I did learn a lot about the stock market while doing options though, so I guess that is a plus.
It's a trap to follow the advice of investment savvy people that recommend higher risk options without taking into consideration the energy it takes to properly manage risky investments if someone isn't doing it for you. They falsely assume that what works for them (higher risk/return investments and closely following the markets for signals) is what also works for normal people that don't follow markets and financial news very much at all. They mean well and are genuinely trying to help people make the most money possible, but it's a huge blind spot that the time/energy/attention costs of investing aren't also taken into consideration.
It's the same reason I wouldn't recommend Linux to someone that isn't motivated enough to learn how to use it. It definitely can maximize what you get from your computer, but only at the expense of requiring more responsibility and time to learn how it works. Though, it's far easier to get solid Linux advice than solid investment advice and a bad financial decision is way harder to recover from than a bad technology choice.
It was like that but not as often as I expected. For example, intraday movements could often happen at very predictable times. It can also be very cargo cult. Things like technical analysis seem to work (until they don't) only because enough people believe they will, so the signal to noise ratio can be very hard to suss out.
Ultimately the time required and risk tolerance for those moonshot chances just didn't add up.
Exactly this. I played options for a while, just with my lunch money, because it was fun. But it quickly consumes your life, you have to stay on top of it all the time. The stress is what made me stop doing it.