Please suggest a platform or series that teaches options trading without a cost.
I have engaged a few platforms and most want money.
Thank you for the suggestions.

What do you want to learn? Basics of how contracts work, single leg strategies, multi leg strategies, technical analysis?  How are you currently analyzing the underlying securities you are/want to trade options on?

Do you have a brokerage account open?  What trading platform? What options approval do you have on this account/What strategies will they let you execute?  Has this been successful for you so far?

Most of the big firms offer free education portals to their clients, and many offer webinars to discuss the basics.

I have a Fidelity 401k and IRA. I have a trading account open with Wells Fargo and Scottrade.
I have never traded options. I have dabbled in videos and internet pages that quickly rise above my level of understanding.
I think my personal learning strategy lends to actual examples.
Thank you for any suggestions.

Ok, that's helpful!  

You cannot trade options in a 401k account (you may have known this).  IRAs will typically allow some strategies up to spreads (multi leg, limited risk options strategies), often depending on the account value and your brokerage.  I'd call over to Fidelity and speak with them about what they may or may not allow you to do in your account if that's where you're thinking of trading - that will narrow things down.  With options, please realize that your using a significant amount of financial leverage - not borrowing money per se, but controlling a large amount of stock value with little capital (your money) in many cases - often in the neighborhood of 10:1 or more.  As such, while you can see significant gains, leverage can cut both ways depending on your options strategy, so balls out risk taking in an IRA is usually a poor choice.

Next, I'd encourage you to become very well versed in formulating an opinion on the price performance of a specific stock/etf/index that you're interested in trading options on.  The change in value of an option contract is directly related to the price of the underlying security (stock/eft/index), so you need to be convinced of which direction that is going to go, by how much (ex, I expect stock A to go from $100 to $125 a share) and by what date (by the end of next month).  Once this is determined, options give you a vehicle to profit off of that movement, if you're correct.

To understand the mechanics of options, become very familiar with the two primary contract types - calls and puts.  Investopedia is a good resource for reading - I haven't found videos that do a good job explaining, whether paid or not IMO.
https://www.investopedia.com/options-basics-tutorial-4583012

Another resource would be a Series 7 text for the mechanics - these can usually be found at your local library or thrift shop.  Also, check out what your brokerage firm offers to their clients for education - there are usually a lot of free resources once you're logged into your account.  If you can't find it, call the brokerage and ask them - they're free to talk to!

The last piece you'll want to understand are the basics of each contract - the underlying security, the strike price, the expiration date, and the premium.  Below are brief descriptions, see above resources for a more in-depth discussion:

Underlying Security - this is the stock/etf/index you're trading on, the price of which will determine whether your contract gains or loses value.
Strike Price - this is the price in the contract in which your option is either "in the money" or "out of the money."  Depending on which direction you're trading, you either want a contract to go in the money, or stay out of the money.  At the end of the proverbial day, you will be comparing the market price of the underlying security to the strike price of the option.
Expiration Date - this is when the contract expires.  After expiration, the option contract is no longer traded, and depending on what you chose, you may have won or lost your trade (if you hold it that long).  Expiration date is very important as it will have a significant impact on the premium of the option.
Premium - just like it sounds, it's the price paid (or received) for the option contract.  Premium is sometimes called the "market price" of the contract, since it's the money that is exchanged for the contract.  Premium is made of two primary parts - time value and intrinsic value.  Time value is based largely on how long the contract has until it expires, and intrinsic value comes into play when a contract is "in the money."  There is also a component of volatility, which will inflate or deflate premiums on option contracts - see illustration below.

The best way I've found for people to understand these pieces is to think about an option contract they have in their lives (that they may not realize) - car insurance.  It breaks down as:

Underlying "security" - your car.  The value of your car is what's insured, but if you get into an accident, the value of that asset goes down.  

Strike price - The insured value of your car - if the price of your car goes down, what is the price the insurance company will pay you?  As long as your car stays above this value, your contract is out of the money, but if it dips below that insured value, now the contract is in the money.

Expiration date - When does your policy expire?  If you don't renew and pay more premium, what happens after this date? (you're not insured!)

Premium - how much do you pay for the policy?  As mentioned above, the longer the contract has until expiration, the higher the time value of the contract.  If your auto policy expires in six months, the premium will be less than if the policy expires in a year, all other things being equal.  For intrinsic value, if you don't get into a wreck, your policy (contract) has no intrinsic value - the car is more valuable to you than the policy contract.  However, if you wrap your car around a telephone pole, the contract pays out (and has higher intrinsic value to you) than the asset (car) does.  In terms of volatility, for someone who is selling contracts, they are taking on some risk, so the more volatile/likely it is the contract they sold will gain in value to the contract holder, the more they will want to be paid to sell the contract.  Therefore, the seller will price his contract (premium) accordingly.  Using the car example, if you drive in the neighborhood and live in an area that is known for being safe for driving, your policy will be cheaper than if you tried to buy the same policy at a demolition derby.  The derby obviously has more "volatility" or potential that the insurance policy will need to be paid out.

Now that you have an opinion on what direction the underlying security is going to move and you understand the two contract types you can develop a strategy to buy or sell contracts to be profitable if your analysis (or for a lot of retail traders - guess/gut feeling) is correct.  Each will have its own characteristics on what you are risking and what you can gain, and will be largely driven on what your brokerage will approve you to do in your account (this is a regulatory thing - you'll have have you account approved for options trading by someone with a Series 4 license).  

From there, the world really is your oyster, and I'd encourage you to develop a trading philosophy and process that works for you.  When you start, prepare to potentially lose your entire investment (most traders begin by buying calls or puts - which can pay off handsomely if your right, but you lose your entire investment if you're wrong), and go from there.  Good trading philosophy dictates that you start small to test your theories and analysis, and not put your entire account behind any one trade, no matter how convinced you are that you're right.

Then it's a process of refining your process and analysis.  There are so many different ways to "play" or structure option strategies that I couldn't write even a little bit here.  Be prepared to learn a lot and have some fun!  Hope all of this helps, if I can clarify anything please let me know.

Cmsnare, are you willing to share a real life example you are working on?
Thank you for your very educational write-up.

I've got to be careful with real life examples with work...

For personal use, I'm a fan of income generating strategies.  The reasons and examples of these include:

1.  You start on the winning side of the trade.  You get paid up front (you're the party selling options) and if the contracts end up going "against" you, it's not the end of the world - you still make money.  A couple of examples:

- Cash Secured Equity Puts (CSEPs).  This is selling insurance on stock/etfs if they drop below the option strike price. Depending on account type, you'll need to have to have the cash on hand to cover assignment (buying shares at the strike price), but most brokerages will allow you to hold that cash in a dividend money market fund in the mean time - make money while you're making money.  The other option is usually to have a margin account with sufficient buying power to cover an assignment, which depending on your risk tolerance and portfolio size may or may not be the way to go.  Since you specifically mentioned an IRA in the mix, you cannot have a margin feature in this account type, so your brokerage will have you stick with cash/money market funds.  For me, I will only do this on stocks/etfs I would buy anyways, but think they may be overpriced currently.  If the price drops, you buy at the price you set (strike price) and the cost is offset by the premium you brought in by selling the contract.  

- Covered calls.  This is owing shares of the underlying (100 shares/contract) and selling a call contract against them.  You earn premium when you sell the contract, and you can set the strike price as a specific profit target that you'd be happy selling at should the price of the stock/etf go up.  If it does, your shares are called away at the strike, and you make the difference in what you paid for them and the strike price, plus the premium you collected.  If it doesn't go up that high, you keep the premium - interestingly, this is also considered a partially hedged long position, since if the price of your shares drop, you don't begin "losing" money from your purchase point to the tune of the amount of premium you collected.  You can also do whats known as a buy-write, where you buy the shares and sell the call against the shares in a single trade.  One recent application has been to do this with contracts that are near expiration and are already in the money (the market price is above the strike price of the contract).  Since you know what you'll be selling the shares for (assuming the market price stays above the strike through expiration), you can turn the time value into cash in your pocket.

- Combo the two above strategies - Find a stock/etf that trades in a channel and has good support and resistance points - it doesn't seem to go lower than a specific price, nor higher than a specific price.  Depending on where it is in this cycle, CSEP or Covered Call into a position that will profit when it hits support/resistance.  Then turn around and do the opposite strategy in the other direction, generating income the whole way.  If this happens on a stock with a healthy, regular dividend, all the better, especially when in a covered call position, since you're entitled to the dividend cash if/until the shares are called away.

- Credit spreads/Iron Condor.  These are multi leg strategies where you sell a contract that is closer to the money, and buy the same type of contract further away from the money as protection.  The premium on the sell leg is higher than the buy, so you take in a net credit when opening the position.  If you're right in your analysis, you keep the premium as pure profit, if you're wrong, you can set how much "risk" (what my maximum loss is) when you choose the distance between the two contract strike prices.  Do this with both calls and puts (you expect the share price to end up in between the two short legs for max gain) and double income for the same (actually, technically less) out of pocket risk - this is an Iron Condor.

2.  Time value is in your favor.  You don't have to worry about something happening before a specific date.  You know exactly what your risk is and when you get to start the process over again.  Even if you're partially right, you can exit the contract by buying it back for less than you sold it for (again, time value decreasing the closer the contract comes to expiration), and still profit.

3.  Since the vast majority of option contracts expire worthless, you have mathematical odds on your side that you'll win the trade.

As I mentioned in the previous post, most retail traders begin with doing the opposite of what I just described - either buying calls (lotto tickets) or puts (insurance contracts), and some can make tremendous returns.  I had several colleagues who, when the wheels came of the market in late February and March (volatility) made more than their respectable annual salaries in a couple of weeks buying options, which is usually the attraction for folks to options in the first place - this is that leverage I mentioned, where they were controlling tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars in shares with a few thousand dollars of their money invested.  

It all comes down to which system works best for you - we'll always take a profitable trade over an unprofitable one, and if you can consistently make profits, your system is working.  If you're consistently loosing money, change the formula.

The best thing I can offer, and it's where most (especially new) option traders get stuck, is that they don't have a specific opinion on where the underlying security is going to go and by when, particularly by what scale.  In this case, you really are buying lotto tickets - you might win, but not consistently.  Get good at security analysis (either technical or fundamental) and produce a scale-able process that wins more than it loses.

Hope that helps.

Thank you. Can you go over an example of each, "(either technical or fundamental)"
I am going to take some time to wrap my mind around your post.
I have shares in Tesla, Apple, Exxon, Ferrari, Abbott, Southwest Airlines, Bank of America and Pfizer. If you have a play on any of these specific companies and can share, please do sir.
Again, thank you for your help.

In terms of technical or fundamental, they are the two primary methods used for analyzing a security.  If we can successfully analyze the asset, we can attempt to predict the direction its price will go in the market.  In terms of trading options, as I mentioned before, the most important (and often most overlooked) component is to identify which way the underlying asset's price is going to move, by what magnitude, and by when.

Fundamental analysis refers to looking at the underlying financial performance of the company/companies that you want to trade.  In particular, trying to identify a company that may be over or undervalued and then trading in a direction that will be profitable when the market realizes that it has over or under priced an asset.

Technical analysis refers to looking for patterns or other inferences within charts - typically candle stick charts that show the open, high, low, and closing prices of an asset for a given time period (can be minutes to weeks depending on how you set up the chart), along with volume data (how many shares traded).  The theory (and it is a theory, but if enough people believe it and act upon it, it can become self fulfilling...) is that there are patterns or other mathematical calculations that can be identified from previous data and used to predict the future.  There are too many of these ideas to describe, but the main tenant is that the chart represents emotional and (theoretically) rational decision making of the masses, and that since people are habitual, previous patterns that have occurred may repeat with similar results.  If you can identify the pattern before the result, you can trade accordingly and profit.

In terms of both types of analysis, remember that you're generating an opinion, which the market may or may not share.  If your analysis turns out to be what the market also thinks, you'll make money.  If your analysis goes against the market consensus, no matter how much you're convinced you're right, you'll usually end up losing.  This is the same for any type of investing, but with exchange traded securities (stocks, ETFs, options, etc) you usually get results and feedback more quickly.  However, the same concept would apply if you're starting a business: no matter how good you think your product is, if the market doesn't agree and won't buy it, you'll lose your investment.

In terms of specific plays on any asset, I don't have anything that I can share.  Part of this is regulatory, but beyond that, it would be inappropriate because how I see something and may trade it in line with my goals, timeline and risk tolerances, may be completely inappropriate or in conflict with your goals, timeline and risk tolerances - remember, I'm just some guy on the internet :-)

Wow cmsnare, thanks for taking the time to write out those solid posts.

I just started trading options and have learned a lot in the last few weeks. So far, I have just done covered calls and cash covered puts. My advice to OP is to start by writing covered calls on whatever stocks you already hold 100 shares of. Just understand that your shares may be assigned so write the call for a strike price you would be ok for selling the shares for anyway.

A couple of weeks ago I decided that it would be a good idea to write covered calls on biotech stocks. Dumb idea, but very educational

May 13:

bought 100 shares of MRNA for $64.90/share and sold the 5/22 $70 CALL for $3.20 ($320)

bought 100 shares NVAX for $40/share and sold the 5/22 $49 CALL for $2.25 ($225)

My goal was for both stocks to appreciate modestly and either let me write weekly calls for that juicy premium or to exceed my calls and give me $830 for MRNA and/or $1125 for NVAX in about 9 days. The next Monday, Moderna released the press statement about the "promising results" in their phase 1 trial. MRNA skyrocketed and blasted straight through my call to a high of $87. I'm kicking myself because my call limited my gains to $70 making me lose out on up to $1700 more profit! Oddly enough, NVAX also blasted through my call. Now here is where I made my biggest mistake, I got greedy thinking about my missed profits and the near certainty that I would have my shares assigned and sold a cash covered MRNA 5/22 $72 PUT for $2.25. Within 30 minutes of selling the put the STAT report came out questioning the trial results and MRNA stock crashed. That Friday my calls expired worthless so I kept the premium and the shares, but I also ended up with another 100 shares of MRNA with a cost basis of $69.75. This Monday I liquidated the original positions for a total profit of $1423.89 for NVAX but only $28.85 for MRNA. The part that really sucks is that I also still have the 100 shares of MRNA from selling that put, and it closed underwater by $825 on Friday.

This experience demonstrates a lot of the things that can go wrong with just the basic covered call and cash covered put strategies. Most of the issues can be avoided by choosing less volatile stocks but then your premiums will be much lower.

In the future I'm considering using a strategy like bull put credit spreads on SPX to eliminate the assignment risk of the cash covered puts.

wow I own puts on both NVAX and MRNA

There is money to be made and/or lost in any possible position in these two companies. If I chose to buy puts I would set a limit sell as soon as it hit 50% profit and not try to win the lottery. You could be winning bigly and have one press statement make your contract worthless.

I don't like the odds holding a put until expiration. You have to be right about not just direction but also timing. Better probability of winning if you just put all your money on black at a roulette wheel in Vegas. I like the idea of selling options better because if done right the odds are closer to the casino. Put credit spreads placed out of the money at a 10-15 delta have a high probability of expiring worthless allowing you to pocket the credit. Unless of course you put it on a meme stock like Moderna

I just want to get out of my long stock position as soon as possible without losing too much money. If Moderna is successful with their technology they will be extremely profitable but I don't want anything to do with them after the recent fiasco.

I agree, my position in Moderna went up to 50% last week, but is still up 25%. Both companies have multi-billion dollar market caps and $10 to $50 million in revenue.   Once Moderna did their Monday pump and dump, I got a uncontrollable desire to "go short" on highly valued vaccine stocks.  So much can go wrong with developing, manufacturing and distributing vaccines.  My puts don't expire until Oct

Alrighty,
Let's look a Nikola stock. I think this one might have some interesting volatility potential.
Anybody care to comment on a play that makes sense on this stock?
Thank you.

When I was looking at this, I was using Andy Tanner.  It cost though:  https://thecashflowacademy.com/

I have no idea if it was worth it or not  You get what they call the "Mentors Club" and they hold sessions where they live trade each week. Don't trade what you are not willing to lose.  In other words...go all in

Ok, NKLA:

What's your sentiment and how much do you have to trade on?  Are we in a margin acct?  How much risk (in terms of total loss amt) are you willing to tolerate?

If you're playing on volatility and don't want to be on the selling side, you could:

1.  Long call if you're bullish.
2.  Long put if you're bearish.
3.  Long Straddle (buy a call and a put with the same strike price).  Realize that you're paying for two contracts and one of them will expire worthless.  Therefore, the volatility/price moves in one direction need to overcome the cost of both - (higher hurtle to get to a gain).  Benefit hear is that you don't have to pick a direction (up or down) since you're covering both.
4.  Long Strangle (buy a call and a put with different strike prices).  This should be cheaper out of pocket to do than the straddle, but since there is a gap between your strike, there is a "no mans land" where both contracts are out of the money.  Difference between straddle and strangle really comes down to how much "jump" are you anticipating?
5.  Debit Call/Debit Put spreads or Debit Iron Condor - described in previous post.  These have to be done in a margin account.

Each of these strategies will have different max gain possibilities, but we'll know exactly what the max loss is when you enter the position (you can't lose more than your initial investment amount since we're not taking any short risk).

Check out Mark Meldrum on YouTube. His CFA Level 1 videos from previous years are free and very thorough. He's also been doing an applied market series that discuss some of his options strategies. A few weeks ago he let it out that his account is 8 figures and starts with a 2..... so some of what he describes takes into account the ability to write naked options, but the fundamentals are the same.

I've used his program for the CFA curriculum and just realized he had some free resources on YT - hope it helps.