Earn “Bonus Dividends” From Stocks You Already Own
You may not like what I’m about to say, but the fact of the matter is that if you want a “true” retirement… The kind where you sleep well at night, travel freely and still have money left over to help out your kids and grandkids… It’s very unlikely that you’ll be able to generate enough income for that lifestyle through simply stocks and bonds.
Consider this…
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Let’s say you collect Social Security, but you estimate that you’ll need an additional $45,000 a year in income to maintain a comfortable standard of living in your golden years. That means, with a $250,000 portfolio, you’d need to generate around 18% annual returns just to pay yourself without losing any capital. With a $500,000 portfolio, you’d need about 9%.
If you have more than that, you’re in a better position, but there are still many future costs that could drain your nest egg in a hurry.
#-ad_banner-#But what if I told you that there’s a way to earn additional income — as high as, say, $1,400 a month — from stocks you already own? Even better, what I’m about to tell you is one of the safest income-producing strategies around, and it’s been used by people “in the know” for decades.
Before I reveal exactly what it is I’m talking about, let me give you an analogy…
Most people would think it foolish to own an investment property and not rent it out. After all, if you owned an $80,000 apartment in Boston, Houston or Seattle, you’d be able to collect about $500 a month in rent, depending on the neighborhood.
Sounds like a no-brainer, right?
Likewise, if you owned $80,000 worth of stock in companies like Apple, Facebook or Intel, you could essentially do the same thing. That’s because the stocks in your brokerage account can also generate monthly income, much like a rental property. But unlike with real estate, most people don’t take advantage of this with their stocks.
When you think about it this way, it’s utterly unbelievable that more people aren’t doing this.
The good news is that collecting additional income on your stocks isn’t difficult. In fact, you can do it with blocks of just 100 shares, with nearly every stock listed on the Nasdaq and the NYSE.
See, many investors simply hold stocks in their investment accounts and hope that their dividends and capital gains will be enough.
But you can do better than that by using an incredibly safe strategy that lets you make a deal with other traders who want to pay you cash upfront — money you can funnel into your brokerage account — for the opportunity to buy your stock from you at a higher price.
To be absolutely clear: Someone will pay you cash for the opportunity to buy your stock at a higher price than it is trading for today. You also get to set the price at which you would be willing to sell your shares. If the shares don’t trade for that agreed upon price within a certain time frame then you get to keep the cash they paid… and your shares.
Sounds too good to be true, right? Don’t be fooled: it’s real and it works. I use this strategy myself to generate extra money for my day-to-day living costs. It can cover your monthly bills… medical expenses… even provide you with additional income for the things you otherwise couldn’t afford, like taking lavish vacations.
However you choose to use this money, it’s one of the safest ways to generate extra income from the stocks you already have in your portfolio. In fact, I can’t think of a better strategy for retirees looking to boost their income.
Lower Your Risk, Boost Your Income
The strategy I’m talking about is an “options” strategy. But don’t worry, it’s completely unlike any risky options trading you may have heard about.
In fact, this strategy is the main risk reduction technique used by wealthy people and professional money managers to safeguard their wealth. For them, the main purpose is to reduce the risk of holding such large quantities of stock. The fact that this strategy also produces income in the process is an added bonus.
But for ordinary investors like you and me, both of these benefits are equally important.
Like I said, this is an especially great source of money if you’re retired, approaching retirement, or just want to boost your monthly income. Even The Wall Street Journal says, “[It] generates income and can juice your returns in any market.”
The technique is called “selling covered calls” or “covered call writing.”
Here’s how I explain covered calls to new readers of my premium newsletter, Maximum Income.
A call option is simply the right — but not the obligation — to buy a stock at a specified price before a specified date. Selling a covered call obligates us to sell that stock to the call buyer if it moves above a specified price (the option’s “strike price”). When we accept that obligation, we receive instant income upfront (known as a “premium”). You can be asked to sell the stock at any time between the moment you collect the premium and the expiration of the option contract. To minimize risk, we will only sell calls on stocks that we own 100 shares of — that’s what makes it a “covered” call.
Now perhaps the best way to understand how this works is to give you an example.
How We Got A “Bonus Dividend” From Bank of America
My Maximum Income readers and I recently made a covered call trade on Bank of America (NYSE: BAC).
If you want to know why I like owning the company in today’s environment, suffice it to say that with interest rates on the rise, I think the major banks — and BAC in particular — are poised to do well for investors.
There is, of course, just one problem. At a yield of 2.17%, the income produced from owning BAC leaves a little more to be desired for most investors. That’s where covered calls come in.
Now keep in mind that I did not make a habit of revealing the exact details of my trades. That information is normally reserved for my Maximum Income subscribers only. I am, however, going to make an exception today and reveal a recent trade we made so you can see exactly what I mean when I say it’s the best bet for investors looking to supplement their income.
When I originally issued this recommendation, BAC was trading around $29.10. So I recommend that Maximum Income readers buy 100 shares of BAC and then sell one BAC Apr 29 Call for every 100 shares of BAC they purchased. That’s a call option on BAC with a strike price of $29 that expired on April 18.
At the time, these call options were trading around $0.63 per share. The goal was to enter this trade at a cost basis of $28.50 or less. Your cost basis is simply the price you purchase shares at minus the premium per share received when selling the call.
Now from this point, one of two things can happen — and both of them are pretty good scenarios, depending on how you look at it.
Assuming BAC trades for $29 or less on April 18, we’d keep the $63 we received from the premium on $2,910, earning 2.2% in 31 days. I know that may not sound like much, but remember, this is the same amount of income we’d earn in an entire year of owning BAC. If we can repeat a similar trade every 31 days, we’d earn a 72% return on our capital in 12 months.
If BAC trades above $29, our stock will be called. In that case, we will sell the shares for $29. In the most conservative case, we’d realize a profit of $0.50 per share ($29 – $28.50 cost basis), or $50 per 100 shares. This is a profit of 1.9% in 31 days. If we can repeat a similar trade every 31 days, we’d earn a 58% return on our cost basis in 12 months.
More Investors Should Be Doing This…
I know there are a lot of numbers I threw out there, but hopefully you understand that what we’re essentially talking about here is a “win-win”. Either a potential 2.2% “bonus dividend” that we can earn agan and again — on a stock that only yields 2% per year… or nab a quick 2% gain on a solid stock in a month.
Frankly, I’m happy to take either. That’s why thousands of investors have joined me over at Maximum Income. They’re not content to simply accept the income offered by traditional stocks and bonds. Honestly, in this low-rate environment, it’s just not going to cut it — and I don’t know why more investors aren’t doing this.
Part of the reason could be that they simply aren’t even aware it exists. Or maybe they think it’s too risky or complicated. But nothing could be further from the truth.
That’s why I’m happy to tell you about my research report, which explains how covered calls work, and how you can use it to generate hundreds — even thousands — of dollars per month, no matter whether the stock market is moving up, down or sideways.