RJ Hamster
These ‘Boring’ Trades Have Quietly Paid 20% a Year
Delivering World-Class Financial Research Since 1999
A guest essay from Doc Eifrig… Selling options is safer than buying stocks – if you do it this way… A 95% win rate… Turn market fear into monthly cash… Get paid over and over again…
Editor’s note: Today, as our team enjoys some time off for the holidays, we’re bringing you another guest essay from our Dr. David “Doc” Eifrig – and it’s all about options.
As Doc told you yesterday, most people are scared of trading options. That’s likely because they’ve been burned by doing it the wrong way and think it’s too risky, and maybe even “lost their shirts” on the first options trade they ever made.
But there “is a better way,” Doc wrote… And he introduced the options strategy he learned 30 years ago, which reduces the risk to your investments while creating returns and steady income that simply doesn’t exist for mere stockholders.
Today, he shows you exactly how and why this approach works…
And he offers the chance to try his Retirement Trader advisory, where he has shared these recommended strategies with thousands of subscribers for more than 15 years, with a 95% win rate on more than 800 positions. Enjoy…
Pay attention here…
Today, I (Doc) am going to show you exactly how to make the type of options trades I recommend in my Retirement Trader advisory. That’s right – I’m letting you in on the secrets to the strategy that has delivered a 95% win rate since 2010.
After today’s essay, you’ll know all you really need to know to use my strategy yourself… You’ll see how I was able to put together a streak of 211 consecutive winning trades… and hopefully, you’ll be compelled to use this strategy.
After all, in the past four years, this strategy has generated more than a 20% average annualized return each year on closed trades. That’s during the bear market in 2022, followed by some ups and downs in the current three-year bull run. And these gains came with less risk than simply owning stocks.
Here’s how we use options – the right way…
One risk-reducing, return-boosting options trade is known as a ‘covered call’…
I can explain how a covered call works using a simple example…
If you follow the entertainment business at all, you may have heard of a movie script or story being “optioned.”
This means a studio has approached a writer and expressed interest in turning his story into a movie. The studio pays the writer, say, $10,000 today to lock up the rights to the movie. And if it decides to move forward, it will buy the script from him for $100,000.
The screenwriter just sold the movie studio a covered call. He gets to keep the $10,000 he was paid up front, no matter what. If the studio makes the movie, he makes more money. If the studio moves on, he keeps the option money and gets to sell his script again to another buyer after the first buyer decides not to exercise his option.
When the phone rings and you get an offer to have your script optioned, that’s a day worthy of celebration.
We can do something similar with the stocks we already own…
As a subscriber of Stansberry Research, I’m going to assume you already own some high-quality, capital-efficient companies like Microsoft (MSFT) or Hershey (HSY).
If you limit yourself to traditional investments, you simply can’t do better than stocks like these when it comes to building wealth.
But you can do even more with some options “frosting.”
For example, as a Hershey shareholder, you can wait for earnings to rise and push the share price up. You can also wait for earnings expectations to increase – thereby leading the market to place a higher valuation on your shares.
But why not sell an option and collect cash early, just like the screenwriter?
Here’s a real example from the not-too-distant past…
Let’s say you were sitting on 100 shares of Hershey, which traded at about $181 per share in late December 2023. Your total position would be worth about $18,100. In the next month, Hershey shares may rise or fall… and your wealth would do the same.
Instead, you could find someone to pay you cash for the option to buy your stock at a later date. In the case of Hershey, you could have quickly entered an option contract to sell your shares on January 26, 2024, for $185 a share. You could’ve sold this call for about $3 per share.
A standard options contract covers 100 shares. This means you’d collect $300, free and clear. It shows up in your brokerage account immediately, and you can do whatever you’d like with it. It will never go away.
When the option expires, the call buyer decides if he wants to buy your shares. In this example, that would be your 100 shares of Hershey for $185.
If shares trade for more than $185, the buyer will take them from you… paying $4 per share more than the $181 you could have gotten by selling them on the open market at the time you opened the trade, in addition to the $3 per share you received for agreeing to the deal.
Meanwhile, if Hershey shares still trade below $185, the buyer won’t want them, so he’ll leave them for you. In that case, you could sell another call option and collect cash again. When that expires, you can do it again, and so on.
If you did this each month, you could’ve collected about $3,600 in a year on your $18,100 investment in Hershey if shares don’t move a penny. On an annualized basis, that’s an extra 20% per year of income on your position in Hershey…
I’ve also pointed out that selling covered calls lowers your risk relative to holding stocks the usual way…
Let’s see how…
Again, if you own 100 shares of Hershey at $181 per share, you have $18,100 at risk. The stock could theoretically go to $0. But if you collect $3,600 over the course of the year, you now have only $14,500 at risk ($18,100 minus $3,600).
On a per-share basis, if you paid $181 per share for Hershey but sell a single call for $3, your “cost basis” is now down to $178. This reduces your risk if (and when) the stock falls.
On the upside, if shares stay at $181, you’ve made a profit of 1.65% ($3 on $181) without the stock even moving. And you made that in about a month.
Here’s how to think of a covered-call trade: You’re getting a gambler to agree to pay you now for the right to pay you even more later. That’s a winning move.
Now, you may still have no interest in options. That’s OK…
After all, this strategy doesn’t produce “home runs.” In fact, selling covered calls can limit your upside if your stock makes a big move. (For example, if our hypothetical Hershey position shot up to $225 before expiration, we’d be stuck selling shares for only $185 apiece.)
So if you’re still of the opinion that building wealth comes from making wild speculations to chase spectacular returns, then collecting cash payments from high-quality stocks over and over again may not appeal to you.
But if you’ve learned enough to understand that real wealth comes from limiting risk, you may never go back to investing the usual way again…
In fact, we can make it even simpler…
We can actually trade two ways… We sell covered calls as we described here. And we also like to sell “puts” – to option buyers in the market who are betting on shares of a particular stock to fall over a set period of time.
Selling covered calls and puts may sound like opposite trades, but they actually make nearly identical returns on your money with similarly low risk.
And if you decide to sell puts, then it’s an even easier strategy… You only have to make one trade, and you don’t need to own any stock up front.
Selling something you don’t own sounds like an impossible arrangement. But it’s just the vocabulary that makes it confusing.
Said another way, if you followed the covered-call example, you can definitely understand a put trade. For our Retirement Trader subscribers, it’s arranged as a “choose your own adventure.” Whichever one works for you can create the same income.
Like when selling covered calls, when you sell a put, you are selling an options contract to a buyer who is making a leveraged bet… which can pay off massively for them if they’re right. We’re just betting that they most likely won’t be correct… and that we’ll come out all right even if they are.
In an environment where there’s so much fear in the market, selling puts can work incredibly well. It thrives as folks get afraid, using their anxiety to help us make more money up front, much like selling insurance.
The main difference is that selling puts requires a surplus of ready cash, as opposed to owning shares of a stock up front with a covered call. While covered calls might leave you holding shares you already own, if you sell puts, you may be obligated to buy those shares at an agreed-upon price at a later date.
That’s why we only recommend trades on businesses that we fully understand and blue-chip stocks that we would want to own anyway. But no matter the route, the end goal is the same… generating safe, steady income without touching a share of stock.
Here’s an example of a put-sell recommendation…
In June 2023, I recommended Retirement Tradersubscribers sell put options on American Express (AXP), one of the largest and best credit-card companies in the world.
You may remember that not long before, the regional banking crisis had broken out. Everyone thought that banks were going to collapse and we were headed straight into a financial calamity. Yes, a few banks that did dumb things went under. That’s the way it should work.
We didn’t buy the fear of a widespread banking collapse. That June, though, folks were still skeptical about whether the banking “crisis” was behind us, yet the financial sector was recovering in our view…
This made it a good time to take advantage of other investors’ fear and sell put options on a financial company we like, such as American Express. Given its strong customer base, the company was forecasting 15% to 17% revenue growth even with the potential for a slowing economy. And based on our analysis, the company was right to be optimistic.
Subscribers who followed the advice sold puts expiring in August 2023 with a strike price of $165 and collected $470 in income up front. As I shared in the trade instructions…
The puts obligate you to buy AXP at $165 a share if the stock trades for less than that near the August 18option-expiration day.
Buying 100 shares at $165 each represented a potential obligation of $16,500. (Remember, one options contract equals 100 shares.) I always tell folks to keep this potential cash obligation in mind when using this strategy.
But we explained that if the markets remained unchanged and AXP traded for more than $165 on August 18, subscribers wouldn’t have to buy the stock. They’d just get to keep the $470 “premium.” That’s a simple 3% return in about two months based on the $16,500 potential obligation.
Maybe that doesn’t sound like a lot, but…
If we put this trade on every two months – assuming all prices remain the same – this could return 19% a year.
(Note, I’m not recommending selling this particular put on AXP today, as this was a trade from 2023.)
Of course, if you did this trade and shares of AXP fell below $165 back on August 18, 2023, you would have kept the income payment but would have needed to buy the stock at $165 per share. If that happened, you’d own a blue chip – a stock that we would love to own – for less than you could have bought it for a couple months earlier.
You’d be buying shares for $165 each. But remember, you’d have collected $4.70 in premium. That means your true cost in the trade would be $160.30. You could then sell your shares anytime they traded above $160.30, or just sit back and let the share price rise, collecting $2.40 in dividend payments each year.
It’s hard to lose using this strategy if you only sell options on stocks you would love to own.
We also have a strategy in Retirement Trader called rolling an option, which limits the likelihood of either put sellers being forced to buy shares or our trades closing prematurely for a loss.
This is what we did with this particular trade. Subscribers ended up walking away with a gain of 3.3%, or 14.7% annualized, in September 2023.
I’ve been using these strategies in Retirement Trader since 2010…
My team and I have recommended more than 800 different positions… and 776 of them have been closed for profits. That’s a win rate of 95%, and we’re now on a streak of 80 straight winning trades.
Not only are these winning trades, but they’re also significantly profitable.
This year, we’re about to deliver a 24% average annualized return on closed trades. Last year it was 25%, and we’ve returned 20% or more each year since 2022.
When you post gains of 20% or more in a year with a win rate of 95%, it’s easy to stay in the market and keep trading. And when you do, your wealth compounds at an astounding rate.
The great thing about really learning how to trade options is that you’ll find you can do it in any market environment and collect hundreds – or even thousands – of dollars in income each month.
I’ve heard from so many happy subscribers who’ve done this for themselves, either through covered calls or selling puts using my strategy. And what do they all have in common? None had any prior experience with this approach or anything close to it.
But in my Retirement Trader service, they learned how to make the type of trades I described and followed my recommendations. Now, I often hear from subscribers who are confident enough to create their own trades using my strategy.
This is all to say that if you’re interested at all in trading options to generate income – a strategy that comes with lower risk than simply owning shares of stocks – I urge you to give Retirement Trader a try.
In addition to getting access to all of my educational materials, and new monthly recommendations, subscribers get a special report with my No. 1 stock for 2026. This video presentation and special offer will go offline at midnight Eastern time, so don’t delay.
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Urgent Holiday Announcement From Doc This Week
Dr. David “Doc” Eifrig has an urgent message about his position at Stansberry Research. In a new, short 10-minute update, he shares his (very rare and surprising) outlook for 2026… and an announcement that could shake up the entire financial-publishing industry. This could change how you make money next year… But you must see this before the holidays are over. Click here for Doc’s holiday update.
More Than 150 Stocks Could CRASH (Beginning Next Week)
A controversial analyst whose work is followed by members of all 10 of the biggest investing firms in the world is now issuing a startling warning. Today, he says 50% of the 300-plus stocks that have doubled in 2025 look due for a CRASH in 2026, according to his system. In his latest investing briefing, he even names TWO of America’s most popular stocks that could suffer the most. Until tomorrow, get their names and tickers right here.
Our team is taking some deserved time off around the holidays, so we won’t be sharing the 52-week highs, top open positions, and mailbag today.
Additionally, with the next two days being New Year’s Eve and Day, the next time you’ll receive a Digest will be on Friday. In the meantime, here’s to 2026. We look forward to sharing the new year with you… And, as always, send your comments and questions to feedback@stansberryresearch.com.
Here’s to our health, wealth, and a great retirement,
Dr. David Eifrig, MD, MBA
Baltimore, Maryland
December 30, 2025
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