Options Trading 101: Some helpful resources on video and other recommendations

I've posted several suggestions for book to read and brokerages to consider for beginning traders. But there are a couple of video resources that are worth a look for anybody just considering trading options.

First: Tradeking's Youtube Series. These run around 8 minutes each and start from the bottom, explaining puts and calls and what they represent, and emphasizing mistakes that many beginners make.

Second: Tastytrade. This is a phenomenal resource, with the founder of ThinkOrSwim, Tom Sosnoff and some colleagues broadcasting a mix of market news, options trading studies, beginner info, and more. Beginners should focus on "Where should I start?" and the "Liz and JNY" show as well as several other beginner's segments. If you subscribe with an email address they will send you a daily highlight list. They broadcast from 7 to 3 Central Time every trading day, so not possible for most folks to watch it all in real time. But they archive everything so you can pick and choose what you want.

And finally today: the two insights on options that I wish I'd had starting out:

• It isn't necessary to hold options to expiration to make money; in fact it's generally a detriment.  I read every book in the local library without coming across this; almost every book for amateurs that I've seen assumes holding everything to expiration. But you can make plenty of money and take far less risk by selling out the position before it expires (in almost all cases.)
• You might think that an in-the-money option moves at the same rate as the stock, but it doesn't. It may move only 50% or 70% as fast; this ratio is called its delta. This is something I didn't get for the first couple of years and it cost me dearly!

Happy trading!