McMillan on Options

Some of the negative reviews sounded like they wanted a short book that said "Do the following and you will be very rich very quick". Guess what, that book doesn't exist and will never exist. Options are very useful if used properly but to use them properly you need a deep understanding of risk and the mechanics of options. These concepts are mathematical in nature and so is this book. For a variety of reasons just buying a bunch of options is a suckers game as many have learned, but used to reduce risk as a hedge is a different matter. McMillan's other book Options as a Strategic Investment would be the place to start learning. This advanced text explains many things professionals are doing and gives insight to why the markets behave as they do. If you want to get involved with options you need to understand this book thoroughly.

This is an excellent book. It has a logical progression and thoroughly describes option strategies from the conservative to the aggressive. My only suggestion to enhance the book's practicality would be to have an appendix showing profit and loss worksheets for each strategy. His website, The Option Strategist, has some useful option market commentary.

"McMillan on Options" is a rare kind of book, and one of the very best. Especially revealing are the discussions in Chapter 4, "The Predictive Power of Options", on how certain patterns of option trading volume and implied volatility can be tip-offs to insider activity and sharp moves in the underlying stock, and on how to take practical advantage of such patterns. The chapters on trading systems and on how to trade volatility and the volatility skew were also well written and useful to the active options trader. All in all, I would recommend this book to anyone seriously contemplating getting involved in the options game. In fact, "McMillan on Options" and "Options as a Strategic Investment" (a real classic, also by McMillan), were among the very few options books that I made reference to in my own recent work ("Advanced Option Pricing Models", McGraw Hill, Feb 2005) Jeffrey Owen Katz, Ph.D.

As a ROP (registered Options principal) I feel I am uniquely qualified to review this book. First, understand that Larry McMillan is considered by many to be the best options mind on Wall Street (sorry Bernie Schaeffer). His knowledge of this less-than-logical derivative investment is the equivalent of Alan Greenspan’s knowledge of the economy.My assessment: this is a good book. McMillan covers virtually every aspect of options trading: history, terms, strategies, volatility, theoretical approaches, etc. I am particularly impressed by Larry’s use of historical examples to bring complicated strategies down to basic levels.This is not to say this is an easy read. An easy investment read is Peter Lynch’s "One Up on Wall Street". McMillan on Options is more like a doctor’s guide to brain surgery: the pictures are cool but the content can be complicated. Topics covered include spreads (verts, calendar, diagonal), straddles, combos, the greeks (delta, rho, theta, vega and gamma) and strategies that employ these. If volatility is your life, and you hold a hefty position in Rolaids futures, then this book is for you. I have not read a more comprehensive, useable options book. I believe all options traders and speculators should own McMillan on Options.

Having never traded options before but having an engineering background, I found the text as dry as my college engineering textbooks, but as informative as ever. I finally got the hang of it by the last chapter, and found it more informative reading the second time.I CANNOT IMAGINE TRADING OPTIONS W/O A FULL UNDERSTANDING OF THE CONCEPTS HE PRESENTS. It is not, however, intuitive to the novice options trader. It may take reading a second time to get the hang of it.