This is a Profits Run lead magnet that defines options terms and walks a broker screen, not a trading book with a method. It teaches you the words. It does not teach you a way to trade.
The one idea
The whole report exists to remove fear of options jargon. It walks through puts, calls, strike price, premium, intrinsic and extrinsic value, the four Greeks (delta, gamma, theta, vega), and how to read a broker's option chain, using a single running example (a $50 stock, a $45 put, a $55 call) to show how a contract pays off at expiration.
Its one real argument is that options are not inherently riskier than stocks: they require far less margin (Poulos cites 5 to 10 percent of the capital a stock position would need, versus 40 to 50 percent margin on stock), and the danger comes from position sizing and leverage abuse, not from the instrument itself.
Poulos is explicit that this report stops at Options 101. The book names five strategy families (directional, protective, market-neutral, income) and tells you which market view maps to which family (bullish leans toward buying calls or selling puts, bearish toward buying puts or selling calls, sideways toward selling calls or puts), but it never builds out a single complete strategy with entry rules, exit rules, or position sizing. It ends by pointing you at Profits Run's paid programs for that part.
What it actually teaches
There is no trading method here, just four building blocks the report expects you to have before you can use one.
LEARN THE PRICING VOCABULARY
An option's premium splits into intrinsic value (strike price minus current price, only present when in-the-money) and extrinsic value (everything tied to time and volatility). The book's worked example: a 40-strike call with the stock at $45 and 90 days to expiration has $5 of intrinsic value and roughly $2 of extrinsic value, for a $7 total price. Drop to 30 days and the same option is priced at about $6, with extrinsic value collapsing to zero by expiration.
READ THE GREEKS BEFORE YOU ENTER
Delta tells you how much the option price moves per dollar of stock movement (roughly 0.50 at-the-money, 0.60 to 1.0 in-the-money, 0.10 to 0.40 out-of-the-money in the book's ranges). Theta tells you how fast time value is decaying, and the book's rule of thumb is to hold long options with 90-plus days left (theta erodes slowly) and sell short options with 30 days or less left, where the theta curve steepens hard into expiration. Vega tells you how much the premium moves per one point of implied volatility.
MATCH DIRECTION TO STRATEGY FAMILY
If your independent read on the stock is bullish, the book points toward buying calls or selling puts. Bearish points toward buying puts or selling calls. Sideways points toward selling calls or puts (never naked, the book warns, only as part of a combined position). This mapping assumes you already have a working method for calling direction; the report supplies none.
CHECK LIQUIDITY BEFORE YOU TRADE THE CHAIN
On the option chain, favor a narrow bid-ask spread (the book cites 2 to 3 cents on low-priced options, 5 to 10 cents on higher-priced ones) and open interest of at least 500 contracts on monthly options as a rough liquidity floor, while noting it is not an absolute requirement.
What it looks like Monday morning
A reader who genuinely did not know what a strike price or a Greek was before opening this walks away able to read a broker's option chain without panicking, and understands why an out-of-the-money call can lose value even while the stock goes up (a volatility drop can outrun the price gain). That is the entire deliverable.
It does not change what anyone actually does Monday morning in the market, because it hands over no entry trigger, no exit rule, and no position-sizing formula. The next real step is picking one of the strategy families it names and going to get that strategy's actual rules somewhere else, which is exactly what the report tells you to do at the end.
Options is the same way, if you know what you are doing, they are no more risky than trading stocksBill Poulos, Simple Options Trading
Where it fails
- It is a lead magnet, not a book, and reads like one. At 68 pages with no ISBN, no publisher's edition history, and a closing pitch to buy Profits Run's paid programs, this is a free special report structured to sell a funnel. Anyone expecting a complete trading book, with a tested strategy and a track record, is reading the wrong document.
- There is no strategy in the strategies chapter. The section literally titled Strategies (page 41) lists five category names, directional, protective, market-neutral, income, and a short list of when each applies to a market view. None of the five gets built out: no strike selection rule, no expiration rule, no stop, no target, no sizing formula. It is a table of contents for a strategy, not a strategy.
- The broker walkthrough is dated and platform-specific. About 25 of the 68 pages are annotated screenshots of the OptionsXpress virtual trading platform quoting AAPL and Baidu (BIDU) with trade dates from June through October 2013. OptionsXpress was absorbed into Charles Schwab in 2014 and that exact interface no longer exists, so a third of the report is a demo of software readers cannot open an account on anymore.
- It assumes you already have a directional edge and never delivers one. Every strategy recommendation in the book (buy calls if bullish, sell calls if bearish, and so on) depends on an accurate read of where the stock is headed. The report says outright that you need, quote, a method to identify high-probability, directional moves, but supplies none. Everything downstream of that gap is untested here.
- The risk framing undersells assignment and naked-option risk. The book calls assignment rare and dismisses it in three sentences (buy back the shares or sell them, and you are done), and it flags naked short calls as very dangerous only in passing, in a single sentence buried in the Strategies section, with no worked example of the unlimited-risk scenario it names two pages earlier for a short call. A reader relying only on this report has no concrete sense of what a bad naked short actually costs.
Who it is for
Buy it if
You have never opened an option chain and want the vocabulary (strike, premium, delta, theta, ITM versus OTM) explained once, cleanly, with a broker screen in front of you, before you go pay for or research an actual strategy.
Skip it if
You already know what a Greek is, or you are looking for a system with entry rules, exits, and sizing. This has no track record, no backtest, and no complete strategy anywhere in it, only a strategy taxonomy and a sales pitch for Profits Run's paid courses at the end.
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