Investing beginners will learn all the skills—soup to nuts—they need 
to successfully and confidently invest in the stock and options market. peo-
ple who have some experience in options and who may have used covered 
calls, protective puts, and the like will find out how to greatly improve their 
results from these investments and how to use options in other ways as 
well. professional money managers and analysts will develop a thorough 
understanding of how to effectively incorporate option investments into 
their portfolio strategies and may in fact be encouraged to consider ques-
tions about valuation and behavioral biases in a new light as well.
The approach used here to teach about valuation and options is 
unique, simple without being simpleminded, and extremely effective in 
communicating these complex topics in a memorable, vivid way. r ead-
ers used to seeing option books littered with hockey-stick diagrams and 
partial differential equations may have some unlearning to do, but no mat-
ter your starting point—whether you are a novice investor or a seasoned 
hedge fund manager—by the end of this book, I believe that you will look 
at equity investing in a new light.
xvi  •   Introduction