Learn options trading: free guides for Indian index options
Understand the why behind every strategy: educational, never a tip.
These guides teach how options work in Indian markets: NIFTY and BANKNIFTY contracts, how their expiries work, premium, the Greeks, and the strategies built from them. They are written for someone meeting an option chain for the first time, and every term they introduce is one a chain, a payoff chart or a position will actually show you.
They are not tips: no guide here will tell you what to buy, and EzyOptions is not registered with SEBI as an Investment Adviser or Research Analyst.
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Options basics
Calls, puts, premium, intrinsic and time value, and how expiry works.
The Greeks, demystified
Delta, gamma, theta and vega: what each tells you and how they move a position.
Reading the chain
Open interest, PCR and Max Pain: what positioning data can tell you, and what it cannot.
Why these guides work for a beginner
Plain language, one term at a time
Each guide introduces a word only when it is needed and defines it where it first appears, so nothing depends on a glossary you were supposed to read first.
Indian markets, not a textbook's
NIFTY and BANKNIFTY, rupees, lot sizes and expiries as they work on NSE, so the numbers in an example are the kind you will see on a real chain.
Every idea has a screen
Each concept links to the tool where it can be watched: the chain for open interest, the Builder for a payoff, Session Analysis for time decay across a past session.
Numbers you can check
The strategy guides compute breakevens, maximum profit and maximum loss from the legs rather than typing them, so an example cannot quietly disagree with its own arithmetic.
What a beginner learns, in order
Most options courses cover the same ground, and in roughly the same order, because each topic leans on the one before it. Here is that path, what each step is about, and where it is taught.
How the market and an index work
Before options, the thing they are written on. What a share is, how an index such as NIFTY 50 is built from a basket of them, and why so much of India's options trading happens on indices rather than single stocks: one number to follow, and contracts that settle in cash.
Calls and puts
A call is the right to buy at a fixed price and a put is the right to sell, each for a premium paid up front. The guide works through both sides of each contract, because the seller of an option carries a very different risk from the buyer, and beginners are often taught only one half.
Call and put options explained →Premium, strike and moneyness
Why one option costs ₹40 and the next strike ₹140. Premium splits into intrinsic value, what the option is worth if exercised now, and time value, what the remaining time is worth. In the money, at the money and out of the money describe where a strike sits against the market, and they decide how an option behaves.
Options basics: premium and moneyness →Expiry and settlement
Every option has a last day. Index options in India are European style, so they are exercised only at expiry, and they settle in cash because an index cannot be delivered. Time value falls to zero by the close of that day, which is why the same position can look very different on Monday and on expiry day.
How expiry works →The Greeks
Four numbers that describe how a premium will move. Delta for a change in the market, gamma for how fast delta itself changes, theta for the passing of a day, vega for a change in volatility. Together they explain most of the surprises a first position springs on its owner.
Option Greeks: Delta, Gamma, Theta and Vega →Implied volatility
The part of a premium that reflects how much the market expects to move. It is why options get expensive before a budget or a central bank decision, and why they can lose value afterwards even when the market moved the way the buyer expected. The guide turns it into an expected move and explains IV Rank, skew and India VIX.
Implied volatility, IV Rank and skew →Reading the option chain
The chain is every strike for one expiry on one screen. Open interest, its change during the day, the put-call ratio and Max Pain are the figures most often quoted from it. The guide explains what each one measures and, as importantly, what it cannot tell you about where the market will go.
Option chain analysis: OI, PCR and Max Pain →Strategies: combining legs
Two or more options held together shape a payoff that no single option can: a cap on the loss, a lower cost, a bet on a range or on a large move. Spreads, straddles, strangles and condors are the first structures most traders learn, and each has its own guide below.
The four strategy guides →Risk and position sizing
The topic that decides whether the others matter. Knowing the maximum loss before entering, sizing a position against the whole account rather than the one trade, the margin a sold option requires, and naming the exit before the entry. LearnEzy's Planning a Trade and Risk & Discipline tracks are built around it.
Covered in LearnEzy →
Then put it to work
The fastest way to make a concept stick is to act on it with nothing at stake. The option chain is where strikes, premium and open interest stop being vocabulary; the strategy builder turns the payoff diagrams every guide sketches into curves you can bend; and Session Analysis plays back recorded sessions so time decay and volatility moves happen in front of you rather than on a page.
The numbers on the chain, one page each
Implied volatility, the put-call ratio and Max Pain each get a page of their own, with the calculation worked through and the limits stated, and the glossary defines every term the chain and these guides use.
Implied volatility
IV as an expected move, IV Rank and IV Percentile, skew, India VIX and the IV crush.
Put-call ratio
The formula, open interest versus volume PCR, and how the ratio moves through a session.
Max Pain
Calculated strike by strike, why it moves during the day, and how far to trust it.
Options glossary
Strike, premium, open interest, the Greeks and every other term, defined.
Strategies, one at a time
Each strategy guide lays out the legs, when traders reach for it, what works against it, and a worked NIFTY example whose breakevens, maximum profit and maximum loss are computed from the legs rather than typed.
The straddle
A call and a put bought at the same strike and expiry. Traders use it before an event expected to move the market sharply in a direction nobody can call. A quiet market works against it, and so does the fall in volatility that often follows the event itself.
Read the guide →The strangle
A call and a put at different strikes, both out of the money. It costs less than a straddle, and in exchange the market has to travel further before it pays. Time decay and a calm market are its main opponents.
Read the guide →The iron condor
Four legs: a call spread and a put spread sold either side of the market for a credit. It earns when the market stays inside a range, and its maximum loss is fixed before it is opened. A sharp move through either side is what hurts it.
Read the guide →The bull call spread
Buy one call and sell another at a higher strike. The sold call lowers the cost and caps the profit at that strike, which suits a view that the market will rise, but only so far. A flat or falling market works against it.
Read the guide →| Strategy | View | Net premium | Max profit | Max loss | Breakevens |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Straddle | A big move, either way | 350 debit | Open-ended | 350 | 23,650, 24,350 |
| Strangle | A bigger move, either way | 175 debit | Open-ended | 175 | 23,625, 24,375 |
| Iron condor | Staying in a range | 90 credit | 90 | 110 | 23,710, 24,290 |
| Bull call spread | Up, to about a level | 90 debit | 110 | 90 | 24,090 |
Want it as a course?
LearnEzy, inside the app, teaches the same path as tracks of short lessons on the live chain, from stock-market basics to multi-leg strategies, with a quiz at the end of each track and a daily streak to keep the habit. It teaches; it never tells you what to buy or sell.
See the full LearnEzy syllabus: every track and lesson, in order.
Start LearnEzy freeEducational content only: not investment advice. You are responsible for your own trading decisions.