투자자를 위한 소매 옵션 거래의 위험성

### 소매 옵션 거래의 위험: 주의 사항
* 📏 최근 패트릭 볼의 동영상에서 언급한 것과는 달리 저는 실제로 **키가 186cm 또는 186cm 11**로, 키에 대한 오해를 바로잡는 것이 중요합니다.
* 💰 주목할 만한 사례로는 **8만 8천 달러를 4억 1천 5백만 달러로 전환**했지만 2022년까지 모두 잃은 옵션 트레이더가 부적절한 금융 조언으로 은행을 상대로 소송을 제기한 사례가 있습니다.
* 📉 은행은 진정으로 유익한 옵션이 아닌 자체 상품을 홍보하는 경우가 많으므로 **금융 조언을 은행에 의존하는 것**을 경계합니다.
* 📊 옵션 거래는 대부분의 개인 투자자에게 '패자부활전'이 될 수 있으며, **거래의 75% 이상이 손실**로 이어져 건전한 투자 전략이라기보다는 도박과 비슷합니다.
* 📈 연구에 따르면 **성공한 트레이더에 대한 노출**은 개인 투자자들의 위험 감수를 증가시켜 **옵션 시장에서의 손실을 더욱 악화**시킬 수 있다고 합니다.
* 📉 2023년 연구에 따르면 개인 투자자자들은 **높은 매도-매수 스프레드로 위험한 옵션**을 거래하는 경우가 많으며, 특히 **게임스탑과 같은 투기 열풍**이 불 때 상당한 금전적 손실을 입는 것으로 나타났습니다.
* 🧩 개인 투자자는 옵션 거래와 관련된 높은 거래 비용을 인식하지 못하는 경우가 많으며, 잘못된 거래 행동으로 인해 **평균 5-14%의 손실**을 입을 수 있습니다.
* 💡 궁극적으로 부를 쌓으려면 **옵션 거래를 통해 단기간의 이익**을 추구하기보다는 꾸준히 저축하고 다양한 포트폴리오에 투자해야 하며, 이는 재정적 파탄으로 이어질 가능성이 높습니다.

소매 옵션 거래는 투기와 높은 거래 비용으로 인해 대부분의 투자자에게 패배하는 게임인 경우가 많습니다.

Before I start the video, I want to address an error made by Patrick Bole, who, other than this oversight, I generally have tremendous respect for. In a recent video, Patrick portrayed me as being shorter than Tony Robbins. Tony Robbins is 6'7. I'm 6'10, 6'11 with hair. Patrick, please do your research. An options trader, well, a carpenter who successfully traded options for a while in British Columbia, incredibly turned $88,000 into $415 million between 2019 and 2021. But by 2022, his account was worthless. He's suing RBC and an accounting firm for not having given him better financial planning advice. That lawsuit is not what I want to talk about, but I will mention that caution is always warranted when taking financial advice from a bank. Banks will sell you bank financial products. What I want to talk about is retail options trading, also known in some circles as degenerate gambling. I'm Ben Felix, portfolio manager at PWL Capital, and I'm going to tell you why.

trading options is a losers' game for most retail investors most of the time. Options are financial contracts that give the option holder the right but not the obligation to buy or sell a set quantity or dollar value of an asset at a fixed price by a set date. They are useful tools for many reasons, and the technology and its underlying mathematics have arguably revolutionized the economy and changed the world. While they can be used for good, some of their features, like embedded leverage, make them a double-edged sword. They can just as easily be used for responsible risk management and hedging as they can be used for speculation and gambling. Unfortunately, the majority of retail activity in options markets looks a lot more like gambling, but that doesn't stop retail investors from trading options. If anything, it seems like the speculative nature of options trading is the reason that retail investors are active in these markets, and it's only been getting worse as online options trading platforms aggressively market option trading to retail investors. Some combination of commission-free trading, high profits for brokerages, financial

influencers, easy online trading, gamification, and the meme stock phenomenon have come together to turn retail trading into a large part of the options market. There are incredible stories like the RBC client, at least on the way up, and Roaring Kitty, the guy behind the GameStop saga, that make trading to extreme wealth seem possible. This is probably not a good thing. Experimental research suggests that when people observe successful traders, they increase their own risk-taking. That research placed participants into a trading environment with a starting amount of capital and allowed them to trade over two trading rounds. After the first round, participants in the experimental condition were shown the performance of the top three participants, while those in the control group were not. The authors find that traders exposed to their top-performing peers tend to take more risk, trade more overall, and be less satisfied with their own results. The same thing happens online in real life. Successful traders post their wins for everyone to see, making it seem possible for everyone else watching. Social influence and comparison are likely part of the

problem, but it doesn't help that retail-focused trading platforms promote options trading to their customers often pretty aggressively. I've seen ads that make trading options sound easy, smooth, and smart in an effort to compel users onto an options trading platform. This is no mistake; retail options trading is profitable for the brokerages facilitating it. Brokerages promote options trading to their customers as a way to boost profit potential, but I wonder whose profits they're really talking about. In reality, retail options traders have lit huge amounts of their own money on fire by trading options. For example, a 2023 paper in the Journal of Finance estimates that the aggregate portfolio of retail investors lost $2.1 billion from November 2019 to June 2021. This finding is not unique or unexpected. A 2022 paper simulates returns from an empirical distribution of option trades and compares them to stock trades. The authors find that returns on options trades have considerably higher volatility and are extremely skewed, with some very rare but incredible outcomes.

like the examples I mentioned earlier, but the majority, over 75% of options trades, lose money, and over half of the option portfolios in the simulation lose more than 90% of their value. This is the reality. It's kind of like a lottery. There are a few big winners, but the vast majority of retail options traders and the average retail options trader loses money. Another study on 68,000 trading accounts and more than 8 million trades in stocks and options at a large online broker in the Netherlands similarly finds that most investors take significant losses on their options trades, much larger than the losses they take from equity trading. The authors also demonstrate that retail investors do not use options for hedging their underlying stock positions, and that single men with low incomes and little investment experience trade the most. Together, this suggests that gambling and sensation-seeking rather than hedging are why people are trading options. Guys, get a less expensive hobby, go outside. In case there was any doubt that options trading is being treated like a casino by retail investors, a 2023

paper in the journal Finance finds that 50% of retail trades in their sample are in risky options with less than a week to expiration, with an average quoted bid-ask spread of 12.6%, and they lose money on average. Retail investors in their sample strongly prefer call options to puts. They trade mostly at-the-money or slightly out-of-the-money options, which have especially high trading costs, with an average quoted bid-ask spread of 29%. They typically trade small amounts, and they prefer options on attention-grabbing stocks. They also document that retail activity in both call and put purchases increases significantly during retail investor frenzies like GameStop and other meme stocks. The authors again suggest that this is evidence of retail investors having speculative rather than hedging motives behind their trades. A 12.6% or 29% bid-ask spread is a very high transaction cost to overcome, but the high cost of retail options trading will not always be obvious to the retail trader. Brokerages promote zero or low commissions on their options trades, but

those explicit costs are only one component of the cost of trading. A 2022 study using a data set from the NASDAQ stock market finds that retail investors display three wealth-depleting behaviors when trading options. They overpay for options relative to realized volatility, they incur enormous bid-ask spreads, and they sluggishly respond to announcements. These behaviors translate to losses of 5 to 9% on average and 10 to 14% for high expected volatility announcements. A 2021 study on the South Korean options market shows that retail investors generally prefer simple option strategies, which provide directional exposure to the underlying asset, and they tend to lose on their trades. Even the top 30% of retail investors lose money in the options market in the South Korean sample. Options trading platforms have more recently started offering complex multi-leg options. A 2023 study finds that retail trades in complex options return negative 16.4% over 3 days on average, with losses increasing with complexity. The findings suggest that retail investors may not fully

understand the risk-return trade-offs in complex option strategies and that they're lured in by leverage and the potential for lottery-like payoffs despite some incredible success stories, which we should expect in the distribution of options trading outcomes. Trading options has generally been a disaster for retail investors, which we should also expect. Retail investors typically use options for speculative trading, pay high transaction costs, and lose money. All of these negative effects are amplified when investors are shown a successful trader's outcome, which in the world of social media is pretty easy to find, even when in reality most people are losing money. I think it's also problematic that maybe other than this video, you wouldn't hear any of this if you tried to learn about trading options on YouTube. Most of the videos I could find are telling you how to trade options, how much money you can make trading options, and how to sign up for their course. I'd bet that most of the people behind those videos have not read the papers showing how poorly trading options tends to perform for retail.

investors just take a minute to think about it. Financial markets are highly competitive. Retail investors do not have the same resources, information, or knowledge as institutions, and they're more prone to behavioral biases. When you trade, you're interacting with sophisticated market participants who want to make profits at your expense. Based on the research mentioned in this video, the options market seems to be one of the worst places for retail investors to trade and one of the best places for institutions to profit off of retail investors. Always remember, when you're having dinner with lions, make sure you're at the table, not on the menu. For most investors, building wealth is not something that happens with one big winning trade or even with a series of winning trades. It's a long and boring process that consists of saving and investing in a diversified, low-cost portfolio. Chasing big wins by trading options is more likely to destroy wealth than to create it. Thanks for watching. I'm Ben Felix, portfolio manager at PWL Capital. If you want to learn more about how PWL helps Canadians grow their

Wealth without trading options. You can book a meeting with us below.

Why You Will (Probably) Lose Money Trading Options

I post videos on investing, financial decision-making, and living a good life.

My name is Ben Felix. I am a Portfolio Manager and the Head of Research at PWL Capital. I am a CFA charterholder and CFP professional. I am securities licensed in Canada by CIRO.

All channel content is produced and owned by PWL Capital Inc.


Ben Felix

패트릭 볼은 연사를 토니 로빈스보다 키가 작은 것으로 잘못 묘사했습니다.

브리티시 컬럼비아의 한 옵션 트레이더는 8만 8천 달러를 4억 1천 5백만 달러로 전환했지만 2022년까지 모두 잃었고 현재 더 나은 재정적 조언을 받기 위해 소송을 제기하고 있습니다.

발표자인 벤 펠릭스는 옵션의 잠재적 이점에도 불구하고 소매 옵션 거래는 종종 도박과 유사하며 대부분의 투자자에게는 패배하는 게임이라고 경고합니다.

인플루언서와 게임화가 소매 거래에 미치는 영향

인플루언서, 간편한 온라인 거래, 게임화 등으로 옵션 시장에서 소매 트레이딩의 역할이 크게 증가했습니다.

트레이더의 성공 사례와 브로커의 공격적인 옵션 거래 홍보는 개인 투자자에게 위험한 환경을 조성하고 있습니다.

빠른 부의 매력에도 불구하고 소매 옵션 트레이더들은 옵션 거래의 높은 변동성과 왜곡된 수익률로 인해 총 수십억 달러의 손실을 입었습니다.

옵션 거래의 대부분은 손실을 초래하며, 절반 이상의 포트폴리오가 가치의 90% 이상을 잃습니다.

68,000개의 거래 계좌를 대상으로 한 연구에 따르면 개인 투자자는 주식 거래에 비해 옵션 거래에서 더 큰 손실을 입으며, 소득이 낮고 투자 경험이 적은 독신 남성일 가능성이 더 높은 것으로 나타났습니다.

위험한 옵션과 주목받는 종목을 선호하는 등 개인 투자자의 거래 패턴을 보면 헤지보다는 도박과 센세이션 추구가 옵션 거래의 주된 동기인 것으로 보입니다.

개인 투자자는 옵션 거래 시 초과지불, 높은 매도-매도 스프레드 발생, 느린 공시 대응 등 세 가지 해로운 행동을 보이며 평균 5~9%의 손실을 기록합니다.

단순한 옵션 전략이 개인 투자자의 선택을 지배하고 있지만 상위 30%도 수익을 내는 데 어려움을 겪고 있습니다.

복잡한 멀티 레그 옵션으로 전환하면서 3일간 평균 16.

4%의 마이너스 수익률로 더 큰 손실이 발생했으며, 이는 개인 투자자들이 옵션 거래에서 흔히 범하는 함정과 오해가 무엇인지 보여줍니다.

금융 시장에서 개인 투자자가 직면한 과제

개인 투자자는 자원, 정보, 지식이 부족하여 기관에 비해 상당한 불이익을 받습니다.

옵션 시장은 특히 개인 투자자에게 불리한 환경이며, 기관은 손해를 감수하고 수익을 낼 수 있는 기회를 제공합니다.

부를 쌓는 것은 장기적인 과정이며 옵션 거래를 통해 큰 수익을 쫓기보다는 다각화된 저비용 포트폴리오에 저축하고 투자하는 것이 필요합니다.