Option Play
When you buy or sale an option , you must be very careful and have a strategy on how you can protect your investment, in the long run with the right strategy option play is a worthy game.
in todays market behavior the Dow for example moving in the range of 10,000 and 10,700 points , really calm market in many ways , its monthly gain or lose not exceeding 10%, and if you are the one to play the market index, assume you writing up calls for April 2010 at +15% of what the market is today, most likely the market will remain at below 10% gain (if it loses then of course you gain more )at day of expiration most likely you will gain 100% of your sale, however if the market stays calm, and the closest it gets to expiration , you can buy it back and chose how much your gain is pending on the market move.
lets assume even if the market gain some and your contracts losing ground , you can always move it up a notch by buying back and selling to next level of +15% , and to protect yourself from disaster you buy some longs out of the money just in case the unpredictable happens.
good luck!