Everyone assumes new options traders blow up because they pick the wrong direction. They don't. Most blow up because they size positions like they're trading shares.

Here's the pattern I've watched play out over and over: someone learns what a call and put are, gets one or two wins early (often luck), and then puts 20-30% of their account into a single weekly option because 'the setup looks perfect.' It doesn't matter how good the setup is — options can go to zero fast, and there's no slow bleed to bail out of like a stock.

The traders who actually make it past year one all do one boring thing: they cap risk per trade at 1-2% of their account, no matter how confident they feel. That's it. Confidence doesn't scale your position size — your risk plan does.

If you're starting out, write your max risk per trade on a sticky note and put it on your monitor. It sounds dumb. It works.

Started a structured community for beginner options traders around exactly this kind of stuff (real risk frameworks, not signal-chasing) — MC Traders, if anyone wants to dig deeper.