Options have been around for a long, long time. I own 3 books about options trading. They make it clear from the first page that options are risky (some more than others) although they can also be used to hedge risk from other trades.
What’s new in options? Very short-dated options with prompts from the platforms to keep gambling.
How I Got Hooked on the Hottest Trade in Markets—and Bagged a 2,000% Return
A WSJ reporter tried her hand at trading the explosive short-dated options bets that have made financial markets riskier than ever
![Gunjan Banerji, a reporter for The Wall Street Journal, wanted to see what the hype was about and convinced her editors to let her get in on the short-dated options game.
By Gunjan Banerji, The Wall Street Journal, March 16, 2024
There’s a hot new trade on Wall Street, blurring the line between investing and gambling like never before.
It involves contracts known as short-dated options, bets on everything from individual stocks to indexes that run for just a few days, or in some cases mere hours.
Part of their appeal, and risk, is that the contracts can be like placing chips at a roulette table, or buying a scratch-off lottery ticket. There is the potential for huge, nearly instantaneous gains, or the loss of everything you put down…
It’s no coincidence these trades are booming while online sports betting is taking the U.S. by storm. …Some customers find the platforms addictive. … Robinhood and other brokers have drawn similar complaints from investors who say they are gamifying investing… a barrage of mobile alerts from Robinhood about my positions and stocks on my watch list encouraged me to hunt for another trade…[end quote]
What could possibly go wrong?
Wendy