Consolidate your options foundation and set yourself up for advanced strategies.
We have covered a huge range of foundational topics in options trading over the last 35 days (all linked at the bottom of this article), from the basics of calls and puts to risk management, spreads, event trades, and efficient execution.
This review distills the most important lessons so far, helping you lock in key concepts before we move on to more advanced material.
Core Concepts You Should Own by Now
1. Options Basics
- Calls, puts, and how they work on Derive (European, cash-settled, no early exercise)
- Understanding strike, expiry, premium, and payoff diagrams
2. Greeks Mastery
- Delta, Gamma, Theta, Vega, and Rho for both single trades and full portfolios
- How Greeks change as price, volatility, and time evolve
3. Strategic Structures
- Vertical spreads, calendar spreads, straddles, strangles, butterflies, iron condors, and risk reversals
- Building both risk-defined and income-oriented trades
4. Managing Risk
- Defining max loss and max gain for every trade
- Using subaccounts to isolate strategies, time frames, or assets
- Portfolio Greeks for holistic risk management
5. Trading Volatility and Events
- Implied versus realized volatility
- Event-driven trades with straddles, strangles, and calendars
- Statistical arbitrage and pairs trading
6. Execution and Liquidity
- Using order books, limit orders, and RFQ for best fills
- Avoiding slippage and hidden costs
- Tracking execution quality in your process
Habits to Build
- Review your Greeks and risk at both trade and portfolio level
- Use subaccounts to keep your book organized and your risk separated
- Track execution costs and learn where you give up PnL
- Regularly revisit your strategy, adjusting as volatility, market structure, or your goals change
On Derive
- Every tool and strategy covered so far can be executed and tracked live on Derive
- Experiment with subaccounts, Greeks monitoring, and advanced trade types to deepen your edge
Your Action Today
- Revisit any topic from Days 1–35 that still feels shaky
- Build a few sample trades or backtests on Derive to reinforce the concepts
- Set a weekly schedule to review portfolio Greeks, subaccounts, and execution quality
Tomorrow, we step forward into more advanced options strategies and real-world case studies.
Coming tomorrow:
Day 37 – Advanced Option Structures: Case Studies from Crypto Markets
Hasta manana
Cpt
CptRandlelwa
Derive Options Masterclass: Days 1–35 Archive
Day 1 – Welcome to the Derive Options Masterclass
https://open.substack.com/pub/cptrandlelwa/p/welcome-to-the-derive-options-masterclass?r=1f3l1e&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web
Day 2 – Navigating Derive: Your First Options Trade
https://open.substack.com/pub/cptrandlelwa/p/day-2-navigating-derive-your-first?r=1f3l1e&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web
Day 3 – European vs American Options: What Matters?
https://open.substack.com/pub/cptrandlelwa/p/day-3-european-vs-american-options?r=1f3l1e&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web
Day 4 – What Are Calls and Puts? The Foundation
https://open.substack.com/pub/cptrandlelwa/p/day-4-what-are-calls-and-puts-the?r=1f3l1e&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web
Day 5 – Understanding Premiums: What Drives Option Prices?
https://open.substack.com/pub/cptrandlelwa/p/day-5-understanding-premiums-what?r=1f3l1e&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web
Day 6 – Time Decay and Theta: How Options Lose Value
https://open.substack.com/pub/cptrandlelwa/p/day-6-time-decay-and-theta-how-options?r=1f3l1e&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web
Day 7 – Volatility and Vega: Why Movement Matters
https://open.substack.com/pub/cptrandlelwa/p/day-7-volatility-and-vega-why-movement?r=1f3l1e&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web
Day 8 – Putting It Together: How Price, Time, and Volatility Interact
https://open.substack.com/pub/cptrandlelwa/p/day-8-putting-it-together-how-price?r=1f3l1e&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web
Day 9 – Long Call and Long Put: The Classic Option Plays
https://open.substack.com/pub/cptrandlelwa/p/day-9-long-call-and-long-put-the?r=1f3l1e&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web
Day 10 – Short Call and Short Put: How Selling Options Works
https://open.substack.com/pub/cptrandlelwa/p/day-10-short-call-and-short-put-how?r=1f3l1e&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web
Day 11 – Vertical Spreads: Risk-Defined Directional Trades
https://open.substack.com/pub/cptrandlelwa/p/day-11-vertical-spreads-risk-defined?r=1f3l1e&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web
Day 12 – Credit Spreads: Income with Limited Risk
https://open.substack.com/pub/cptrandlelwa/p/day-12-credit-spreads-income-with?r=1f3l1e&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web
Day 13 – Straddles: Betting on Volatility
https://open.substack.com/pub/cptrandlelwa/p/day-13-straddles-betting-on-volatility?r=1f3l1e&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web
Day 14 – Strangles: Cheaper Volatility Bets
https://open.substack.com/pub/cptrandlelwa/p/day-14-strangles-cheaper-volatility?r=1f3l1e&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web
Day 15 – Iron Condors: Income from Stability
https://open.substack.com/pub/cptrandlelwa/p/day-15-iron-condors-income-from-stability?r=1f3l1e&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web
Day 16 – Delta Hedging: How Pros Neutralize Exposure
https://open.substack.com/pub/cptrandlelwa/p/day-16-delta-hedging-how-pros-neutralize?r=1f3l1e&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web
Day 17 – Gamma: How Fast Delta Changes
https://open.substack.com/pub/cptrandlelwa/p/day-17-gamma-how-fast-delta-changes?r=1f3l1e&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web
Day 18 – Vega: How Volatility Impacts Option Prices
https://open.substack.com/pub/cptrandlelwa/p/day-18-vega-how-volatility-impacts?r=1f3l1e&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web
Day 19 – Theta Deep Dive: Understanding Time Decay
https://open.substack.com/pub/cptrandlelwa/p/day-19-theta-deep-dive-understanding?r=1f3l1e&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web
Day 20 – How to Read Greeks Together
https://open.substack.com/pub/cptrandlelwa/p/day-20-how-to-read-greeks-together?r=1f3l1e&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web
Day 21 – Trading Earnings Events: Volatility Before and After
https://open.substack.com/pub/cptrandlelwa/p/day-21-trading-earnings-events-volatility?r=1f3l1e&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web
Day 22 – Event Straddles and Strangles: Maximizing Volatility Plays
https://open.substack.com/pub/cptrandlelwa/p/day-22-event-straddles-and-strangles?r=1f3l1e&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web
Day 23 – Managing Theta Decay: How Buyers and Sellers Think Differently
https://open.substack.com/pub/cptrandlelwa/p/day-23-managing-theta-decay-how-buyers?r=1f3l1e&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web
Day 24 – Building Risk-Defined Spreads: Safer Leverage
https://open.substack.com/pub/cptrandlelwa/p/day-24-building-risk-defined-spreads?r=1f3l1e&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web
Day 25 – Ratio Spreads: Controlled Asymmetry
https://open.substack.com/pub/cptrandlelwa/p/day-25-ratio-spreads-controlled-asymmetry?r=1f3l1e&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web
Day 26 – Calendar Spreads: Volatility and Time in One Trade
https://open.substack.com/pub/cptrandlelwa/p/day-26-calendar-spreads-volatility?r=1f3l1e&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web
Day 27 – Butterfly Spreads: Pinpointing Price with Limited Risk
https://open.substack.com/pub/cptrandlelwa/p/day-27-butterfly-spreads-pinpointing?r=1f3l1e&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web
Day 28 – Iron Butterflies: Premium Harvesting at the Pin
https://open.substack.com/pub/cptrandlelwa/p/day-28-iron-butterflies-premium-harvesting?r=1f3l1e&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web
Day 29 – Adjusting and Rolling Spreads: Staying in the Game
https://open.substack.com/pub/cptrandlelwa/p/day-29-adjusting-and-rolling-spreads?r=1f3l1e&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web
Day 30 – Iron Condors in Volatile Markets: Stretching the Range
https://open.substack.com/pub/cptrandlelwa/p/day-30-iron-condors-in-volatile-markets?r=1f3l1e&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web
Day 31 – Synthetic Positions: Replicating Payoff Profiles
https://open.substack.com/pub/cptrandlelwa/p/day-31-synthetic-positions-replicating?r=1f3l1e&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web
Day 32 – Statistical Arbitrage: Options for Mean Reversion and Correlation
https://open.substack.com/pub/cptrandlelwa/p/day-32-statistical-arbitrage-options?r=1f3l1e&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web
Day 33 – Risk Reversals: Expressing Skew and Directional Bias
https://open.substack.com/pub/cptrandlelwa/p/day-33-risk-reversals-expressing?r=1f3l1e&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web
Day 34 – Managing Portfolio Greeks: Active Risk Control
https://open.substack.com/pub/cptrandlelwa/p/day-34-managing-portfolio-greeks?r=1f3l1e&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web
Day 35 – Managing Liquidity and Slippage: Executing Like a Pro
https://open.substack.com/pub/cptrandlelwa/p/day-35-managing-liquidity-and-slippage?r=1f3l1e&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web
