I bought some call options and they appreciated 3309%
medium.com
medium.com
It's not necessarily right to say that the options were mispriced. Option trading desks hedge themselves, and then don't care whether the stock price goes up or down (unless they want an explicit long or short position in the underlyer, which is rare). What they do care about is how much the stock moves every day ("realised vol"), and how that compares to the (implied) volatility they originally sold/marked the option at. (If you sold the option, you lose on gamma the more the stock moves, while you gain on theta.)
Big jumps in price are definitely a problem - the theory assumes continues trading, and as you get shorter to expiry, or the jumps get bigger, the approximation to continuous trading breaks down.
At any rate, traders are well aware of the fact that prices are not lognormal, and vol not constant. Nevertheless, the theory and practice of replication works quite well all in all.
Last comment: Every time a stock jumps, some people lose and some win. If people traded with leverage (options/futures), some lose a lot and some win a lot.
(Derivatives have net zero supply, so it's in fact a zero sum game - but don't forget that the bank is hedged, generally, complicating the picture.)
Bottom line: there are necessarily some winners, and some losers. Guess who writes articles on medium that get upvoted on HN? :-)
Gamblers only talk about their wins.
If I lived in the U.S. I would first look into Schwab's options trading service.
How do you screen for event-driven trading opportunities?
If a stock has moved 50% in 30 days, either something happened (which would be tangible and in the news) or there is a lot of speculation going on. Investigating the latter of such cases further, sometimes the event that will resolve the speculation is fairly specific. E.g. a shareholder vote or a court ruling. In such cases, if you are able to form an opinion about what the outcome of the situation will be, American options can be a great tool.