A free lead-magnet ebook from Option Alpha that compresses its entire method into three filters: pick a direction, check IV rank against 50, then pick from a menu. The 18 strategy pages that follow are a reference card, not a lesson.
The one idea
The book's real argument is that direction barely matters. Du Plessis opens by showing that the Dow moved within a 2% band 94% of the time and an equal number of days up as down going back to 1990, so picking a direction is closer to a coin flip than a skill. His fix is to sell options far enough out of the money that you can be wrong on direction and still collect the premium, because implied volatility consistently overstates how much a stock actually moves.
That overstatement is the book's entire edge. It compares IV to realized volatility on three ETFs: DIA overstated actual moves by 6.25% on average over 13 years, GLD by 5.20%, and TLT by 5.67% over 12 years. Because IV runs hot more often than not, net option sellers hold a small structural advantage the way a casino holds one on a coin-flip game with skewed payouts.
The process itself is three filters applied in order. First, form a directional view: bullish, bearish, or neutral. That alone eliminates two-thirds of the strategy list. Second, check the stock's IV Rank (its current IV plotted on a 1-100 scale against its own one-year high and low). Above 50, you're a net seller; below 50, you either sit out or buy small. Third, with direction and IV rank both set, you're left with 2-4 strategies and the book's per-strategy pages tell you which one fits your risk tolerance and account type.
What it actually teaches
The book's process, worked exactly as it presents it, using its own YHOO example:
SET A DIRECTIONAL VIEW
Decide bullish, bearish, or neutral on the underlying. The book insists the call itself barely matters (its Dow data backs that up) because the point isn't to be right on direction, it's to narrow the strategy list. This step alone cuts the roughly 20-strategy menu covered later in the book down by two-thirds.
CHECK IV RANK AGAINST 50
Pull the stock's current implied volatility and rank it 1-100 against its own trailing one-year IV range. A reading right in the middle of the range scores near 50 regardless of the raw IV number, so a 30% IV stock can rank higher than a 50% IV stock if 30% sits near that stock's own historical ceiling. Above the 50th rank, you have to be a net option seller. Below 50, the book says avoid selling or buy small, since the seller's edge from IV over-expectation isn't there.
PICK FROM THE SURVIVING STRATEGIES
Cross direction and IV rank and you land in one of five buckets: high-IV bullish, low-IV bullish, high-IV neutral, low-IV bearish, high-IV bearish (plus a sixth, low-IV neutral, where the book's advice is simply to pass on the trade). Each bucket has 3-6 named strategies (put credit spread, short naked put, iron condor, short strangle, and so on), and the worked YHOO example (neutral view, IV rank 70) narrows to three: short straddle, short strangle, or iron butterfly, with the book recommending the iron butterfly for undefined-risk-averse or IRA accounts.
APPLY THE STRATEGY'S FIXED RULES
Every one of the 18 strategy pages runs the identical seven-field template: trade setup, optimal timeline (mostly 30-60 days to expiration for selling, 60-90 for buying, 20-45 for calendars and diagonals), volatility impact, time decay direction, position sizing (1-2% of equity for undefined-risk trades like naked puts and straddles, 3-5% notional for defined-risk spreads like iron condors, under 1% for debit strategies), a profit-taking target (usually 50% of max gain for defined-risk sells, 25% for straddles and iron butterflies, 25-50% for debit trades), and the break-even formula.
What it looks like Monday morning
A reader opens their broker's options screen, looks up IV rank on whatever underlying they're watching (the book assumes a data source like the Option Alpha Watch List provides this; most retail platforms show IV rank or IV percentile natively now), and only proceeds to a trade if that number and their directional read agree with one of the book's five buckets. If IV rank is under 50 and they're neutral, the instruction is explicit: don't trade.
For a trade that clears the filter, they size it off the book's bands (1-2% of equity on anything undefined-risk, 3-5% notional on defined-risk credit spreads and iron condors) and set a GTC order to close near 25-50% of max profit rather than holding to expiration, which is the one piece of the book that reads as genuine risk discipline rather than sales copy.
| Position | Trades | Win rate |
|---|---|---|
| Short call (bearish) | 1,805 | 71.9% |
| Short put (bullish) | 1,805 | 88.3% |
| Short strangle (call + put, neutral) | 1,805 | 74.7% |
All three ran inside the same 2008-to-present bull market the book explicitly names; no bear-market or high-volatility period is tested.
Choosing which option strategy to use for any particular trade setup is a process of elimination, NOT selection.Kirk Du Plessis, The Ultimate Options Strategy Guide
Where it fails
- It's a funnel document, not a book. Roughly a third of the 90 pages are the author's origin story, a carpentry parable retold twice, and full-page calls to action for Option Alpha's paid Watch List, podcast, and PRO membership. The actual method (direction, IV rank, pick a strategy) is fully stated in about 12 pages; the remaining 45 pages are a strategy glossary repeating one seven-field template 18 times with almost no variation in prose.
- The core backtest is a single, short, one-directional regime. The book's proof that option selling wins is 1,805 trades from 2008 to roughly 2015-2016, an 88.3% win rate on short puts and 71.9% on short calls, explicitly inside what the text itself calls an almost 8-year bull market off the 2008 bottom. It never shows what the same 70%-probability short strangle did in 2008 itself, in 2015's August volatility spike, or in anything resembling a sustained downtrend, so the headline win rates describe one of the most favorable option-selling stretches in market history, not the strategy in general.
- The 50-line IV Rank rule predates a well-known critique of IV Rank itself. The book treats IV Rank (current IV plotted 1-100 against a trailing one-year range) as the definitive volatility-timing tool, with 50 as the hard cutoff between selling and not selling. Since this book's writing, IV Percentile and IV Rank have both been criticized industry-wide (including elsewhere in Option Alpha's own later content) for being distorted by short volatility spikes that get baked into a full year of history, meaning a stock can show a misleadingly low or high rank for months after a single event. The book gives readers no such caveat and presents 50 as a clean, permanent line.
- No losing trade is walked through. Every one of the 18 strategy write-ups describes setup, timeline, sizing, and profit target, but none of them walks through what actually happens when the trade goes against you, how theta and IV moves interact when a short strangle gets tested on one side, or what an actual dollar loss looked like in a real account. The three backtest charts (DIA, GLD, TLT) show aggregate win rates and average IV-versus-realized spreads, never a single trade's P&L history, so a reader never sees the shape of a loss before being told to size up to 5% of equity per trade.
- It assumes a funded margin account and defined-risk comfort the reader may not have. Several of the recommended strategies (short naked put, short straddle, short strangle, custom naked put) are explicitly undefined-risk and require margin approval most new accounts and all IRAs don't have; the book itself flags the iron butterfly as the fallback specifically for IRA accounts, which quietly concedes that a chunk of its own strategy menu is unusable for a meaningful slice of readers without ever stating that up front.
Who it is for
Buy it if
You already understand options mechanics and want a fast, free reference that organizes strategies by directional view and IV rank rather than by name, or you want the three-filter mental model as a starting checklist before reading a deeper book on volatility or risk management.
Skip it if
You're new to options and need the mechanics explained (this book assumes you already know what a call, strike, and premium are), or you're looking for evidence the method survives a bear market or a volatility shock, since the only backtest in the book covers a single multi-year bull run.
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