In addition to celebrating more than 35 years as a professional options trader, I'm also a former college professor, so let me address the class in how to invest in options: Before we get started, raise your hand if you've lost money in stock investing during the past several months of market volatility.

Now, raise your hand if you feel frustrated every time the market tanks because you think you can't make any profit when the market declines.

I suspect that if we had been in a real classroom, I would have seen a sea of hands waving in the air. It's been a tough time for buy-and-hold stock investors, no doubt. But it's been a whole different story for options traders, who were too busy clapping their hands instead at the profits they've been banking, time and again, in this crazy market.

It's Time to Change Your Answer

Simply put, trading options gives you, well, options for making money in any kind of market, whether it's soaring or plummeting. Try cashing in your stocks when the major indices drop 300 points in a day -- sure, you can close your long stock positions whenever you want, but can you close them for profits?

But when you trade options, that's exactly what can happen -- you can bank profits even on the worst market days.

In the midst of the broader indices' lows at the end of March, we walked away with an 84% return in a SanDisk (SNDK) trade, and our secret was using put options.

Actually, how to invest in options no secret, really. Options trade just like stocks and are available through nearly every broker and online brokerage out there. You can put in a simple order for them just like you would for a stock, as well as set your stop-loss and buy-under limits, too.

Once you realize that options mostly work just like stocks (i.e., that they serve as a surrogate to trading the underlying shares), it's important to note that all options are tied to what's known as the underlying stock or index. The next step is understanding the two basic kinds of options: calls and puts.