The recent surge in retail option trading has sparked concerns about leverage- and lottery-seeking. We study why retail investors trade options over stocks leveraging a novel trader-level dataset of 2,415,323 parent trades. Options constitute about one-third of all trades and concentrate in just ten underlyings, especially the S&P 500 index. We document sub-hour median holding periods and minimal combined stock-option positions. Investors use options primarily to access high-priced underlyings as the median option’s underlying is 31 times more expensive than the median stock. Contrary to leverage-seeking concerns, they achieve only two-to-one realized leverage by sizing option trades six times smaller than stock trades. Contrary to lottery-seeking concerns, option trades’ profits are distributed nearly symmetrically, not positively skewed. We leverage our sample’s heterogeneity to confirm core findings across investor types, brokers, and within traders. Overall, rather than a new extreme, retail option trading reflects familiar stock speculation.