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How Do Cash-Secured Puts Work?
Options may be notorious for their speculative use, but many investors use them to generate income or achieve other goals. For example, cash-secured puts provide you with an alternative way to delay stock purchases and buy stock below its current price. You earn a cash premium that you can keep whether or not the option […]
How to Write Covered Calls With Better Yields
With traditional investing, you buy stocks, hoping the price goes up, so that when you eventually sell you can make a profit. While this type of investing can make you money, it doesn’t always have a payout, and even when it does, you don’t always have a livable income from that payout. There are other […]
How to Find Covered Call Opportunities
Covered calls have become one of the most widely used option strategies for generating income. While simpler than most option strategies, finding the right covered call opportunities can be challenging—especially when you’re trying to build a holistic portfolio with minimal risk. In this article, we will look at how to choose the right stocks and […]
Starting a Position with a Covered Straddle
There are many different option strategies that investors can use to generate an income. While covered calls generate an income from an existing long stock position, a covered straddle can be helpful for investors that want to initiate a long stock position and generate extra income. The trade-off is that it is a bit riskier […]
Generate Portfolio Income in Retirement
In an ideal world, retirees would have so much money saved before retirement that they could hang up their hat without having to work for another dollar. However, portfolio income in retirement is a huge challenge for many retirees. Unfortunately, for most people, having a nest egg – even a decent sized one – isn’t […]
Is running out of retirement money a fate worse than death?
Imagine this – the year is 2040. You are 80 years old, in reasonably good health, and you have just spent your last penny of retirement savings. You have no other sources of income. For the rest of your life, you will rely on government handouts and the charity of others. Sit with that image […]
How to Roll a Covered Call
The stock market is inherently unpredictable and even low-risk strategies can be ruined by new information. For example, covered calls provide a convenient way to boost portfolio income, but there can be a high opportunity cost if the underlying stock moves sharply higher. Rolling covered calls is a common way to manage these risks over […]
Can Option Trading Really Give You Safer Retirement Income?
Option trading may sound like a risky endeavor, but like most investments, it’s only as risky as you make it. After all, stock investing can be incredibly risky if you’re investing in penny stocks, but few financial advisors would argue against a diversified blue-chip stock portfolio. The key to building income for retirement is using […]
Calls or Puts: Which Is Better for Income?
Stock options come in two different flavors, but they can be combined into countless different strategies. Option income strategies are designed to take advantage of time decay to generate a consistent income. Investors may decide to use calls or puts, or a combination of options to achieve these goals. Option income strategies are designed to […]
What Is a Poor Man’s Covered Call?
Covered calls are a popular way to generate an income from stock options, but they require a potentially large upfront investment in the underlying stock. While such an investment isn’t a problem for large account holders, it can be prohibitively expensive for those just getting started using options to generate income. Fortunately, there are some […]
How the Wheel Option Strategy Works
There are many different options strategies designed to generate an income. While covered calls are the most popular, traders may also use iron condors, butterfly spreads, diagonal spreads or calendar spreads to generate income that may be less risky or more lucrative than simply buying dividend-paying stocks or conventional bonds. The wheel option strategy is […]
Top 5 Covered Call ETFs (2022)
Exchange-traded funds (ETFs) have become a popular way for investors to access countless strategies, including covered calls. From smart beta to actively managed funds, there are many different ways for investors to generate an income above and beyond dividends. However, there are also several drawbacks to consider before using ETFs. Let’s look at the top […]
Can I Trade Options in an IRA?
Many individual investors wish to utilize options trading to generate income but are unsure of whether or not they can trade options in an IRA. Most individual retirement accounts (IRAs) are indeed capable of trading options, provided they request the right settings. This includes Traditional, Rollover, Roth, Simple, and SEP IRAs. Where most investors can’t trade […]
Covered Call Pros and Cons
In this article, we examine covered call pros and cons. Before diving into the complexities of what a covered call trade is and how it can be used to generate portfolio income lets first define what an option contract is and what it means to each party involved. There are two main types of options, […]
How Option Greeks Affect Covered Calls
The concept of a stock option is fairly straightforward: It provides the right or obligation to buy or sell a stock at a specified time and price. Of course, the price of an option is influenced by a wide range of factors, including the underlying stock price, time remaining, volatility and even interest rates. These […]