As promised some time ago, here is the info you need that could allow you to realistically make anywhere from $500 to $25,000 or more from your portfolio by next Wednesday depending on how big it is.

If you are not set up to trade options in your account, you might want to consider doing so as you won’t be able to do what I am about to show you if you don’t.

The CBOE or Chicago Board Options Exchange was nice enough to put this program together for you which is partially the reason why more money flows through them now than any other exchange in the world including the New York Stock Exchange, and the Nasdaq.

Plus, I really like these guys, they have their act together.

So without further ado here is a link to their page and I want you to download their GREAT Education Program they have put together that shows and explains the mechanics behind the options plays we have been doing here. It is user friendly and is right on the money…pun intended.

Just click on the box and it will take you to the download. Do that and then I will show you what you can do with it although since you are hear, you are smart anyway so I think you will see the light and see how I have been able to pull in 50% + return on the plays that I have been showing you.

Let me know what you think!

Cheers,

Andrew

PS A word of caution. Do not let your broker give you a rough time about setting up to trade options in your account. Most are clueless about them. Make sure you tell him/her that you just want to do covered ones and that should put out the fire in their underwear.

Remember too that if they were so brilliant at giving advice on how to invest, they would not be working for someone else, they would have been able to take their own advice and be retired by now…

Just something to think about.

That being said, I am not offering investment advice here just my opinion and you should always seek the advice of a qualified (please note that word and good luck finding one) investment professional.

OK, squeezed out of Apple this morning for a 380% net return.

An Analyst (it always cracks me up how appropriately that term describes most of them) Shaw Wu downgraded the stock today on valuation concerns. Apparently it was OK, last year when it was at 180 but not now. I refuse to get on a soapbox here on my view of Analysts, but your smart so you can figure out what it is.

Here is the squeeze we got out of Apple for the trades to close the positions. This is why you have your orders in before the market opens if you are bailing out. Especially when the stock drops like a rock as it did today.

5 Contracts of APVGK- July 155 Calls sold @ $23.00= $11,500 - Commissions of $14.95 = Net $11,485.05

The ROI as I mentioned before not computable as we had no money in this trade. (more…)

Going to put in sell orders tomorrow on the 5 contracts of the APVGK’s.

Also going to sell all 39 contracts of the APVGRs that are still in the portfolio. Nope, I did not look at these today so I did not have a chance to get out at $5.20 …whoops, my bad.

Also, if you look back at the either or scenario, we could have gotten either 16 if we took out are original investment or 39 if we played up. Well, I went with the played up version….I really need to watch my portfolio a bit closer… So, if these get sold tomorrow on the original $6,000 investment, they should bring in right around $31,000 or $12,880 on the 16 contracts that I discussed. So, not too bad aye? (more…)

=$

Apple pushed past 161 today. Not really a big surprise for anyone keeping up with my trades here. The July 155 Calls APVGK are now bid at $17.50. So the 5 we have free and clear are now worth $8,750. Since we originally purchased 10 contracts for $6,000 and then sold 5 contracts for $6,000 and got all of our equity back, we are now holding these contracts with a ZERO cost basis. The questions is, what is our ROI?…..Exactly…like in the movie “The Toy Story” to infinity and beyond!

Our Apple July 190 Calls APVGR are now at $4.65. I have to go back and look at the trades but I think I might have sold half of them at $5.20. We got into those at $2.60 so we are fine there. I am going to put an order in to sell them all for $5.20 so that I can get into a different play. (more…)

= $

In the trade last week with Apple where instead of just buying stock naked i.e. without dressing it and taking care of it by dressing it with a Call, we purchased 100 shares of Apple and then immediately sold the call on it. These were both market orders using zero buying techniques that anyone could do, even a monkey like me!

Now a day after we did this the stock dropped. Has this ever happened to you before? Of course it has if you have been investing for any length of time.

But if you had purchased the stock naked, your investment would be down about $4 Bucks a share now since it is trading around$149. Ouch….

Guess what? We are still smiling! Because we sold our July 170 Call on our stock, we put $8.25 per share in our pocket that we could go buy monkey food with. I do get hungry you know.

Even though Apple is down, we are still up $4.25 on the trade versus being down $4. That is an $8.25% difference. Can you say holy smokes Mr. Monkey?

We took care of our stock and dressed it and it is now taking care of us because we took care of it. Do you see why doing covered Calls in many ways is much safer and more profitable than just buying the stock?

I have some videos in the works that will explain the Why, What, and How of dressing your portfolio to make it safer and get much higher returns than you my have thought possible.

Andrew Anderson …AKA =  I Am An Investor Monkey

UPDATE 10:14 AM, April 8: Plugged In Numbers At Bottom Of This Story- Here is another play for Apple. Meant to get this out yesterday but got too tied up so here it is.

It is a covered Call play. Now a lot of you have heard of this, and a lot may not have.

But it is the only way that I will buy an individual stock. It is just something else that you want to add to you bag of tricks.

Ok, so we are going to buy 100 shares of Apple, and since I am writing this on Monday..whoops. at 1:30 AM so it is now Tuesday, but before the market opens I will use the closing numbers for trade.

Going to use the closing prices on these - AAPL 155.89 So let us say we shell out about $15,600 total to make it easy on me.. Therefore, we have $156 as a cost basis. Now of course our goal is always 21.5% ROI per year. (more…)

Just wanted to do a quick update on the original Apple Call play from two Friday’s ago. Sold 5 of the 155 June contracts at $12.00 yesterday. Since we purchased them for $6.00 about 10 days ago we now have our original equity back minus some change. So, we now basically we have 5 contracts free and clear.  Basically this is a 100% return……. in 10 days.

Will get into further details on this in the next few days as soon as I can clear my plate a tad. Also will back fill on the other purchase of July 190 calls.

Out of Apple at a net of around $10,475. Thank goodness I am done with the official play now. Will still do a follow up with the other scenarios though.

The skinny on the play since Friday = $6,000 in, $10,475 out, Net $4,475 = 74.58% return in 6 days and I am not going to even try to figure out the yearly ROI.

OK, back to work.

Here is the skinny on those 10 Contracts of Apple Calls, They are July $155’s, APVGK that I put in the portfolio on Friday for $6,000.

They are up another $1,900 or 21.71% just today as of Noon. We are up a total of $4,650 or 77.5% since Friday and they are now worth$10,650. I am pointing this out so that everyone can get past the mental block they have about being able to regularly obtain at least 21.5% returns, yearly mind you, on a regular basis.

You can learn how to do this and I am going to show you. Now if you purchased these and you feel comfortable with getting a 77.5% return in 4 days it would be OK for you to sell them all now. Bravo, job well done. Go take Yourself/Husband/Wife/Significant Other out for a nice Dinner this evening. Good behavior should always be rewarded so that it will be repeated. (more…)

This is an example of a No Brainer Trade. If I was to have sold today, I could have netted 33% since Friday or made $2,000 on the 10 contracts I purchased on Friday.

When I get some time, I will show you how to do this on a regular basis and I will show you how truly easy it is to do with the right information and why options in many cases are FAR LESS risky than purchasing stocks. And NO I am not going to sell these yet.

Nothing fundamentally has changed since I posted this trade on Friday. When playing with Options, you make a plan and stick with it. Keep your eye on the bullseye. Trades like these are why I just laugh at the experts that tell you that you have to have a diversified portfolio and yet never mention using options in your portfolio.

Personally in my mind if they do not mention them they are charlatans. If they do not mention them, their advice most of the time is rubbish for sure.

Normally I would have probably purchased 30 contracts and sold the Puts Short on top of that. If so I would be up I think $60,000 today on the trade and no I would not be selling yet….Hmmm.. have to go look at the Puts and see where they ended. Anyway, that is not for everyone of whereas all of you are capable of purchasing Calls.

I will also show why if you own individual stocks you should consider selling Covered Calls on them.  I just looked at what the CBOE has as far as an explanation for what a Covered Call is  and honestly it sucks.   I will throw together a short video on what they are soon.

Sometimes you just need to put some eggs in one basket and watch it carefully and then know when to run with it and take them out. But these chicks are not ready to hatch yet no matter how fast they are growing. Let us be patient and see just how big they get. I think you will be surprised.

To find out what a Call, Put, and Options are Click Here to go the the Chicago Board Options Exchange. They have some great training and information and a Virtual Account that allows you to play with stocks and options. Got to love it! If I can back date the trades I have done I will use it to show you what is going on!

Will put some numbers to this and a more lengthy explanation, but the virtual portfolio for the Investing Challenge is doing fine but I need to add a trade for Friday.

10 contracts of Apple August, $155 Calls. So, I am going to round the numbers andgoing to call it $6,000 even though it is actually up about $400 already. Don’t normally do a lot of options but, this was too good to pass up.

The were under $6.00 for the better part of the day. Have to keep an eye on these but, I think we sell half at $12 if they get there before May and keep the others until the June numbers come out. From what I have seen, $150 looks like it could be here soon and I think $180 or $190 is possible.

Now if they would just make the iPod a bit more intuitive when adding songs. I like iPods but truthfully their upload interface sucks, but not their stock thankfully. Bad idea to bet against Job’s any day of the week.

Opportunities abound in Chaos and Kevlar Umbrellas

I recently wrote this for another website I work on but, I felt that it really has much more relevance for us investors. This was originally published for readers of the Muse Blueprint which helps people start their own business or want to take an existing one to the next level.

If you listen to the news and I suggest that you don’t very often, you would think that the sky is falling with the economy. Well, parts of it actually are but it does not have to be so for you. I suggest that you think of yourself as the person selling Kevlar Umbrellas, like I do.

While you should be aware of economic trends such as the US dollar’s values falling like a rock with no end in site, it does open up opportunities.

I will give you just a couple of examples. As gas prices keep going up (and they will but more on that later) , it is going to make locally made products and services more competitive against those that are not local.

Do you have a product or service that can save people from driving for instance? Do you know where one is to invest in?

Here are two of my Muses or other Businesses that I have recently picked up (another strategy I will cover is buying small businesses) that do exactly that, www.888360Pixs.com and www.888EZToOwn.com . The first is a service that provides pictures, virtual tours, and Videos of Real Estate, Boats, Cars and just about everything else. The second provides FREE Real Estate Advertising.

Ok, time out here. Here is the Definition of a Muse from my Book, The Muse Blueprint.

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This will be the first in an ongoing series that I and others will be writing on the how and why of getting at least 20% returns.

For some of you this sounds like a pipe dream and yet for others, you stick you nose up at only 20%. But, if you are a serious investor, this a worthy goal for you to shoot for.

With some vehicles this is a bit easier than with others. Without going off on too many tangents, 20% is what Warren Buffet shoots for so, why not you?

If you can hit the magical 20% number you have a pretty good chance of retiring with a nice nest egg. For those of you that are a bit skeptical about hitting this number on a regular basis there are numerous ways to do so.

You can do it through and with or without leverage of various types. You can trade on margin, using options, or just plain borrow money, or last but not least, figure out how to purchase your investments on a wholesale basis. Then, you don’t even need to use leverage at all.

I am not going to attempt to go over every way to do this in the first installment but I do want to show you at least one way to do this in each one.

The first way that I will show you virtually anyone can do with a little bit of education and know how. The fact that it is so easy is perhaps that is why it is overlooked so often. That plus the fact that it is in no way shape or form sexy and does not make great copy. Well it does, but only for those of us that interested in results that end up in our wallet.

What I like about this is that you can do this tax free in your IRA or just pay taxes on it and do it however you want. The IRA is preferred way to do this though. I will touch upon this and get into more details later on.

The first way I will explain how to do this is with Real Estate.

Ok, quite yawning and don’t tell me that the Real Estate Market is tanking.

This is in fact one of the best times to do this. Have figured out that the best time to get into something is when everyone else is getting out?

This image to the left is from an actual deal that I was involved with late last year. Look at the numbers, they don’t lie. The truth of the matter is that instead of renting this out, you could easily sell it right away and gain at least 20% in less than 60 days. Yes, you can sell deals like this even in the current Real Estate Market.

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