The truth is all retail investors get a pretty bad deal on contracts and pay so, so, so much more for premiums than institutional investors. When used as a primary investment vehicle to tendies, contracts are always a zero-sum game for retail investors unless by some sick stroke of insane luck an institutional investors happen to call upon your shit, over-leveraged position so they can make 100x what you made in tendies alone. Retail spreads are much tighter than institution's.

Unless you are a HNWI or UHNWI using derivatives to hedge your discretionary investments accounts with a huge private bank who will write you custom contracts, you're just providing liquidity and thus compensated for that service.

$SPY 211c 12/31, though.