Listen to CNBC or other mainstream financial media outlets and you will hear about the risk options entail, when in fact they are used on a daily basis by savvy investors to protect portfolios against loss. Those same investors also use options to enhance the overall return of the portfolios while keeping risk well controlled.

Less savvy investors do get themselves into trouble by trying to trade options before learning how they work or how to use them effectively and safely. Instead of reducing risk, these uneducated investors and traders tend to increase their risk and eventually pay the price for the lack of understanding.

In contrast to those novice traders, educated investors and traders use options on a daily basis to reduce risks while simultaneously enhancing their overall returns. Even the most vicious market sell-offs will have limited impact upon a portfolio that is properly protected with stock options.

Once you fully understand and appreciate how options can be used, market collapses become much less concerning. Market sell-offs will actually become welcomed events because they offer an opportunity to capture profits and grow wealth.

What you will find is that once you incorporate options in an appropriate manner volatility will be significantly reduced in your portfolio. While traditionally constructed stock portfolios will rise and fall in value, an account well managed with options will see much less “up and down” movement and will tend to simply rise steadily regardless of what the market is doing.

Stock options are not magical vehicles, however. They are sophisticated financial instruments and they demand a certain amount of understanding before you can hope to reap the benefits outlined above.

Professional trading firms invest a significant amount of time educating their new traders, before turning them loose on the exchange floor. Such professional quality training has not traditionally been available to the retail trading market. That has now changed…

The curriculum taught to new floor traders has now been updated for the retail trader. Nothing has been taken away from the original curriculum as it continues to offer the same core information taught to floor traders.

This professional level education must be distinguished from the numerous option trading courses and hotel seminars being offered to the retail public. These programs are often packaged as weekend hotel seminars or home study courses, but fail to impart the necessary information.

If you really want to master options, you will want to seek out the live Options Mastery classes offered by Ron Ianieri. Ron is a former floor trader and market specialist, who was responsible for training new traders hired by his firm. The curriculum that he designed for those new floor traders and been adapted for our use and is taught in live classes taught over the Internet that run for several months.

Surprisingly, the cost to enroll in the live classes is less than many weekend seminars. Beyond price, you will also find that the live classes run for several months, include review sessions, tests and quizzes, all designed to offer you a solid education. At the conclusion of these live option trading classes, students fully understand what options are, how they work, and how they can be used to protect portfolios, enhance returns, and capture profits in a risk averse way.