Using Options to Buy Stocks: Build Wealth With Little Risk and No Capital

Rating:
Summary: This is an important book
Review: I picked this up ... at a book clearance sale, if you have to pay more pick another title. First of all the author says he sells puts (contracts agreeing to buy a stock or index at a set price until a specific date for which you receive a premium) to buy stocks in his investment account. There is not a single example in the book of a trade he executed this way. Instead he fills about 1/4 of the book with hypothetical computer runs assuming you had sold every LEAP contract over a multi year period. That is just a silly example for the individual investor. That is akin to comparing all of the insurance coverage written by Prudential with you writing a policy on your grandma.

Second he gives you numerous pages on how to calculate Volatility and Black-Scholes, etc. What is missed is that you want to be selling Puts and Calls when Volatility is High, and most option brokers do this calculation with a computer. As for Black-Sholes, the calculation is easy to find on the web, but any "advantage" that it may provide is used by insititutions who can rapidly scan the whole market and quickly correct any price imbalances. Unless you enjoy crunching financial formulas by hand, this section is filler at best.

Finally, his stock selection and risk control methods are questionable at best. Think Enron and realize that even "independent" reviewers like Morningstar and Value Line had it well rated up until the bitter end. If you dont already have a solid stock picking methodology, you should not start buy selling options. The notion that a reader should do anything other than sell an option that is 100% covered by CASH is the same as endorsing the methods that bankrupted many very large traders, banks and hedge-funds.

If you are looking for investment ideas Getting Started in Options may be a good place to START. Throw in Peter Lynch, Justin Mamis, and Andrew Tobias for good measure.

Rating:
Summary: Too Much Theory, Not Enough Real World!!
Review: I picked this up ... at a book clearance sale, if you have to pay more pick another title. First of all the author says he sells puts (contracts agreeing to buy a stock or index at a set price until a specific date for which you receive a premium) to buy stocks in his investment account. There is not a single example in the book of a trade he executed this way. Instead he fills about 1/4 of the book with hypothetical computer runs assuming you had sold every LEAP contract over a multi year period. That is just a silly example for the individual investor. That is akin to comparing all of the insurance coverage written by Prudential with you writing a policy on your grandma.

Second he gives you numerous pages on how to calculate Volatility and Black-Scholes, etc. What is missed is that you want to be selling Puts and Calls when Volatility is High, and most option brokers do this calculation with a computer. As for Black-Sholes, the calculation is easy to find on the web, but any "advantage" that it may provide is used by insititutions who can rapidly scan the whole market and quickly correct any price imbalances. Unless you enjoy crunching financial formulas by hand, this section is filler at best.

Finally, his stock selection and risk control methods are questionable at best. Think Enron and realize that even "independent" reviewers like Morningstar and Value Line had it well rated up until the bitter end. If you dont already have a solid stock picking methodology, you should not start buy selling options. The notion that a reader should do anything other than sell an option that is 100% covered by CASH is the same as endorsing the methods that bankrupted many very large traders, banks and hedge-funds.

If you are looking for investment ideas Getting Started in Options may be a good place to START. Throw in Peter Lynch, Justin Mamis, and Andrew Tobias for good measure.

Rating:
Summary: One idea explored throroughly
Review: I saw this book in the book store, and spent some time there reading the first few chapters. I was so interested in his ideas, that I purchased the book. It's well-written and not at all dry, unlike some other investment books.

The author starts off by telling us how he had been able to amass a decent-sized portfolio over the years. He had a couple of hundred thousand dollars saved away, all invested in good long-term stock investments. He wished there was a way he could generate more income on-top of his already solid investments.

He started out by selling covered calls on some of his stock portfolio. That worked for a while, but he soon became frustrated that some of his best performing stocks were being called away, while he was left with a portfolio of poorly performing stocks. That is one of the down sides to covered call investing.

So he tried selling put options instead. Selling a put option is when you promise to purchase a stock at a specific price. In exchange for this promise you get paid a premium up front.

The author has found a lot of success picking solid companies, with sales and earnings growth, and selling put options one or two years out (LEAPs). Most of the LEAP puts he sells expires worthless, thus allowing him to keep the premium as profit, and sell some more long-term puts for more premium.

Most of the book deals with his back-testing data for this theory. He tests different quality stocks, different expiry dates, and different strikes. All in an effort to find the best overall results. In the end, some of his data suggests that selling long term puts at a strike price below the current price on the highest quality stocks has a 95% plus success rate.

If this type of theory interests you, I suggest getting this book and studying the theory and data for yourself.

Rating:
Summary: This is an important book
Review: I trade equity options. I have read a lot of books about options. Basically, once you have read McMillan's book, none of the other option books have anything to add. Except this book.
This book shows some original thinking; it's not just the same old thing about bull spreads, etc. The book advocates more than just selling puts to get premium or to use as a method of buying stock at a discount. He explains how you can sell puts on solid companies and buy stock of other companies with the premium you brought in. He really got me thinking, and I have gone from his ideas to developing some of my own.
This book is well worth reading. Read it to get ideas on how to use puts for your own advantage. Learn something new.

Rating:
Summary: The LEAPS Put as A Conservative Financial Derivative...
Review: Jim Rogers, George Soros' former partner, onced admonished against the use of put writing, a financial instrument which brought him catastrophic losses early in his extraordinary career. Of course, LEAPS puts did not exist at the time Rogers was making use of them, and one wonders what he might think, or might have done, with Dennis Eisen's book, which makes a compelling case for LEAPS put writing.

This book is a singular, well conceived investment strategy lesson in several respects. It's rare that such a book can captivate an audience of beginning, intermediate and advanced investors, but I suspect investors of just about any caliber will find this worthwhile reading. That is to say, most readers will likely find something new here about calls and puts (both the regular option and LEAP flavors), although the author does well to stick more or less exclusively to LEAPS put writing. Also, the author uses historical runs to substantiate the tactics he's advising, which make his claims all the more informed and interesting.

Eisen addresses the key issues of rate of return, risk, and probability exceedingly well, and he contributes something altogether new to the field --probability tables, based on an issue's earnings growth and volatility. The author also addresses the proper allocation of margin, option taxation, and gives a decent explanation of option volatility. The book's essential and recurrent theme is that LEAPS puts tend to completely disregard an underlying issue's earnings growth potential.

The book's essential shortcoming is that its underlying option pricing formula, which accounts for stock dividends and American style options unlike the European-styled Black-Scholes model, is delineated for copy in the text as a BASIC program rather than as an EXCEL spreadsheet. Unless the reader is using BASIC, which seems unlikely to me, he or she will find the awaiting transcription task a substantial chore. And the volatility calculation Eisen suggests is based on a year's worth of an underlying issue's price data. The book might have included a macro spreadsheet for all of the requisite data and calculations, or the author might have made such a spreadsheet available for extra cost, which I --and I am sure many others-- would gladly pay.