Grid trading looks like easy money.

Place buy orders below the current price. Place sell orders above. As price oscillates, orders fill. Profit accumulates.

It's mean reversion made mechanical.

Until it isn't.

Theory is clean. Markets are messy.

Let's walk through a real example that ties together everything from the first three posts.

Options are often sold as leverage.

That's misleading.

Options are contracts on uncertainty.

Their core variable is not price - it's volatility.

Most strategies people run are linear.

Fixed position size. Fixed stops. Linear P&L intuition.

Linear thinking works until volatility changes regime.

Then losses stop scaling linearly.

Most people think volatility is danger.

It isn't.

Volatility is how much prices have been moving, not how much they can move. That difference sounds semantic until the day your stops don't work.