Use These Strategies To Beat The Market Pullback
Investing is always about fear and greed.
And as we’ve all been witnessing over the last few weeks, fear has the upper hand right now, as U.S. stocks got off to their worst start in seven years.
#-ad_banner-#Despite a strong rally during the last few days January, the S&P 500 finished the month with a 5.1% decline. The Dow Jones Industrial Average fell 5.5%. The Nasdaq Composite dropped 7.9% — its worst performance since May 2010.
That kind of short-term volatility has lots of investors reaching for the Maalox. If you’re anxious about what lies ahead, you’re not alone. But keep reading, because I can help.
I’m about to show you three ways you can actually profit during this current market pullback — and well beyond.
In fact, I’m going to show you how you could have collected $7,690 in profits from the last official market correction back in August, and how you could already have locked in $1,550 during January’s market dive — all with minimal risk.
Pullback Profit Strategy #1: Make Your Investments ‘Plunge Proof’
Imagine there’s a stock you really want to own, but market volatility is making you nervous about what price you’d be paying. What if you buy the stock only to see it fall by 10-15% in the next month? Well, here’s a way to collect money while waiting for the right price to buy.
To fully understand how selling options can help “plunge-proof” your portfolio, let me tell you a little about how options work. (If you already know this, you can just skim ahead.)
First, please note I’m talking about selling options, not buying them. The difference is simple.
When you sell a put options contract, you give the buyer of the contract the right to sell you the stock if it falls below a certain price on a certain date. Both the price (called the “strike price”) and the date (referred to as the “expiration date”) are specified in the contract.
The reason so many traders love selling options is because when you sell that option, the buyer pays you cash upfront. So as the seller, you get cash deposited into your account immediately.
And if the shares are still trading higher than the price you specified on the date you selected, then you get to keep all the cash and the trade is closed. It’s that easy.
For argument’s sake, let’s say the shares drop lower than the specific price you agreed to. You still get to keep the cash the buyer gave you, and you’ll be buying the stock you wanted at a great price.
Now let me show you how this process can help you profit from a volatile pullback like we’re experiencing now.
How To Collect $1,000 Or More On A Stock That Drops 15%
Say I want to make a little extra cash, but I’m worried the market might fall another 15% or so.
So I decide to sell options on Walgreens Boots Alliance (NYSE: WBA). Since I’m a little concerned the market might take a fall, I set the “strike price” at $65.00 — 15% lower than the current price of the stock.
Even if that stock price drops 15%, I still get to keep all the cash the buyer gave me. In this example, if you sold 10 contracts, you’d collect around $1,400.
When I sell options, I practically always “plunge-proof” my strike price by setting it at least 10% lower than the stock’s current price. This allows me to make money even if the stock drops by a significant margin.
That’s a big part of the reason my subscribers and I closed 50 winning trades in the last year without one single loser — even when the S&P 500 experienced a 13% pullback from August to September.
In fact, back in August and September, despite broad panic on the Street, subscribers to my Income Multiplier options service continued to collect steady cash.
While other investors were paralyzed by fear, I calmly closed five winning trades and collected 26% average annualized returns while the market plunged 13%.
In fact, I just closed another winner in January as the market dove more than 5%.
But that’s not the only way the Pullback Profit strategy cashes in.
Pullback Profit Strategy #2: Use Options To ‘Automatically’ Time the Market
Most investors know that weakness in the stock market has always been a great opportunity to buy low.
According to a study from mutual fund company American Funds, a pullback of 10% or more happened about once every year from 1900 to December of 2014.
Bear markets (more than a 20% decline) are less common, happening only once every 3.5 years.
Take a look at the frequency of corrections and pullbacks in the table below:
As Warren Buffett puts it, “Be fearful when others are greedy, and be greedy only when others are fearful.”
One way to profit from a correction is to simply purchase shares in a company after they have fallen.
With that said, while buying on a dip can be profitable, it does come with a big caveat: Properly timing the market is virtually impossible.
In 2014, financial research firm DALBAR released a study on market timing. It found that the average U.S. stock market fund investor realized an average annual return of 3.7% per year versus the S&P 500’s 11.1% over the past 30 years.
What this means is that investors cost themselves huge returns by pulling their capital in and out of the market at exactly the wrong times.
But the good news is that there’s a way to “automatically” time the market and actually get paid to trade even if the market falls — by selling options. It’s a trick Warren Buffett himself has used to buy stocks at a discount many times.
You see, the strike price you set when you sell options essentially acts as a limit order that guarantees you only buy a stock if it drops below a certain price.
That means you’re basically buying that stock at a significant discount, and you can often turn around and sell that stock very quickly after the stock rebounds.
Which brings me to profit trick #3…
Pullback Profit Strategy #3: Use Fear To Boost Your Profits
When investors are anxious, something called the “Fear Gauge,” or VIX (aka the Volatility Index), skyrockets.
As the VIX spikes, put sellers have the opportunity to make bigger profits. Because when the VIX is high, the premiums that sellers collect upfront are high as well.
This means that right now, we’re sitting on a golden opportunity to make money by selling options on some really great stocks.
That’s exactly what I did last August and September as the market dropped 13%.
You see, while regular investors were panicking and trying to time the market, I opened eight new trades. And over the next few weeks, as the S&P 500 began to recover, these trades delivered huge returns.
If fact, if you’d sold 10 contracts on each of those trades, you would have collected $7,690 in extra cash on those eight trades alone.
And my subscribers are expecting to see solid gains as a result of the recent January pullback as well.
For example, in early January, the S&P 500 began buckling — down 2.5% in the first three days of the year.
Most investors were panicking and trying to time the market. And that’s when I sprang into action. On January 6, I recommended my subscribers sell options on discount retailer Dollar General (NYSE: DG).
Selling these options enabled my subscribers to collect $1,100 of income that was instantly deposited into their brokerage accounts.
I set my strike price 14% below Dollar General’s share price at the time — meaning we would only buy shares if they fell more than 14% in the 134 days when the options expired.
As I write this, Dollar General has rebounded, and we’re on pace to record another winning trade.
And I’m not just cherry picking my best trades to tell you about. My Income Multiplier readers and I have enjoyed 75 winning trades without a single loser since we started nearly two years ago.
To find out more about how you too could make money on every single trade you make this year no matter what the market does, simply follow this link.