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Options Strategies: A Complete Guide to Trading Options

This page is the starting point for every options strategy guide on StockBotty. Before diving int...

Wheel Strategy: Structure, Cycle, and When to Use It

The wheel strategy is a repeating cycle of selling cash-secured puts and covered calls on a stock...

Iron Condor Strategy: Structure, Payoff, and When to Use It

An iron condor is a four-legged, defined-risk options strategy that profits when a stock trades s...

Call Debit Spread and Call Credit Spread: Structure, Payoff, and When to Use Each

A call debit spread and a call credit spread both use two call strikes in the same expiration...

Put Debit Spread and Put Credit Spread: Structure, Payoff, and When to Use Each

A put debit spread and a put credit spread both use two put strikes in the same expiration...

Long Call and Short Call: Structure, Payoff, and When to Use Each

Every call option has two sides: someone buys it, someone sells it. The buyer holds a long call...

Long Put and Short Put: Structure, Payoff, and When to Use Each

Every put option has two sides: someone buys it, someone sells it. The buyer holds a long put...

Broken Wing Butterfly Strategy: Call and Put Versions Explained

A broken wing butterfly is a butterfly spread with one wing stretched wider than the other. That ...

Ratio Spread Strategy: Call and Put Ratio Spreads Explained

A ratio spread buys one option and sells two (or more) further out-of-the-money options of the sa...

Calendar Spread Strategy: Structure, Payoff, and When to Use It

A calendar spread sells a near-term option and buys a longer-dated option at the same strike. Unl...

Protective Put Strategy: Structure, Payoff, and When to Use It

A protective put buys a put option against shares you already own - one contract per 100 shares....

Covered Call Strategy: Structure, Payoff, and When to Use It

A covered call sells a call option against shares you already own - one contract per 100 shares....

Iron Butterfly Strategy: Structure, Payoff, and How It Differs From an Iron Condor

An iron butterfly is close cousin to the iron condor covered elsewhere on this site - same four-l...

Straddle and Strangle Strategies: Long and Short, Explained

A straddle and a strangle are both built from one call and one put in the same expiration...

Jade Lizard Strategy: Structure, Payoff, and Why It Has No Upside Risk

A jade lizard combines a short put with a call credit spread, all in the same expiration -...

Diagonal Spread Strategy: Structure, Payoff, and How It Relates to Calendar Spreads

A diagonal spread sits at the intersection of two ideas already covered on this site. A calendar ...

Collar Strategy: Structure, Payoff, and a Deep ITM Variant

A collar combines the two strategies already covered in the covered call and protective put guide...

Playbook: How I Try to Manage and Rescue Losing Option Trades

⚠ Before you read any of this: everything in the Playbook is a record of my own trading...

Covered Call Rescue: How I Roll Up and Out to Avoid Losing My Shares

⚠ Before you read this: this is what I personally do when one of my covered calls is...

How I Adjust a Losing Short Put: My Premium-Multiple Framework

⚠ Before you read this: this is how I personally manage my own losing short puts - not...

How I Recovered a Losing Put Credit Spread by Selling the Long Put and Rolling

⚠ Read this before the technique below. This is a record of something I've done on my own...

Short Put to Strangle to Straddle: The Most Aggressive Recovery I Use

⚠⚠ This is the most aggressive technique in this Playbook - read carefully before anything else. ...

Using a Put Ratio Spread as an Entry Tool Instead of a Limit Order or Short Put

⚠ Before you read this: this is not a rescue technique - it's how I sometimes structure an...

The Options Greeks Explained: Delta, Gamma, Theta, Vega, and How They Interact

Every strategy guide on this site references the Greeks in passing - theta decay here, gamma risk...

Assignment and Exercise Explained: How It Actually Works

Early assignment, pin risk, and dividend risk show up in the risk section of nearly every strateg...

Rolling Options Explained: Out, Up/Down, and Down and Out

Rolling comes up as a management technique in nearly every strategy guide on this site, described...

Implied Volatility Explained: The Basics, Term Structure, and Skew

IV-Rank and IV Percentile, covered on the strategies overview, describe whether implied volatilit...

Futures Options: Delivery Risk vs. Cash Settlement

Futures options get less everyday attention than equity options, but they carry a mechanical wrin...

How to Read an Option Chain

An option chain looks dense the first time it's opened - rows of numbers stretching across the sc...

How to Read Options Flow: Filtering Noise From Signal

A colorful "unusual options activity" screenshot is easy to find and easy to misread. Large trade...