Gold options, from zero
I'm writing a course on Gold options
If you trade spot XAUUSD, you have probably had a month that looks something like this. You read the chart, you read the news.
You go long say at $4,580 with a target of $4,650. The price does eventually get there. But before it does it dips, then rips, then dips again, deep enough one of those mornings to stop you out.
By the time the target prints you are out. You called the direction right and your account still ended the month down.
That is what trading direction-only does to you in recent months.
The macro changes every minute, the price swings are wide, and spot only gives you one tool: bet on direction and hope your timing is also good.
If Gold ends up where you thought it would but takes two extra weeks to get there, you can be right and still broke.
There is another way to play this market.
It is called options trading, and it is what most professional Gold traders use on top of their spot or futures positions.
With options you do not have to be right next Tuesday, you can be right next month.
You can also bet that the price will stay calm.
You can get paid for being patient.
You can pay a small, known cost to protect a large position from a single bad headline.
None of that exists in spot.
All of it exists in options.
I avoided options when I started trading Gold
The words sounded like a foreign language: strike, delta, theta, vega, IV crush.
I assumed I needed a finance degree to keep up. So I stayed in spot.
And every time there was an interesting move in Gold around a Fed meeting or a CPI print, I watched options traders pull far more out of the same idea than I did, with less risk, on smaller accounts.
When I eventually I stopped avoiding the topic and started studying it, the basic ideas turned out to be simpler than the people who talk about them like to make it sound.
The vocabulary is what scares everyone off.
Most courses on options are written by people who forgot what it was like to not understand any of this.
I have not forgotten.
Who this is for
This course is for the reader of the Sunday Gold Report who trades XAUUSD spot or Gold futures, has never bought an option, and is curious enough to find out what the fuss is about.
You do not need a math background. You do not need a fancy broker.
If you know what Gold is, why it moves, and roughly how a candle works, that is enough.
If you already trade options confidently, this will be elementary. Save your time for something else.
What you will be able to do by the end
By the end of the sixteen lessons (sixteen if everything goes according to the plan) you will be able to open any option chain on any broker and read it without flinching.
You will know which options are worth buying and which to leave alone.
You will be able to place your first real options trade with a clear plan and a defined maximum loss before you ever click submit.
You will know how to use options to protect a Gold position you already hold, and how to earn extra income on it month after month while you wait for the long-term move you actually believe in.
You will understand why Fed weeks and CPI prints change option prices the way they do, and how to position for those events without getting wrecked.
And by the last lesson you will be ready to graduate from GLD to options on Gold futures, which is where the professional money sits.
The first three lessons are free
Lesson 1 - why options exist and why Gold is the perfect place to learn them.
Lesson 2 is the mindset shift between thinking like a spot trader and thinking like an options trader.
Lesson 3 is all about calls and puts - the only two things options can be, and the place every option you ever trade will start from.
By the end of those three lessons you will already be ahead of most spot traders, because most spot traders never bother to learn even this much.
Lessons 4 through 16 are for paid subscribers.
Options earn their keep when the macro is active. The macro now is active as ever.
Lesson 1 lands tomorrow, May 15.
Safe trading,
and remember: All that glitters is not Gold,
Joe