Income Investing Strategies Can Use Options and Dividends

Income investing strategies can use options and dividends in pursuit of heightened returns.

Investors who are willing to accept additional risk in pursuit of potent profits may be tempted to try options, especially if guided in how to do so. One way to engage in options trading is with the stewardship of a seasoned specialist, especially a person who also can serve as a stock sherpa.

One person to consider is Jon Johnson, a recipient of business and law degrees from the University of Texas at Austin, who is the editor of Investment House Daily, Technical Traders Alert, Rapid Profits Stock Trader and Pick of the Week. He also has gained additional attention as a guest on CNBC-TV, Bloomberg TV, Houston’s 650 Business Radio and a source in various financial articles in the Washington Post, Chicago Sun-Times, The Wall Street Journal’s Smart Money magazine, Bloomberg, Kiplinger Personal Finance Magazine, Houston Chronicle, Business Week and Money magazine. Johnson also was featured in Forbes.com’s Best of The Web online edition.

Jon Johnson: Income Investing Strategies Can Use Options and Dividends

Johnson told me he never really understood why the earning income from options or dividends tend to be separated. The money is income either way, he added.

“It can be argued that the risk is different, but risk is typically often tied to lack of knowledge of the variables,” Johnson continued. “More variables imply more risk, but if you implement strategies to control or account for the variables, risk diminishes. Indeed, with purchasing options there is certainly limited risk: the price of the option.”

Johnson developed his own trading and investing style that became so successful his brokers asked if they could follow his trades for themselves and their clients. He then began to provide investing and education services to clients prior to sharing his insights through Investment House.

Jon Johnson leads Investment House Daily, Pick of the Week, Technical Trader and Rapid Profits Stock Trader.

Investment House Daily trade options as well as stocks. Some of its positions have been held long term in stocks.

“We had plays on AAPL that lasted years,” Johnson said. “What we do with those name-brand stocks that we hold for as long as they perform is sell calls against them after upside rallies. There are technical attributes to rallies that I know very well and share with my readers as to when a particular rally leg is peaking. We use those to write calls against the stock, let the stock fade back to test, then buy the same strike and month of options sold, pocketing the difference.”

That strategy is simple for stocks held long term, Johnson counseled. With Investment House Daily, the decision was made to try and keep stocks roughly $80 or less so subscribers could build a better position.

“That allows us to be in stocks that grow, such as AAPL, did,” Johnson said. “But it does preclude a lot of the name brand stocks out there that sport a share price in the hundreds or even thousands.

Income Investing Strategies Can Use Options and Dividends: Investment House Daily

Investment House Daily features both options and stocks in its trades that are accompanied by an in-depth look at each market session to address the technical moves and their significance for stock indices, bonds, currencies and commodities, Johnson told me. Sentiment indicators are monitored by the Investment House Daily service to help in making investment decisions.

Those indicators include put/call ratio, bulls versus bears, short interest, the VIX volatility index, etc., to forecast how the Investment House Daily service should recommend options for subscribers to buy and to sell. Market leadership is examined to assess whether an upward or downward trend is emerging, Johnson added.

“From this information, we glean top picks and craft plays that we will enter if the conditions are met,” Johnson explained. “The plays sought are quality stocks, preferably $75 per share or lower, so we can more easily invest and trade the stock and not necessarily have to play options if we prefer not to. A lot of factors determine what plays make the report.”

Video reports are offered on the weekends, and on Monday and Wednesday. Each Tuesday and Thursday, subscribers receive full writeups but without related videos. Email and text alerts announce when subscribers should enter positions, take profits and exit them, Johnson said.

“I like to say we want to get people to my definition of success: doing what you want to do, when you want to do it,” Johnson said.

Write-ups about new recommendations are provided on the weekends, with related charts. During the weekdays, Johnson details what stocks are interesting and discusses them in his video reports. Tables can be accessed online by subscribers to see any changes in recommended buy points, stop-loss points, news, etc., he added.

Income Investing Strategies Can Use Options and Dividends: Options Trades

A 68.00% dividend profit was procured in February 2024 when Investment House Daily recommended call options in ProShares Bitcoin Strategy ETF (ARCX: BITO). As the first U.S. exchange-traded fund that seeks to correspond to the performance of bitcoin, BITO invests in bitcoin futures and does not invest in bitcoin. There is no guarantee the fund will closely track bitcoin returns.

Chart courtesy of www.stockcharts.com

Yet a higher gain of 121.78% was obtained when Investment House Daily recommended calls in Dallas-based Dave & Buster’s Entertainment Inc. (NASDAQ: PLAY).

Chart courtesy of www.stockcharts.com

Income Investing Strategies Can Use Options and Dividends: Technical Traders

Technical Traders Alert is an options-only service that provides the same market summary features as Investment House Daily. In addition, Technical Traders Alert offers time-sensitive alerts.

“This service follows leaders but does not eliminate plays because the fundamentals are not there,” Johnson told me. “Trades are technically based, and the best patterns win, so to speak. Price of the stock is not a concern because this is an options service primarily focused on buying calls and options — used to do spreads, but the maintenance of spread positions made an alert system cumbersome and unsatisfying to subscribers.”

Due to Technical Traders Alert focusing on the buying of calls and puts, everything needs to be right from earnings awareness, to expiration, to strike price, etc., Johnson told me. The outlook must allow for an “acceptable” 3:1 potential gain to risk, with other great characteristics such as gap fills, Fibonacci extensions, etc., for targets, he added.

“We don’t care if the market rises or falls – we fish off the front or the back of the boat, playing what the market gives,” Johnson said. “That is the motto: take what the market gives.”

Johnson previously recommended Lam Research Corporation (NASDAQ: LRCX), a Fremont, California-based provider of wafer fabrication equipment and services to help chipmakers build smaller and faster electronic devices. Within just days of the Feb. 9 recommendation, Johnson informed his subscribers to sell, producing an average gain of 54.27%.

Chart courtesy of www.stockcharts.com

Income Investing Strategies Can Use Options and Dividends: Pick of the Week

Pick of the Week selects one equity from the daily alerts each week to highlight in this stock-only report, Johnson said. The Pick of the Week is distributed to subscribers on the weekend. The service also offers a table of recommendations but no market analysis, he added.

One Pick of the Week trade that turned into a substantial double-digit-percentage winner in just 73 days between October 16, 2023, and December 28, 2023, featured Chicago-based Coeur Mining (NYSE: CDE). The stock of the precious metals producer generated a 27.18% gain.

Chart courtesy of www.stockcharts.com

Coeur Mining operates four wholly owned operations: the Palmarejo gold-silver complex in Mexico, the Rochester silver-gold mine in Nevada, the Kensington gold mine in Alaska and the Wharf gold mine in South Dakota. Plus, Coeur Mining owns the Silvertip silver-zinc-lead exploration project in British Columbia. A lesson about the volatility of the stock was shown on Tuesday, Feb. 13, when its share price plunged 8.3%, falling 24 cents a share to $2.54.

Another profitable Pick of the Week trade occurred between November 29, 2023, and January 2, 2024, with San Francisco-based Opendoor Technologies Inc. (NASDAQ: OPEN). Opendoor aims to facilitate the buying and selling of a home on a mobile device by serving as an e-commerce platform for residential real estate transactions. That Pick of the Week stock trade produced a profit of 39.37% within 34 days.

Chart courtesy of www.stockcharts.com

Income Investing Strategies Can Use Options and Dividends: Rapid Profits Stock Trader

Rapid Profits Stock Trader is another stock-only advisory service led by Johnson. But Rapid Profits Stock Trader lacks the market analysis offered in his Pick of the Week service.

Rapid Profits Stock Trader uses texts and emails to inform subscribers of when to buy and sell the stocks it recommends. In this service, the guidance takes the form of an alert that instructs subscribers what to buy and sell, as well as when.

Paid subscribers receive access to an online website that provides an update about all current positions. The focus of Rapid Profits Stock Trader is on lower-priced equities in the $1 to $40 range that show great entry opportunities, Johnson said.

The idea is to “move in,” collect 5%, 10% and even 15% or more based on explosive moves, Johnson told me.

“We typically don’t hang around in a position, if possible,” Johnson said. “We watch a lot of stocks, and when there is one ‘turning the corner,’ i.e. after a decline it shows the attributes of breaking higher or shows some other setup that can deliver a rapid gain, we issue the alert for the play.”

Two highly profitable trades closed earlier this month. The one in China’s Nano Labs Ltd. (NASDAQ: NS) produced a gain of 44.91% in 249 days.  The chart of NA below reflects the recent volatility in China’s beaten-down market.

Another double-digit percentage trade came from Cerus Corp. (NASDAQ: CERS), a biotechnology company in Concord, California. The stock jumped 10.23% in three days, leading Johnson to advise his subscribers to take their profits.

Chart courtesy of www.stockcharts.com

“One of my phrases is we ‘take what the market gives,’” Johnson said. “That is a good principle to apply to any market because it puts you into the correct mindset to profit. In a strong trend, higher or lower, it is easy: you find great technical patterns with the right attributes such as strong accumulation or distribution, a logical target such as a gap point, a prior high or low, and a trendline. You buy in, you let it work, you take the gain.

“When the market is volatile – choppy as I like to call it – it is not so easy and that is where many stumble. You have to adjust your mindset to what is possible in that particular market. If you approach that market with the ‘take what the market gives’ mindset, you immediately adjust your criteria. You don’t demand less from plays, you demand more: clear entries, clear targets, quick entries and quick exits.”

Another advocate of option trading is Hugh Grossman, who leads DayTradeSpy’s Trading Room. Buying a stock produces a dividend payout worth a cup of coffee, but an option can give an investor much more, for so much less, he told me.

Hugh Grossman leads DayTradeSpy’s Trading Room.

“If you spend the $469 on options – two call contracts – a 3-cent move on the calls will yield $6, which should be able to get you a donut, such as a cruller, and a coffee,” Grossman said.

Geopolitical Risk Returns

Geopolitical risk seems to keep rising. The United States is embroiled in politics as shown by an all-night session when the U.S. Senate voted 70-29 early Tuesday morning, Feb. 13, to approve a $95 billion national security supplemental package with aid for Ukraine, Israel and Taiwan. The bi-partisan approval occurred despite attempts by dissenters to deny the funding.

Certain Democrats opposed the proposal due to the loss of more than 28,000 lives in Gaza following the Oct. 7 attack of Hamas in Israel that killed 1,200 people, as well as the abduction of about 250 others. That led to an ongoing military response to stop the aggressors. Republicans who objected to the foreign aid aimed their opposition at a lack of funding to protect the U.S. border from migrants crossing from Mexico to America illegally. Before providing help to Ukraine, Israel and Taiwan, those lawmakers sought to secure the U.S. border first.

House Speaker Mike Johnson said he will not bring the supplemental foreign aid package to a vote in the House due to its omission of a border protection proposal that he asked to be included. Democrats spoke of trying to force a vote on the measure.

“The House acted 10 months ago to help enact transformative policy change by passing the Secure Our Border Act, and since then, including today, the Senate has failed to meet the moment,” Speaker Johnson said.

The U.S. House voted 214-213 on Tuesday, Feb. 13, to impeach Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas, with the Republican majority seeking to hold him accountable for the Biden administration failure to control waves of migrants entering the United States illegally from the Mexican border. Secretary Mayorkas narrowly became the first cabinet member to be impeached in nearly 150 years.

For investors seeking to obtain income from options and dividend-paying stocks, the Investment House Daily, Pick of the Week, Technical Trader and Rapid Profits Stock Trader services led by Johnson combine to provide ways to do so.

Paul Dykewicz, www.pauldykewicz.com, is an accomplished, award-winning journalist who has written for Dow Jones, the Wall Street Journal, Investor’s Business Daily, USA Today, the Journal of Commerce, Seeking Alpha, Guru Focus and other publications and websites. Attention Holiday Gift Buyers! Consider purchasing Paul’s inspirational book, “Holy Smokes! Golden Guidance from Notre Dame’s Championship Chaplain,” with a foreword by former national championship-winning football coach Lou Holtz. The uplifting book is great gift and is endorsed by Joe Montana, Joe Theismann, Ara Parseghian, “Rocket” Ismail, Reggie Brooks, Dick Vitale and many others. Call 202-677-4457 for special pricing on multiple-book purchases or autographed copies! Follow Paul on Twitter @PaulDykewicz. He is the editor of StockInvestor.com and DividendInvestor.com, a writer for both websites and a columnist. He further is editorial director of Eagle Financial Publications in Washington, D.C., where he edits monthly investment newsletters, time-sensitive trading alerts, free e-letters and other investment reports. Paul previously served as business editor of Baltimore’s Daily Record newspaper, after writing for the Baltimore Business Journal and Crain Communications.