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What is the best way to make a bet that a certain stock will go up in the medium term?
Specific stock advice isn't permitted on these boards. I'm discussing the process of a call spread with the Apple Jan 13 calls as an example.  In effect, you have $10 to 'bet.' Each bet you'd construct offers a different return (odds). For example, If you bought the $750 call at $37.25, you'd need to look to find what strike has a bid of $27 or higher. The $790 is bid $27.75. So this particular spread is a 4 to 1 bet the stock will close in January over $790, with a $760 break even.  You can pull the number from Yahoo to a spreadsheet to make your own chart of spread costs, but I'll give one more example.  You think it will go over $850, and that strike is now ask $18.85. The highest strike currently listed is $930, and it's bid $10.35. So this spread cost is $850, and a close over $930 returns $8000 or over 9 to 1.  Again, this is not advice, just an analysis of how spreads work. Note, any anomalies in the pricing above is the effect of a particular strike having no trades today, not every strike is active so 'last trade' can be days old.   Note: My answer adds to AlexR's response in that once you used the word bet and showed a desire to make a risky move, options are the answer. You acknowledged you understand the basic concept, but given the contract size of 100 shares, these suggestions are ways to bet under your $1000 limit and profit from the gain in the underlying stock you hope to see.