Hardly. Options involve a lot more strategy and tactics. Instead of trying to time the market once, you now time the market at least twice: the date you enter the trade and the chosen expiration date. When the expiration date is too close, your option could very well expire worthless before it can do anything; too far, your option has too much wasted time value, not to mention what if the market has recovered.
You also need to learn a lot about options, the Greeks, the IV, and all. With VIX in the fifties, it's very well possible for a trader to lose more money through the small stream of premiums paid for options than the market itself: the market will rebound, after all, but the premium once paid is lost forever.
I do not think options are appropriate for non-professionals.
Well, you only have to time it 1.5 times because you can always sell before expiration, although there is that upper bound. If it doesn't look like it panning out, and you called wrong, you can get out and recoup some money.
You'd have to approach it more like swing trading than buy-and-hold type strategy, unless you're aiming for something like next year.
Presumably you are in fact bearish going into the trade. If not, you probably shouldn't have traded the strategy in the first place.
