Tuesday, November 24th, 2009

Take Your Investments to the Next Level with Covered Calls

Mar 4th, 2009 | By Karim Rahemtulla | Category: Featured

Karim Rahemtulla of the Smart Profits Report is on a mission. He is here to rescue you out of the darkness, doom and gloom and into the light on investing in the “brutal bear” market.

Here he shows us covered call strategy investing and how it works.

This from Karim:

Just what is the best way to profit in a stock market like this?

Our mission here is not only to show you the sectors, industries, and stocks that are set up to fare well, and the trends you can play to your advantage, but to also show you how to profit from them in more advanced, sophisticated ways than ordinary investors.

And when I say “advanced” and “sophisticated,” I don’t mean “complex to understand” and “difficult to execute.” Far from it.

In recent columns, we’ve talked about investing in water, gold investments, the real estate market, and much more (check out our Smart Profits Report archives if you’ve missed anything).

The bottom line is that amid all the bailout and stimulus talk… the volatility… the fear… the constant doom and gloom… we continue to stress that there are ways to negotiate brutal bear markets – ways that can still bring in strong profits.

Covered call investing is one of them…

Covered Calls: The Perfect “Cover” For An Imperfect Market

We realize that times are tough. No doubt about that. But we’re not sitting around complaining about it. Our focus, as always, is purely on showing any investor how to take profits from any market.

And we’ve demonstrated that in recent weeks, due in no small part to our covered call strategy.

Now, before I go any further… I understand that options strategies can sometimes spook investors. They seem complicated, especially since most people are used to just buying and selling stocks.

But our job is to educate you… helping you become a smarter investor, able to take bigger profits…

2 Key Elements That Will Help You Beat Wall Street…

In some ways, Wall Street is like the world’s biggest casino.

The devious types who make their living there don’t want you to know about the tips and techniques that can help you win.

They’re perfectly happy for you to remain in the dark, unwilling to teach you about hedging your bets. They just want you to make them and grab your money.

Now, in some cases, I’ll be the first person to admit that hedging your bets is a flat-out bad idea. However, this is not one of those cases. And I’ll tell you why…

This type of market, complete with its daily volatility and blow-ups, requires that you expand your investing acumen. And this is where we come in, giving you the two key elements you need…

  1. The necessary know-how.
  2. The specific trades to take end-game profits.

Covered Call Buyers vs. Covered Call Sellers… Who Wins?

Using options does not mean gambling. If you’re relatively new to the options world, that’s the first fallacy you need to put aside. Options actually work very logically. With every buyer, there’s a seller.

The Buyers: 9 times out of 10 – especially with short-term options trading – buyers lose out. And with good reason: It’s like trying to predict where a stock will go in a couple of weeks or months – something that nobody is entirely capable of doing.

The Sellers: Options sellers, on the other hand, usually make money because they’re basically betting on this lack of supreme knowledge. Huh… how does that work? Simple…

While they acknowledge that they can’t predict where an index or stock will go with pinpoint accuracy, they at least want to try by making a well-informed, educated estimate. And they want to get paid for trying and waiting around. In particular, with deep-in-the-money covered call selling or put-selling, they want to own the underlying shares, but at a price that they specify.

I’ll give you an example…

Using Covered Calls To Invest In Gold

As we’ve written about here before, we liked gold investments when no one else did. So we put our money where our mouth was and bought shares in Goldcorp (NYSE: GG), a major gold producer.

But we were also aware that gold prices would likely remain volatile for a time, keeping shares from reaching our targets right away.

So what to do?

Easy. We bought the shares and sold call options against our position. This not only reduced our cost, but also gave us a quasi-dividend and increased our chances of a win.

In the end, our shares didn’t get called away from us at options expiration. But that was fine with us. We got another opportunity to lower our cost and increase our potential for a win by selling more calls.

We did the same with a recent trade in the Xcelerated Profits Report – and I’ll be doing it again very shortly. In this market, it’s how you play the game that counts. It’s all about risk management.

The Covered Call Investment Strategy – A Gateway To Safer Profits

In case you don’t know, we have the resources for you to learn about the covered call investment strategy (and several others, for that matter) in more detail on our Smart Profits Report website.

Scan our archives. It’s all free and essential reading if you’re serious about investing. We provide step-by-step instructions on how to execute various trades, as well as the rationale behind them.

And if you find something you really like, why not take your investing to the next level?

Source: Kiss Goodbye To “Ordinary” Investing: Why Smart Investors Use Covered Calls

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By Karim Rahemtulla

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About the Author

Karim RahemtullaKarim Rahemtulla is one of the country's foremost specialists in options trading, and, along with Executive Director Julia Guth, a principal founder of Mt. Vernon Research, as well as the founder and editor of Strategic Income, The 400 Report and The Smart Profits Report. Over the past three years, his options strategies have cashed in winners more than 70% of the time. Karim is also an editor of Mt. Vernon Research's Xcelerated Profits Report, a monthly newsletter devoted to making money using the safest stock and option strategies to reap great returns. An internationally renowned options trader who's been dubbed a "Market Maven" by CNBC, Karim also sits on the Advisory Panel for The Oxford Club, and is a frequent contributor to The Oxford Club Communiqué. Karim was educated in England, Canada, and the U.S. and is fluent in several languages. He travels the world regularly to find the best investment opportunities for our members.

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Smart Profits Report is a comprehensive investment tool that brings you top chart analysis and cutting-edge trading techniques. Smart Profits Report's market-beating technical analysts reveal how to use highly effective charting tools that mainstream analysts know little about or nothing about.

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