Don't Make This Costly Trading Mistake

A guest essay from Doc Eifrig... 188 winning trades and counting... How to trade options the right way... Flip the poker game in your favor... Drop the baggage and boost your portfolio... A limited-time offer from Doc... [Stansberry Research Logo] Delivering World-Class Financial Research Since 1999 [Stansberry Digest] A guest essay from Doc Eifrig... 188 winning trades and counting... How to trade options the right way... Flip the poker game in your favor... Drop the baggage and boost your portfolio... A limited-time offer from Doc... --------------------------------------------------------------- Editor's note: Today, I (Corey McLaughlin) want to share an essay from Stansberry Research partner Dr. David "Doc" Eifrig. As we've said before and longtime subscribers know, Doc is a Renaissance man of sorts – and when he has a message to share, we listen closely. In the 1980s, Doc worked as a Wall Street trader before getting sick of the conflicts of interest he saw... Then he became a board-eligible eye surgeon and helped start a small biotech company, but eventually left medicine too for similar reasons... Then he found a calling sharing his financial and health knowledge directly with readers with the power of the pen... and has done so for two decades like no one else in this industry. In today's essay, Doc picks up on his discussion about options trading we shared in this past weekend's Masters Series. And we urge you to hear him out... Unless you put together 188 consecutive winning trades over the past three years – as Doc and his team have done in their Retirement Trader advisory – you'll probably want to hear how he does it... and how you can, too. As Doc explains today, most people are scared of options, but that's usually because they're trading them the wrong way. There is a right way to do it – and deliver stock-like returns with lower risk than owning shares outright. This is a trading strategy he learned 30 years ago as a trader at Goldman Sachs. It can produce steady, safe returns over the long run, even in volatile or down markets. Yet most people still have never heard of it... In this essay, he'll tell you why his recommended strategy in Retirement Trader works in any market environment, as he has proven with a 94% win rate since 2010, and with lower risk than simply owning stocks. --------------------------------------------------------------- Just keep reading... Like I (Dr. David "Doc" Eifrig) wrote in [Saturday's Masters Series essay]( just reading the word "options" is enough to make most of you stop reading. I know that most of you probably know only enough about options to think they're complex and risky. But that's because you didn't dig deep enough. The first time you tried to drive a car, it probably seemed complex and risky, too. Now you do it every day. You put the time into learning how to drive because it made your life better. Options will do the same for your finances. And just like learning to drive when you were 16 years old, better finances and larger income streams give you more freedom. I don't blame options skeptics. I blame those who taught them options. Most folks get introduced to options the exact wrong way... as a way to make big, fast gains in the stock market. But when put into practice, this "big gain" tactic leads to big losses. That's why we take the opposite approach in my Retirement Trader service. We use options to reduce the risk of our investments while creating returns that don't exist for other investors. Today, I'm going to show you the right way to use options. If you choose to learn, please read on... If trading options doesn't scare you, does the word 'derivatives'?... Options are considered a type of derivative, a broad term for investments that are based on other investments. With derivatives, you don't invest in an asset. Instead, you bet on a contract that "derives" its value from another. During the financial crisis of 2008 to 2009, you couldn't find a word scarier than derivatives. Remember hearing about those credit-default swaps that nearly blew up Wall Street? Those were derivatives. They were bets that tied their payoff to the default status of mortgage bonds. Perhaps you've read about rogue trader Nick Leeson blowing up Britain's Barings Bank in 1995. He was using derivatives. Or Jérôme Kerviel, who lost 4.9 billion euros for French bank Société Générale with derivatives. And you might recall when a JPMorgan Chase trader known as the "London Whale" cost the financial giant $2 billion in 2012, again due to derivatives. These guys give options and other derivatives a bad name... They used them as a way to load up on risk and leverage, allowing them to make massive bets with little capital up front. Of course, their bonuses depended on taking stupid risks. That has shaped the perception of novice investors regarding options... But it's flat-out wrong. With options, you can make a bet on whatever sort of market activity you expect. A typical investor has two ways to play the market: He can buy stocks he thinks will rise or short the stocks he thinks will fall. An options trader adds several more tools to his bag: He can bet that stocks will rise, fall, stay the same, move within a certain range, rise then fall, and just about everything in between. Options can be used to increase leverage and risk or, just as easily, to reduce it. But most investors do it the wrong way... The standard options pitch goes something like this... Let's say you think a $20 stock is going to rise. Well, you could buy 100 shares for $2,000. If the stock rises to $25, then you'll have $2,500... a profit of $500 that gives you a 25% gain. Instead, you can buy a call option on that stock for just $150. Since each option contract represents 100 shares of stock, your $2,000 investment now lets you "control" 1,300 shares (via 13 call options) instead of 100. Based on the pricing of this particular option, if the stock rises to $25 within the month, it might turn your $2,000 into $3,250. That's a 62.5% return. And your gains quickly multiply with every penny the underlying stock moves higher. Phew! Who wouldn't be interested in boosting returns like that? The trouble comes with the first assumption. You may think a stock is going to rise, but when you trade options like this, you make a leveraged bet that a stock will make that move in a very specific period of time. No matter your investing prowess, you're going to get that wrong most of the time. And when you get it wrong as an options buyer, you'll likely lose your entire investment. People who learn to use options this way often lose their shirts on the first trade and quickly give up. We have a better way... At Stansberry Research, we love to earn higher returns, but we know that true investment success comes from obsessing over risk. In my newsletters, that's what we do all day long. At our different publications, we reduce our risk by employing the best analysts, focusing on quality and value, monitoring our position sizing, using bonds and other nontraditional investments, and using options to custom tailor our returns. In Retirement Trader in particular, our focus on risk lets us consistently make gains month after month, keeping our capital growing... and keeping our subscribers in the market. We do it by doing the exact opposite as the folks who lose money trading options. Let me ask you a question... Is poker a game of skill or chance?... On one hand, you need to get great cards. You can make all the right moves but still end up busted by a straight flush. On the other hand, making careful moves and controlling your risk tends to pay off in the end. People argue over poker because it's hard to prove that skill beats luck. Over any single game, month of games, or even years, the best player can lose. But here's the question that settles it for me: Can you sit down at a poker table and intentionally lose all your money? That's a stupid question, right? Of course you can. The reason poker is a challenge is that everyone is pursuing the same strategies and the same ultimate goal. That competition makes any edge held a small one. But when you take the opposite strategy from everyone else... it's easy to succeed. My options strategy makes it easy to reach your goal... Now, obviously, we're all about making money. My options strategy flips the game so that we're the only ones playing a certain way. Here's what I mean... Most individual traders buy options. And most of the time, they lose money. Instead, we sell options... And we almost always make money. Over more than a dozen years, 94% of our positions have ended up winners. We're sitting on a win streak of 188 trades over more than three years right now. That's the key to our strategy. Selling something you don't own sounds like an impossible arrangement. But it's just the vocabulary that makes it confusing. If you knew you could make double-digit returns in stocks... while reducing your risk... and could do so even if the market goes nowhere for the next few years... would you take the time to learn how? My bet is you would. The only thing holding you back is what I call "options baggage." Options trading looks difficult, and many people have traded options improperly in the past and lost money. Drop that baggage... Keep an open mind, and I promise to show you that absolutely anyone can learn how to make conservative, risk-reducing options trades. I've shown thousands of people how to do it over the years from all walks of life, even my own mother. And I've used this strategy myself to generate income and pay everyday living expenses. For this week only, in a 10-minute video, I explain more about why you should give this strategy a try right now. What's more... I share how you can take advantage of the most generous arrangement we've made in 13 years to get access to my options-trading research. In the broadcast, you'll also hear a few stories from real folks who've had terrific results with no prior options experience. Remember, this is the exact opposite of the kind of conventional options-trading strategy most people have learned or been burned by... It's particularly perfect if you want to generate steady income – no matter what the market is doing at any given time. [Click here for the full details](. --------------------------------------------------------------- Recommended Links: ['I've Been a Trader and Analyst for 40 Years. I'm Now Staking My Entire Reputation on THIS!']( Dr. David "Doc" Eifrig has successfully navigated every crisis you can imagine in his 40 years as a financial pro: The 1987 "Black Monday" crash... the dot-com bust... the 2008 financial crisis... and the COVID-19 panic. But he says the coming crisis in 2024 will top them all. And he's sharing the most important new work of his life. [For a short time only, get the full story here along with a bonus from Doc](. --------------------------------------------------------------- [Billionaires Are Now FLOODING Into Gold]( Ray Dalio, John Paulson, and many others all recommend you own gold right now. But did you know there's another huge investor (worth more than all the world's billionaires COMBINED) buying gold by the ton? That's why the best move to make right now could be this little-known gold investment (which you can get started with for just $5). [Click here for the No. 1 gold recommendation](. --------------------------------------------------------------- New 52-week highs (as of 12/22/23): Autodesk (ADSK), Ansys (ANSS), A.O. Smith (AOS), CBRE Group (CBRE), Canadian National Railway (CNI), Cintas (CTAS), CyberArk Software (CYBR), Dimensional International Small Cap Value Fund (DISV), Expeditors International of Washington (EXPD), Expedia (EXPE), Comfort Systems USA (FIX), Fidelity National Financial (FNF), Alphabet (GOOGL), Intercontinental Exchange (ICE), iShares Core S&P Small-Cap Fund (IJR), Intel (INTC), Ingersoll Rand (IR), Iron Mountain (IRM), London Stock Exchange Group (LNSTY), Micron Technology (MU), NVR (NVR), Ryder System (R), Invesco S&P 500 Equal Weight Technology Fund (RSPT), SentinelOne (S), Sherwin-Williams (SHW), StoneCo (STNE), Textron (TXT), Sprott Physical Uranium Trust (U-U.TO), and Advanced Drainage Systems (WMS). In today's mailbag, feedback on [Doc's Masters Series essay from Saturday]( and his options trading strategy... Do you have a comment or question? As always, e-mail us at feedback@stansberryresearch.com. "I have been into options for many years. Yes, selling puts or calls on stock owned is a money maker. However, I am no longer trying to increase my income. At 92 years old I'm well satisfied with my income, portfolio, and life. I do enjoy reading or watching Stansberry emails and videos that come my way via my subscription." – Subscriber Tom W. Corey McLaughlin comment: Fair enough, Tom. Congrats to you, and happy holidays. Here's to our health, wealth, and a great retirement, Dr. David Eifrig, MD, MBA Baltimore, Maryland December 26, 2023 --------------------------------------------------------------- Stansberry Research Top 10 Open Recommendations Top 10 highest-returning open positions across all Stansberry Research portfolios Stock Buy Date Return Publication Analyst MSFT Microsoft 11/11/10 1,285.0% Retirement Millionaire Doc MSFT Microsoft 02/10/12 1,184.4% Stansberry's Investment Advisory Porter ADP Automatic Data Processing 10/09/08 838.9% Extreme Value Ferris wstETH Wrapped Staked Ethereum 02/21/20 771.1% Stansberry Innovations Report Wade WRB W.R. Berkley 03/16/12 636.2% Stansberry's Investment Advisory Porter BRK.B Berkshire Hathaway 04/01/09 532.0% Retirement Millionaire Doc HSY Hershey 12/07/07 444.5% Stansberry's Investment Advisory Porter AFG American Financial 10/12/12 412.5% Stansberry's Investment Advisory Porter BTC/USD Bitcoin 01/16/20 385.0% Stansberry Innovations Report Wade PANW Palo Alto Networks 04/16/20 326.9% Stansberry Innovations Report Engel Please note: Securities appearing in the Top 10 are not necessarily recommended buys at current prices. The list reflects the best-performing positions currently in the model portfolio of any Stansberry Research publication. The buy date reflects when the editor recommended the investment in the listed publication, and the return shows its performance since that date. To learn if a security is still a recommended buy today, you must be a subscriber to that publication and refer to the most recent portfolio. --------------------------------------------------------------- Top 10 Totals 4 Stansberry's Investment Advisory Porter 3 Stansberry Innovations Report Engel/Wade 2 Retirement Millionaire Doc 1 Extreme Value Ferris --------------------------------------------------------------- Top 5 Crypto Capital Open Recommendations Top 5 highest-returning open positions in the Crypto Capital model portfolio Stock Buy Date Return Publication Analyst wstETH Wrapped Staked Ethereum 12/07/18 1,701.2% Crypto Capital Wade ONE/USD Harmony 12/16/19 1,187.1% Crypto Capital Wade BTC/USD Bitcoin 11/27/18 1,062.9% Crypto Capital Wade POLYX/USD Polymesh 05/19/20 1,061.3% Crypto Capital Wade MATIC/USD Polygon 02/25/21 868.9% Crypto Capital Wade Please note: Securities appearing in the Top 5 are not necessarily recommended buys at current prices. The list reflects the best-performing positions currently in the Crypto Capital model portfolio. The buy date reflects when the recommendation was made, and the return shows its performance since that date. To learn if it's still a recommended buy today, you must be a subscriber and refer to the most recent portfolio. --------------------------------------------------------------- Stansberry Research Hall of Fame Top 10 all-time, highest-returning closed positions across all Stansberry portfolios Investment Symbol Duration Gain Publication Analyst Nvidia^* NVDA 5.96 years 1,466% Venture Tech. Lashmet Microsoft^ MSFT 12.74 years 1,185% Retirement Millionaire Doc Band Protocol crypto 0.32 years 1,169% Crypto Capital Wade Terra crypto 0.41 years 1,164% Crypto Capital Wade Inovio Pharma.^ INO 1.01 years 1,139% Venture Tech. Lashmet Seabridge Gold^ SA 4.20 years 995% Sjug Conf. Sjuggerud Frontier crypto 0.08 years 978% Crypto Capital Wade Binance Coin crypto 1.78 years 963% Crypto Capital Wade Nvidia^* NVDA 4.12 years 777% Venture Tech. Lashmet Intellia Therapeutics NTLA 1.95 years 775% Amer. Moonshots Root ^ These gains occurred with a partial position in the respective stocks. * The two partial positions in Nvidia were part of a single recommendation. Editor Dave Lashmet closed the first leg of the position in November 2016 for a gain of about 108%. Then, he closed the second leg in July 2020 for a 777% return. And finally, in May 2022, he booked a 1,466% return on the final leg. Subscribers who followed his advice on Nvidia could've recorded a total weighted average gain of more than 600%. You have received this e-mail as part of your subscription to Stansberry Digest. If you no longer want to receive e-mails from Stansberry Digest [click here](. Published by Stansberry Research. You’re receiving this e-mail at {EMAIL}. 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