade before real money, and never stop learning.

Free beats expensive

The single best free resource is the OIC’s helpline — staffed by people whose job is to answer your options questions. CBOE’s calculators let you price hypothetical trades. Brokerage education centers offer structured curricula tailored to their platforms.

Practice before capital

Paper trading — simulated trading with fake money — is the rehearsal room. Most brokers offer it free. Trade your strategies for 30 to 90 days on paper before committing real capital, especially for any multi-leg structure.

Why it matters

Most people who lose money in options were never taught the mechanics well enough. They watched a YouTube video, bought a call, and called it research. The resources in this chapter cost nothing and would prevent the majority of beginner losses. Treating options education as a continuous practice — rather than a one-time event — is the single biggest separator between traders who survive year five and traders who blow up in year one.

The compounding effect of small lessons

A single webcast on assignment risk can save you from a $5,000 mistake. One hour with the OIC calculator can change how you size every future trade. The cost-benefit math on free education is absurdly favorable.

Key takeaways

Key takeaways

• The Options Industry Council (OIC) at optionseducation.org offers free courses, calculators, and a phone helpline staffed by options specialists.
• The Chicago Board Options Exchange (CBOE) at cboe.com provides option chains, calculators, and educational webcasts.
• Most major brokerages run free options education centers tailored to their platforms.
• Financial news sites (Yahoo Finance, Bloomberg, CNBC) provide market context but rarely deep options education.
• Paper trading lets you practice strategies risk-free — use it for 30 to 90 days before deploying real capital on any new strategy.
• Options markets continually evolve — new products, new volatility regimes, new regulations — so continuous learning is the price of admission.

Mental model

click to zoom

A layered options education stack — start at the bottom and climb

Read it as: Options education is layered. Start with free OIC and CBOE foundations, practice with paper trading, learn the tools, then graduate to mentorship channels and advanced reading. Ongoing education at the top of the stack is what keeps you from drifting out of step with a changing market.

Practical application

1. Bookmark optionseducation.org and cboe.com today. Free, comprehensive, and continuously updated. There is no excuse not to use them.

2. Open a paper trading account on your brokerage. Most brokers offer them — Thinkorswim, TastyTrade, Interactive Brokers, Webull, and others. Use realistic position sizes, not fantasy amounts.

3. Call the OIC helpline (1-888-OPTIONS) with real questions. It is genuinely staffed and genuinely free. Use it when you encounter assignment, exercise, or settlement scenarios you do not understand.

4. Take one structured course per quarter. Whether through your broker’s education center or a free OIC course, set a cadence so learning does not lapse.

5. Track three sources of market context. Pick three (a major financial news site, a CBOE volatility update, a brokerage daily commentary) and check them before every trading session.

6. Read Natenberg after the basics. Once you have 3 to 6 months of paper-trading experience, “Option Volatility & Pricing” by Sheldon Natenberg is the standard advanced reference.

Beware paid courses promising returns

The best options education is free. Treat any course promising specific returns with deep skepticism — they are almost always selling certainty that does not exist.

Example

A 60-day pre-trading curriculum

A new options trader can build a credible foundation in 60 days at zero cost. Weeks 1 and 2: complete the OIC’s beginner course (call/put basics, exercise, assignment, expiration). Weeks 3 and 4: open a paper trading account and execute 20 simulated trades — a mix of long calls, long puts, covered calls, and cash-secured puts on liquid ETFs like SPY and QQQ. Track P/L by strategy. Weeks 5 and 6: take the OIC intermediate course on spreads, then paper-trade 10 vertical spreads. Week 7: call the OIC helpline with the three questions that came up most often during paper trading. Week 8: review the paper-trading record, identify the strategies with the highest win rate and best risk-adjusted return, and write a one-page trading plan that limits real-money trading to those strategies. Total cost: zero. Total time investment: roughly 30 hours. The trader who skips this and jumps straight to real money usually pays the equivalent of these 30 hours in tuition — except in dollars and to other market participants.

Related lessons

Related

Chapter 26: Sheldon Natenberg Interview Why Natenberg's advanced reference is the natural next book after the basics. Chapter 28: Lessons I Learned About Options Distilled wisdom for putting your education to work without losing the account. Chapter 23: Delta and the Other Greeks Use the free CBOE calculators to practice computing the Greeks on your hypothetical trades.