Aren’t Long Calls and Married Puts the Same Thing?

Chris Smith actually bought The Blueprint. I’m okay with his review, except he should be informed that:

1) The Blueprint’s chapters HAVE been revised to name the Income Methods with the traditionally accepted terms, so that part should be eliminated if he wants a current, accurate review and be reminded…

2) The benefit of the married put at the outset is that it defines risk more readily, in a more understandable way for many.

A married put is NOT the synthetic equivalent of a long call; it is the synthetic equivalent of a long call WITH that long call having a commensurate amount of capital on deposit in a free interest account. That’s intellectual honesty.

That is why the time value premium of an OTM call is always higher than the time value premium portion of an ITM put at the same strike. The free interest rate is priced in.

Folks that want to trade an ideal amount of risk will find that using a married put will do the heavy lifting for them intellectually. They simply decide their risk parameters and use the PowerOptions search screen… no problem.

At one point, Chris shared with me that he was trading an amount of $5,000 and had a $1,000 gain in the same period of time that I was trading $100,000 and had a $2,10O gain. His implication was that pure options did better.

I pointed out that it might appear that way on the surface… a 20% gain versus a 2.1% gain… but that after all, his $5,000 SHOULD represent $100,000 of total trading capital because he was risking 100% of the capital that he was betting on each long call, while I was risking 5% of the capital I was betting on each married put.

In other words, 5% of $100,000 is exactly equal to 100% of $5,000…. by that standard, and by the dollar amount both of our accounts returned, my 2.1%, highly protected gain was greater than his highly leveraged, 20% gain.

If we’re going to talk leverage, let’s talk leverage. A trade that goes against me costs 5%, the same trade that goes just as sour against a pure options guy costs 100%.

100% of $5k is the SAME as 5% of $100k.

RadioActive Trading with a married put ENSURES that a trader, ESPECIALLY a beginner to options or to money management, does not take risks that are too big. Meanwhile, it still affords the trader the opportunity to take dividends, or to play these strategies on the company that he works for when he receives stock as an employee benefit.

The Blueprint may not be the publication of choice to the seasoned options trader that already understands deep principles of money management, but that’s not to whom it is addressed.

Mainly, I’ve been trying to benefit the thousands that have been burned by the snake oil gurus in the covered call seminars, OR guys like the fella I met today in a coffee shop… he works for ADBE and gets some of his compensation in the form of purchasing company stock once a quarter, a specified number of shares for how long he’s worked there… for 15% below the current ask price.

Can The Blueprint benefit this guy and many others in his shoes? You darn skippy it could! He could “bulletproof” immediately with an extended collar and not be crying in his coffee… like this fella was… about his retirement. And it wouldn’t have taken years of experience trading options just to teach him about “Stock Insurance” to simply show him how to bulletproof his stock, and take a little income off it without selling it, even help him “catch” extra money with ratio spreads and such… with NO risk… by selling them against a bulletproofed stock.

ANYway…this helps answer folks that keep coming up with the same old tired argument: Trading long calls and married puts is IDENTICAL.

Hogwash. If there wasn’t a difference than why prefer the calls? There IS a difference, and though that difference may to some only be a matter of how to manage them… it’s that difference that makes them a simple choice for the folks to whom The Blueprint is addressed: People that heretofore have ignored or not understood the principles of safe money management. I believe in my soul that it will help those whom it’s designed to help, and perhaps the review could reflect that.