Using call options to boost yields and generate cash

6 Low-Risk Ways to Generate High Monthly Income

All of a sudden investing for income has become popular again. And there is a reason for that.

More than $6.5 billion has evaporated from retirement accounts since 2007, coinciding with a growing trend of workers postponing their retirements or returning to the workforce at least part-time.

The U.S. economy is still lagging and the next European crisis is never far away, and that isn’t good news for investors who are dependent on the stock market to build retirement nest eggs or generate income for living expenses.

A retiree with $100,000 in a money market account might earn about $50 a month. Even at 10 times that amount, you’re pretty much limited to paying the electric bill and buying groceries without dipping into your nest egg or relying on a job that might not be there for as long as you need it.

To face life in an environment where traditional income investments like CDs, money markets, and bonds producing only .01% to 1% is depressing.  Nobody wants to cut short their dreams just because yields are ridiculously low.

But if you’d instead like to bring in $500 a week (or however much you want/need) using the money that’s otherwise stagnating in your account then I have the solution for you.

That’s why I’ve written this personal “blue print” article so you can easily create an income machine for yourself and generate an extra paycheck every week.

Let’s get started.

It’s a simple concept. Selling options. calls and puts for MONTHLY CASH income.

It’s amazing but by taking positions in the right combination of stocks or ETFs and selling puts or covered calls you can generate anywhere from 2% to 5% of extra income per month.

And with little or no risk to your capital.

Here are several things to consider:

• When you sell an option, you are collecting the cash up front. You are already ahead.
•  When you sell an option, you are transferring risk to the buyer.
•  This cash gives you the ability to manage the position – you have cash in hand to “close” or buy back the put or call, at a profit or loss, without using any or a good deal more capital. This enables you to conserve capital, the basis for regular monthly income.
•  And accepting cash enables you to create targets for your positions and voila! The sum of these targets, when set properly, give you a target income for the month, and that is what this is all about.

You don’t need to be an “options trading pro” to get started or a special account. If you are serious about generating “real income” in your investment account, even during the most volatile market conditions and then read on.

Here are 6 low-risk ways you can use to sell options to generate serious monthly cash income starting today.

1) Volatility in the Market

You may be new to the VIX, “the Fear Index.” This is the measure of market volatility and fear and the name we trade is the S&P 500 VIX Short-Term (NYSE:VXX ), the ETF for the VIX. If you look at a chart of the VXX. you can see where we sell at valleys and buy back puts at peaks. When fear increases, when uncertainty increases, you can sell puts on the VXX and as the VXX goes up, the value of these puts decline and you can buy them back for nice cash gains. And in these kind of market conditions, you can do it again, and again, and again for consistent regular income.

2) Trouble in the Financial Sector

Financial stocks are in trouble and Wall Street knows it. That’s why I like the Ultra-short Financials (NYSE:SKF ), the double inverse ETF on the bank sector. This names moves up 2% for every one percent drop in the banks. And they are still dropping because of continuing busted balance sheets and little possibility to grow earnings in the middle of this double dip recession. The strategy is simple: sell near-term “in-the-money” Puts on the SKF when bank failures hit the news. This trend is likely to continue making the SKF a regular position on the “income generating” circuit.

3) The Run on Precious Metals

Gold and silver may have hit a wall at $1900, but the run is not over. Gold whether you are a gold bug or not   I am not people are flocking to it and its cousins, silver and the gold miners. It is a great long term play but one traders can use every day to generate cash. You are selling into what the market is doing, not because you believe gold is one thing or another.

You can play gold for income two ways – buy the ETF for gold, the SPDR Gold Trust (NYSE:GLD ) and write covered calls or simply sell puts on the GLD. And you can do the same with its cousins, the gold miners, represented by the Gold Miners ETF Trust (NYSE:GDX ).  Or how about selling a put on an individual name like Newmont Mining (NYSE:NEM ), the only stock to go up among the S&P 500 when the market crashed in August.   Gold may be down now, but over the next year it will continue to be a great source to pick-up income from short-term positions.