Home > Articles > Business & Management > Finance & Investing

Options Trading for the Conservative Investor: Setting the Ground Rules

Michael C. Thomsett lays the groundwork for how conservative investors can employ options strategies to enhance current income without increasing market risks; protect long positions through options used for insurance; and create a form of contingency to survive in volatile market conditions.
This chapter is from the book
  • In any discussion of an investment strategy, you begin with a series of assumptions. Your assumptions tie in to your conservative profile: You have prequalified the stock of a limited number of companies; you believe these stocks will rise in value over time; fundamentals are essential in stock selection; you would be happy to buy more shares; and a finite number of companies meet your standards. We have identified ten companies that make up a "model portfolio" to illustrate the options strategies in this book. These serve as examples of companies meeting a few basic criteria for picking companies and their stocks, as candidates for conservative options trading.

This book explains how conservative investors can employ options strategies to (a) enhance current income without increasing market risks; (b) protect long positions through options used for insurance; and (c) create a form of contingency to survive in volatile market conditions.

The Ground Rules

Because you are a conservative investor, the arguments in this book are based on a series of underlying assumptions. Always keep these ground rules in mind, because they relate to your risk profile and to your investing philosophy. Five underlying assumptions are used in this book.

  1. You will limit options activities to stocks you have prequalified. This is a necessary starting point as long as your portfolio—and the stocks you use for options strategies—includes stocks you believe in as long-term-hold stocks, and you consider these stocks permanent parts of your portfolio (as long as the fundamentals remain strong). This is an important attribute because it is not conservative to buy stocks solely to use for options strategies. A conservative approach to options must include the premise that your activities will be limited to the strongest possible stocks you can find.
  2. You believe that your stocks will rise in value. A conservative investor naturally expects stocks to rise in value; otherwise, why keep them? But this seemingly obvious point has relevance in the underlying assumptions of this book. Many of the discussions of strategies are premised on a belief that over the long term, the subject stock's market value will rise. Many options strategies work best when stocks do not rise, so for example, covered call writing (a very conservative strategy) is most profitable when stock values remain steady or even fall slightly. This means that you may need to time a strategy to produce profits resulting from short-term stability in prices, hoping for longer-term growth. So a second underlying assumption is in line with the conservative approach. This means you want to accumulate shares of value investments; you expect prices to rise over time; and you will change a hold to a sell when the fundamentals change. However, at the same time, some options strategies are designed to take advantage of short-term price volatility. When marketwide volatility affects short-term prices in your stocks, you have an opportunity to pick up discounted shares, take profits (without having to sell stock), or average down your overall basis. Of course, the proposal that you should average down is conservative only if the basic stock selection assumptions remain valid. You will want to employ such a strategy only for stocks in which you have a strong belief as long-term value investments.
  3. You accept the premise that fundamental analysis of stocks is an essential first step in the process of examining option opportunities. Options have no fundamental attributes. These are intangible contractual instruments, and they have no value on their own; thus, you can only judge the tangible value of stock as a means for selecting appropriate options strategies. Many first-time options traders make the mistake of overlooking this basic reality. They select options (and stocks) based on the immediate return potential, but they ignore the real market risks of the underlying stocks. This violates the conservative tenet that stocks should be chosen for their fundamental strength and growth potential.
  4. In the event of a temporary downward movement in a stock's price, you would be happy to buy more shares. Some investors may be unwilling to pick up more shares of a particular stock, even when the opportunity to buy discounted shares is presented. In this book, several strategies are introduced proposing that additional shares may be purchased (or exposed to contingent purchase) using options. If this is not the case in a particular situation, those suggestions should be passed over. You may have a strict formula for diversification or asset allocation that you use to limit risks in any particular stocks, for example, so strategies aimed at increasing your holdings in one stock may contradict your portfolio management standards in such an instance. Strategies proposing that you set up situations in which more shares may be picked up work only if that suggestion conforms to your overall portfolio plan.
  5. You believe that an adequate number of available stocks meet your criteria. Some investors become convinced that their short list of stocks is the only list available to them. Thus, if they were to sell shares of stock from their portfolio, they would be unable to reinvest profits in equally acceptable stocks. If you do not believe this, you are probably aware that dozens of stocks meet your fundamental criteria, in terms of price level, PE ratio, volatility, dividend payment history, and a range of other analytical tests. Accordingly, if a particular stock is sold from your portfolio, a number of other stocks that you could and would purchase upon sale of stocks you currently own also conform to your criteria.

Incidentally, this practice makes sense whether you trade options or not. The fundamentals can change for any company, so if a hold stock changes to a sell, you need to reinvest funds. As a matter of basic portfolio management, every investor needs a secondary list of stocks that would be used to replace sold stocks from the current portfolio. The need for maintaining this list relates to options trading because some strategies result in selling shares of stock. In those cases, you want to reinvest capital in a new issue on your list of qualified stocks.

InformIT Promotional Mailings & Special Offers

I would like to receive exclusive offers and hear about products from InformIT and its family of brands. I can unsubscribe at any time.

Overview


Pearson Education, Inc., 221 River Street, Hoboken, New Jersey 07030, (Pearson) presents this site to provide information about products and services that can be purchased through this site.

This privacy notice provides an overview of our commitment to privacy and describes how we collect, protect, use and share personal information collected through this site. Please note that other Pearson websites and online products and services have their own separate privacy policies.

Collection and Use of Information


To conduct business and deliver products and services, Pearson collects and uses personal information in several ways in connection with this site, including:

Questions and Inquiries

For inquiries and questions, we collect the inquiry or question, together with name, contact details (email address, phone number and mailing address) and any other additional information voluntarily submitted to us through a Contact Us form or an email. We use this information to address the inquiry and respond to the question.

Online Store

For orders and purchases placed through our online store on this site, we collect order details, name, institution name and address (if applicable), email address, phone number, shipping and billing addresses, credit/debit card information, shipping options and any instructions. We use this information to complete transactions, fulfill orders, communicate with individuals placing orders or visiting the online store, and for related purposes.

Surveys

Pearson may offer opportunities to provide feedback or participate in surveys, including surveys evaluating Pearson products, services or sites. Participation is voluntary. Pearson collects information requested in the survey questions and uses the information to evaluate, support, maintain and improve products, services or sites, develop new products and services, conduct educational research and for other purposes specified in the survey.

Contests and Drawings

Occasionally, we may sponsor a contest or drawing. Participation is optional. Pearson collects name, contact information and other information specified on the entry form for the contest or drawing to conduct the contest or drawing. Pearson may collect additional personal information from the winners of a contest or drawing in order to award the prize and for tax reporting purposes, as required by law.

Newsletters

If you have elected to receive email newsletters or promotional mailings and special offers but want to unsubscribe, simply email information@informit.com.

Service Announcements

On rare occasions it is necessary to send out a strictly service related announcement. For instance, if our service is temporarily suspended for maintenance we might send users an email. Generally, users may not opt-out of these communications, though they can deactivate their account information. However, these communications are not promotional in nature.

Customer Service

We communicate with users on a regular basis to provide requested services and in regard to issues relating to their account we reply via email or phone in accordance with the users' wishes when a user submits their information through our Contact Us form.

Other Collection and Use of Information


Application and System Logs

Pearson automatically collects log data to help ensure the delivery, availability and security of this site. Log data may include technical information about how a user or visitor connected to this site, such as browser type, type of computer/device, operating system, internet service provider and IP address. We use this information for support purposes and to monitor the health of the site, identify problems, improve service, detect unauthorized access and fraudulent activity, prevent and respond to security incidents and appropriately scale computing resources.

Web Analytics

Pearson may use third party web trend analytical services, including Google Analytics, to collect visitor information, such as IP addresses, browser types, referring pages, pages visited and time spent on a particular site. While these analytical services collect and report information on an anonymous basis, they may use cookies to gather web trend information. The information gathered may enable Pearson (but not the third party web trend services) to link information with application and system log data. Pearson uses this information for system administration and to identify problems, improve service, detect unauthorized access and fraudulent activity, prevent and respond to security incidents, appropriately scale computing resources and otherwise support and deliver this site and its services.

Cookies and Related Technologies

This site uses cookies and similar technologies to personalize content, measure traffic patterns, control security, track use and access of information on this site, and provide interest-based messages and advertising. Users can manage and block the use of cookies through their browser. Disabling or blocking certain cookies may limit the functionality of this site.

Do Not Track

This site currently does not respond to Do Not Track signals.

Security


Pearson uses appropriate physical, administrative and technical security measures to protect personal information from unauthorized access, use and disclosure.

Children


This site is not directed to children under the age of 13.

Marketing


Pearson may send or direct marketing communications to users, provided that

  • Pearson will not use personal information collected or processed as a K-12 school service provider for the purpose of directed or targeted advertising.
  • Such marketing is consistent with applicable law and Pearson's legal obligations.
  • Pearson will not knowingly direct or send marketing communications to an individual who has expressed a preference not to receive marketing.
  • Where required by applicable law, express or implied consent to marketing exists and has not been withdrawn.

Pearson may provide personal information to a third party service provider on a restricted basis to provide marketing solely on behalf of Pearson or an affiliate or customer for whom Pearson is a service provider. Marketing preferences may be changed at any time.

Correcting/Updating Personal Information


If a user's personally identifiable information changes (such as your postal address or email address), we provide a way to correct or update that user's personal data provided to us. This can be done on the Account page. If a user no longer desires our service and desires to delete his or her account, please contact us at customer-service@informit.com and we will process the deletion of a user's account.

Choice/Opt-out


Users can always make an informed choice as to whether they should proceed with certain services offered by InformIT. If you choose to remove yourself from our mailing list(s) simply visit the following page and uncheck any communication you no longer want to receive: www.informit.com/u.aspx.

Sale of Personal Information


Pearson does not rent or sell personal information in exchange for any payment of money.

While Pearson does not sell personal information, as defined in Nevada law, Nevada residents may email a request for no sale of their personal information to NevadaDesignatedRequest@pearson.com.

Supplemental Privacy Statement for California Residents


California residents should read our Supplemental privacy statement for California residents in conjunction with this Privacy Notice. The Supplemental privacy statement for California residents explains Pearson's commitment to comply with California law and applies to personal information of California residents collected in connection with this site and the Services.

Sharing and Disclosure


Pearson may disclose personal information, as follows:

  • As required by law.
  • With the consent of the individual (or their parent, if the individual is a minor)
  • In response to a subpoena, court order or legal process, to the extent permitted or required by law
  • To protect the security and safety of individuals, data, assets and systems, consistent with applicable law
  • In connection the sale, joint venture or other transfer of some or all of its company or assets, subject to the provisions of this Privacy Notice
  • To investigate or address actual or suspected fraud or other illegal activities
  • To exercise its legal rights, including enforcement of the Terms of Use for this site or another contract
  • To affiliated Pearson companies and other companies and organizations who perform work for Pearson and are obligated to protect the privacy of personal information consistent with this Privacy Notice
  • To a school, organization, company or government agency, where Pearson collects or processes the personal information in a school setting or on behalf of such organization, company or government agency.

Links


This web site contains links to other sites. Please be aware that we are not responsible for the privacy practices of such other sites. We encourage our users to be aware when they leave our site and to read the privacy statements of each and every web site that collects Personal Information. This privacy statement applies solely to information collected by this web site.

Requests and Contact


Please contact us about this Privacy Notice or if you have any requests or questions relating to the privacy of your personal information.

Changes to this Privacy Notice


We may revise this Privacy Notice through an updated posting. We will identify the effective date of the revision in the posting. Often, updates are made to provide greater clarity or to comply with changes in regulatory requirements. If the updates involve material changes to the collection, protection, use or disclosure of Personal Information, Pearson will provide notice of the change through a conspicuous notice on this site or other appropriate way. Continued use of the site after the effective date of a posted revision evidences acceptance. Please contact us if you have questions or concerns about the Privacy Notice or any objection to any revisions.

Last Update: November 17, 2020