This is the strategy most often used by stock advisory services - to buy the stock with the intention of selling it back into the market at a profit. This is by far the single largest group of services, primarily because it is the simplest form of trading. So if you want to keep it simple, this is the place to start.

Some services will combine short trades with their long trades so they can take advantage of both rising and falling markets. So in one instance they will buy with the intention of selling at a profit, in the other they will sell the shares into the market and profit when they buy them back for less.

This is the strategy most often used by option advisory services - to buy either a put or a call with the intention of selling it back at a profit. This is the "bread-and-butter" trade for option services, and many do nothing more than this simple strategy. Options can get complicated, but you can keep it simple and still profit.

A spread strategy is any option position that has both long (bought) and short (sold) options of the same type on the same underlying security. It becomes a debit spread when the cost of the long position exceeds the sale proceeds from the short position and, because your account is debited, no margin is required.

A credit spread is essentially the opposite of a debit spread - because the net cost of the short position exceeds the sale proceeds from the long position, money is credited to your brokerage account when you enter the position. You will need to have a margin enabled account if you want to trade them.

An Iron Condor is two credit spreads, a long vertical call spread above the market and a long vertical put spread below it. One advantage of an Iron Condor is the increased profit profile due to the fact that while the income increases the risk doesn't (it's still the difference between the upper and lower strikes).

A straddle is an option strategy whereby the same number of puts and calls are purchased (long) or sold (short) with the same strike price and the same expiration date. The strangle, on the other hand, differs slightly from the straddle in that the puts and calls (either short or long) have different strike prices.

A naked put is a short position in which you, as the writer (or seller) of the option, do not have a corresponding short position in the underlying security. Because of this, the position requires that you put up margin from your account as security, in which case you will need to have a margin enabled account.

A covered call is an option strategy in which a call option is written (sold) against a stock position you own on a share-for-share basis. Often, both parts of this strategy are done at the same time, in that you will buy the shares and simultaneously sell the options in what is known as a buy/write.

LEAPS (Long-term Equity Anticipation Securities) are stock or index options with expiration dates up to three years in the future. One feature of LEAPS is that they give you the right to sell options against them. Because of that, one of the most common LEAP strategies is to buy a LEAP option and then sell shorter term options.

There are a number of advisory services who trade a variety of Indexes, either regularly or as supplemental to their equity trading. These include the DOW, the NASDAQ, the S&P 500 and the Russell 2000 and are traded either directly (through Index options) or indirectly through their respective tracking stocks or mutual funds.

ETFs (Exchange Traded Funds) and Mutual Funds allow you to expand significantly the scope and diversification of your trading. Through them you can trade both domestic and international equities and indexes and, if you wish, leverage your trading through funds that track 2 and 3 times their underlying.