Every year thousands of people flock to hotel seminar rooms to learn how they can earn thousands of dollars by trading stock options. Most of these people are lured by the promise of generating sufficient income so that they can quit the day job and earn their living from home.

Rarely does the prize come so easily.

These weekend seminars do often provide a solid review of option basics and several key options strategies. While learning the basics is always a good start, it does not provide you with a complete picture of what it takes to actually make money as an options trader.

Consistently earning profits as an options trader is no small feat. The challenge of earning a living from the markets should have been highlighted in ample fashion by the recent market collapse.

It is true that options allow you to protect against such market down turns, even profit from them. However, these are derivative products and, consequently, are that much more difficult to manage.

Typically, successful traders do not focus on one or two options positions. Rather than letting a single trade dictate their success each month, they will trade a diversified portfolio of options positions purposefully designed to shift the probability of success squarely in their favor. By expanding the number of positions they are able to allocate relatively small sums of capital to each position to reduce the amount of risk present in any one security, expiration period, or at any one strike price.

You are likely aware of the concept of diversification if you have invested in stocks, mutual funds or other traditional equity products. In the context of a equity portfolio, traditional advice would warn who about “putting all of your eggs in one basket” and encourage you to acquire stock holdings in multiple companies. The theory is that trouble with one stock will will be mitigated by the other healthy holdings within the portfolio.

Yet, most stocks tend to move in tandem with the stock market as a whole. In fact, the more diversified a stock portfolio becomes the more likely it is your wealth will rise and fall with broad market fluctuations. As such, as a traditional investor, it is very difficult to reduce risk from a broad market perspective short of liquidating positions and moving to cash during market downturns.

Options open up new possibilities, however. These derivative products gain value and lose value based upon a series of factors; not just the rise and fall of stock prices. Complex mathematical formulas have been devised to predict the price of an option given a set of variables. Those variables include things like the price of the underlying stock, the number of days until the option expires, and market volatility.

Each variable in the option pricing equation has been assigned a “Greek” letter, or at least a letter that sounds “Greek.” For example, “delta” represents the amount by which an option will gain or lose value given a $1.00 rise or fall in stock price. If an option has a .40 delta, that option will capture 40% of the stock’s movement, gaining 40 cents if it rises one dollar and losing 40 cents if it falls in price by one dollar.

Options also tend to gain and lose value when market volatility rises or falls. As markets become more volatile, option prices tend to increase. They lose value when markets become complacent. Passing time will also reduce the value of an option.

Understanding how these “Greek” variables allows an options trader to assess their relative position in the market, identify where their risk lies, and take action to manage the overall portfolio regardless of market conditions. Professional traders perceive their portfolio in the context of these variables and then execute trades that enhance their overall position. Effective management using the Greeks can generate monthly profits whether the markets move higher, drop in price, or remain range bound.

Trading options like a business is adopts a professional approach that transforms the trader into a risk manager. They simply look to the Greek variable, which immediately tell them where the risk are in their portfolio. Once they identify the risk, a trade can then be executed to bring balance back into the overall asset mix. Done properly, that “re-balancing” will typically enhance potential profitability.

This tends to be a very methodical and low stress manner of trading. In fact, it is much like running a business as opposed to the mythological fast paced “shoot from the hip” lifestyle we tend to associate with traders. The result is a highly risk averse portfolio with significant potential for extraordinary returns.

An on-line stock options trading course that teaches these sophisticated portfolio based techniques for trading options, is offered through TheOptionClub.com.