You can trade anything trading just means the buying and selling of something, applied to options it means the buying and selling of a contract that gives you the right but not the obligation to either purchase or sell 100 shares of a stock at an agreed upon price, at an agreed upon date.
Vandy, NetN did a damn good job with his trading advice. I don't know that he was exclusively trading SPY but that was clearly the focus of this board. Sorry you don't understand the "trading" aspect, but you've been arguing against it for a really long time.