World class investment and trading education, for free

Yes. This course is open to all and is available free of charge on the Upstox website.

No. You do not need an Upstox account to learn this or any other Uplearn course. However, we do encourage you to download the Upstox app and open an account. Trading is best learnt by doing.

Yes. This is a course which covers everything you need to know about Options trading. It is ideal for beginners and advanced learners. However, if you have never traded or invested in equities before, we recommend some self study to get your basics in place. Having said that, we will shortly introduce a basics module as well. Watch this space.

Yes. The Options course is designed to cater to those investors who have been trading for sometime and want to upskill. You will find that the course spends a significant amount of time on getting the basics right. So if you are an advanced learner, you could opt to take the quizzes at the end of every chapter to see where you stand.

Initially, you might profit because of the proverbial ‘beginner's luck.’ However, to consistently generate superior returns, you need to build skills to help you predict market direction (sideways markets, too), select the right options strategy and use risk management rules. We suggest you use this course to do just that!

In fact, compared to equity and futures, options trading requires significantly lower capital. And interestingly, options have the potential to generate a very high return on investment. (For a detailed explainer, refer Chapter 2: Why you should consider opting for Options).

It is a fact that some options strategies do have an unlimited payoff. However, the reference to ‘unlimited’ here is not to infinity. It simply means that the exact payoff cannot be calculated. Payoff in an options trade is linked to the movement in the underlying stock or index (from which it derives value). Since the movement in the underlying cannot be infinite, payoff cannot be infinite as well. However, do note that the movement could be big enough to impact your capital significantly.

To an extent, option sellers do have an edge over buyers in many situations. However, that doesn’t mean option buying is not profitable. Profitability in options trading depends on three key variables related to the underlying stock or asset viz., size of the move, speed of the move and time until expiry. This works irrespective of whether you are a buyer or seller. Also, think about it: if it were true that only option sellers make money, there would be no buyers in the market.

This is not always true. Often, an option buyer can lose money even if the underlying stock or index moves in the predicted direction. This happens in cases where the underlying has not moved enough to go beyond the breakeven point or BEP. (For a detailed explainer, do refer Chapter 15: Option Pricing Concepts: Payoff and profit diagrams).

Yes, Options are used for speculation, but not in the negative sense of the term. Speculation in options means trading with a certain forecasted outcome in mind, e.g., Nifty will hit 17,700. Interestingly, options are a unique trading instrument that can be used independently (single leg), with other options (multi-leg), and even with equity or futures. When used prudently, options can help to limit losses in a portfolio when the markets go down. It can also be used to generate extra income when combined with a stock in the portfolio.