So what’s the better investment – stocks or LEAP options?

Recently, I covered the profitable and simplistic world of LEAP options – a simple way to trade using long-term options that have an expiration date of one to three years.

When it comes to investment strategies, you’re looking for two key elements right off the bat: Simplicity and understandability.  After all, if you know what you’re doing, your chances of success are greatly heightened. And that’s especially true in the sometimes murky world of options.

While I was in Canada last week, Smart Profits readers sure did pound the mailbag! I returned to find several questions to my recent column on how to execute covered call trades. For example, one reader wanted to know how options can work with short positions – and referenced doing so on Yamana Gold (NYSE: AUY).

Last week, I explained the nuts and bolts of covered call investing – a bullish strategy that focuses more on returns than it does on risk.

The mainstream “press” does not want you to pay attention to option strategies such as covered calls.  There is a conspiracy here – and it’s meant to keep you ignorant to a sector of the market that just doesn’t fit in with the “buy stocks and mutual funds” mantra that makes Wall Street money.

As promised last week, this is the start of a series on options strategies I’ve planned in order to show you a world of possibilities that the mainstream “press” quite simply doesn’t want you to pay attention to. At the risk of sounding like a conspiracy theorist, I firmly believe that most investors are intentionally kept in the dark about anything that breaks away from the “buy stocks and mutual funds” mantra that makes Wall Street money.

Stock market-wise, I wish we were back in July 2008. At that time, a 1% swing in the market was an anomaly. Today, it’s the norm. And even though we’ve seen volatility calm down somewhat in recent weeks, don’t be fooled. As we enter another earnings season, we’ll see volatility pick up again. So what are you going to do?

I could almost hear the collective groans of disbelief as soon as readers read my forecast. It was a column I wrote almost three years ago, warning about the impending U.S. real estate crisis and projecting that home prices were set to tumble by as much as 40%. Turns out I actually under-estimated the scale of the bust. Prices have fallen much more than that in some areas – and may fall even further. The are obvious reasons for this. The economic recession. The evaporation of available credit. A huge increase in unemployment. And, of course, the mere fact that the housing market had simply risen to bubble-like proportions and needed to correct. But there’s a bigger problem – and it’s…