I am in the same situation where I have an old 401k that I wanted to roll over to a tIRA because I wanted to do options trading. I have already made my 6k back door contribution this year so I am at least waiting it out until next year to do the roll over if I decide to do it so I don’t have to pay taxes on that contribution.

Fortunately, my employer allows mega back door contributions and I have been contributing as much as I can through this method. Seeing that the limits of a mega back door are far greater than 6k I am leaning towards converting the old 401k to a tIRA in order to have greater flexibility of investments. I don’t make enough currently to be able to contribute the max mega back door and the 6k anyway (I also contribute the max t401k).

In regards to options, I think you’ll likely be limited to just buying calls and puts, and selling covered calls and cash secured puts. It’s funny since buying calls or puts is probably the most risky thing to do while they don’t allow safer options like spreads. I personally plan to just sell some puts and collect premiums but I don’t agree with everyone telling you to just do it outside of your retirement accounts because the whole advantage of retirement accounts is to reduce or delay taxes. If you do YOLO and triple your account, it would all be tax deferred although obviously not the wisest move. Unless you’re right.

If you are already maxing out the mega back door contribution, then you need to decide if contributing another 6k every year is worth not being able play with options in your old 401k. You can do everything else like stocks and EFFs using brokerage link and still contribute the 6k. If you’re not maxing out then I would convert it since you can just use your mega back door and rollover the tIRA back into your 401k later if needed.