Based on your financial expertise, provide your response or viewpoint on the given financial question or topic. The response format is open.

Options for the intelligent but inexperienced
Realize this is almost a year old, but I just wanted to comment on something in Dynas' answer above...  "Whenever you trade always think about what the other guys is thinking. Sometimes we forget their is someone else on the other side of my trade that thinks essentially the exact opposite of me. Its a zero sum game." From a market maker's perspective, their primary goal is not necessarily to make money by you being wrong, it is to make money on the bid-offer spread and hedging their book (and potentially interalize). That being said, the market maker would likely be quoting one side of the market away from top of the book if they don't want to take exposure in that direction (i.e. their bid will be lower than the highest bid available or their offer higher than the lowest offer available). This isn't really going to change anything if you're trading on an exchange, but important to consider if you can only see the prices your broker/dealer provides to you and they are your counterparty in the trade.