It is. I was down $20k after the first 9 months or so and not happy about it because my stocks didn't perform either. Then my stocks did well and NFLX dropped 25% after earnings, so suddenly I was up $30k with put options as well. Since then I lost, and lost and I'm deep in the red again. I didn't buy a whole lot of options though. And I used some profits I made on my stocks to pay for it.
My chances are improving now though, because it's trading at ridiculous levels and the market fundamentals are not that good IMO. Like I said before, if I make good money on NUIN or HERB then I will buy a lot more puts. Unfortunately that hasn't happened yet.
Options can be a good way to speculate in some instances. I always use them on stuff where I don't want to have a lot of money at risk and still want to be in the play. As RD said, timing is everything in options since they lose a lot of time value if you hold them and get closer to the expiration date. If you buy options that are out of the money the only value they have is the time value and a bit of vola value.
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