I'm in the process of still learning. I'm going to see how a few things shape out. 1 /ES future controls basically 100k a SPY. It's 50 bucks a every point it moves. So if the S and P drops 10% you are now down 10k. You don't want to start there especially if you don't have a lot of funds even if your broker would let you. I think I signed away my life to get futures. You could start at 100 shares of spy which would control about 20k. It's more or less the same thing.
I'm going to give it a while longer but I'm about to give up. I think I've learned some good things to help in retirement. I think at times options are good. But you also need to understand they price those things to point there isn't much of an edge on things like SPY at least according to the egg heads. On more illiquid stuff the spread gets ya on entry and exit.
Now tax rates. I start with 10k I make 2k so a 20% return. That's great. Now the tax man wants 700 because I'm at 35% rates in my area. Options are always short term rates. So I really only pocket 1300. So my ROI is really 13%. That historically isn't much better than the long term market average.
I've just started messing a bit with futures. However, I won't trade more than one contract and honestly I might wait until I have 100k in cash. I just was messing around the other day lost 150 bucks in minutes. Then it is no big deal to hold over night at that point. I'm pretty risk adverse and I really don't leveraging. There are reasons to trade /es (60/40 tax rate) and lower fees plus you can trade it nearly 24 hr a day.
So here is what I have learned. Spread and skew on options suck. And on illquid options they MM do it for a reason. I had a 10% probability for option on a stock that moved. I sold it for like 0.78. Bid was at 0 and ask was like 0.35. I wanted to shut it down but didn't because of the spread. That option ended up being in the money. That is the reason MM do things like that. Those lottery tickets hit.
Here is what I have learned with options. From everything I've read most of the time they are "fairly" priced on the indexes. However there seems to be some discussion in the literature that puts are "over priced" relative to risk on indexes. The Egg heads say well maybe the model is under estimating risk and that is why it showing up.
Some of that I can't speak to but what you can do with some leverage in this case if you watch it is get your money in sooner. I could sell an atm strike put for 3 months from now knowing that I'd have the money to buy the stock/index. If it goes up or flat I get the upside and markets historically move up. If it drops well hopefully over the years I invest it moves up more than it drops. If the puts go in the money take the shares. You'll basically be buying the dip.
I've picked some stocks that went up a lot. I picked some that went down a lot. I'm to the point I'm about to just shove it in indexes. I think in retirement CC on SPY plus dividends will be a good thing. However the options are priced i such a way I don't know if I'll "make money" on it. What it can do is give me some cash without selling shares and if the stock goes up so much the better. It's just a way to get money out without selling shares (provided the calls don't expire ITM)
Start small with options. Like one contract small. TDA has tasteytrade rates of 1.50 per option contract no fee. It's perfect for me. ITM puts are the same as covered calls. If you CC gets called away it isn't a loss. If you roll it remember you are rolling at that point so if the stock takes dip down you can end up "losing money on it."
Sorry that got really long.
TLDR shove it all into tax advantaged accounts in target date index funds and don't look at the balance until you retire.