My Approach to Investing

Outside of my passion for fitness, I am an amateur option investor. I placed my first option trade on April 13th 2016. Not really having a great idea of what I was doing I bought a Put on HRB (H&R Block) with a strike of 25.00 before they released their 2015 tax year results. Their stock price had appreciated a bit following their Q2 release and based on some data from the IRS I saw that full service tax prep firms had been losing market share to online companies and self-filing over the previous years so my assumption was that HRB would miss projections and lower guidance. I ended up getting lucky and was able to Sell my Put on April 27th for a net credit of 3.50.  At this point I was hooked and couldn't learn enough, at a fast enough rate!

Fast forward 2 months to when I sold my first covered call on JCP (J.C. Penney) as a method to reduce Cost Basis on the underlying shares that I was long on.  I did this successfully for a few 30 day cycles until one expiration I was $0.01 ITM and my shares got called away - my first slightly unsuccessful trade (albeit I had still locked in an overall profit).

What I love about Options is their ability to create leverage.  You can develop strategies to further diversify your account while limiting your buying power reduction which opens up so many more doors, and in my opinion makes trading that much more fun!