The SimplyPuts™ strategy for outperforming the market begins with in-depth research that identifies strong, up-trending stocks ideal for selling high-premium put options. When assigned, we hold these quality stocks for the long term and strategically write covered calls to maximize returns. Throughout the process, we keep you fully informed—clearly, concisely, and with complete transparency.
Our trade process begins with the selling an “out of the money” put. We generally target a put strike price that is 5% to 10% below the current stock price as this allows degradation in stock price without assignment on expiration day.
One of our goals is to simply collect our put premium and walk away to the next trade. And if the stock closes above the strike price on the expiration date, our trade is closed.
If the stock closes below the strike and is assigned, we decide after more research to hold the stock uncovered or to write a covered call and collect the premium.
Remember, we sold the put on a stock we would be happy to have in our portfolio, so owning the stock is a good thing.
Our research may tell us to hold the stock as it soon will appreciate. We may hold the stock short term or long-term depending on the health and trend of the stock.
Since we trade only strong stocks, we make a lot of return by simply holding our assigned stocks for the long term.
From time to time, a stock will fall dramatically while we hold the sold Put. In those cases, after assignment, we will hold the stock until it recovers and/or write far out-the-money covered calls and “nurse” our return back to health.
The goal, with all our trades, is to never lose money and to beat the market. But if a trade goes heavily against us, and the stock becomes unhealthy, we will sell soon after assignment and take the loss.
We make a lot of return on writing covered calls after we are assigned a stock. If we really love the stock and expect a long future uptrend, we will leave the stock “uncovered” or write covered calls far out of the money.
If the stock does not excite us as much, we write covered calls at the money and very close to the current stock price so the premiums are higher. If we were assigned the stock more than a few percentage points below the target, we will write our covered call “out of the money” so that we do not lose money if we are called out on the expiration day.
SimplyPuts™ does not enter a trade at the open of the market. Many services do this and report an opening price that is wholly inaccurate as you, as the regular investor, cannot capture that opening price. This approach skews the returns reported by other services. Our trades are made during the day and reported to you immediately via email.
You don’t have to make our trades in the minutes after we report like you would in a day-trading situation. Act promptly, but small delays typically don’t break the thesis.
Most of our opening puts are within ~30 days of expiration (sometimes 2–3 weeks; rarely only a few days). 2025 average holding period: 28 days.
We back off our trading a bit during earnings to avoid holding naked puts through earnings announcements when assignment risk spikes. One of our key strategies is to lower risk and maintain a high winning percentage. Selling and holding a put through the earnings date brings us risk we are usually not willing to take.