Investing & Trading

Welcome to the volatile stock, futures, options, commodities, and forex markets. Not long ago, I wrote a couple short books on my personal [individual investor] approach to investing: Investing in DRIPs and Trading Options on Tech Stocks. These two books are bundled here together specifically because I think these cover the two best ways to approach trading and investing.

But it wasn’t exactly an accident.

My wife recently rolled out her 401k funds from a former employer’s control into her own self-directed account. She asked me what course of action I thought she should take and I laughed!

“Didn’t you read my books?” I said.

“Yes,” she said, intensely glaring at me in that loving way only a wife can do.

So after several conversations, a few examples, and looking at some options chains — she sold puts in a couple stocks. First on Target Corp (TGT) before the year ended which expired worthless (in her favor!), and now she has some Apple (AAPL) puts at the $100 level - which has been tested a couple times.

Another good friend we saw at a holiday party was asking me what I would do with a small windfall he had recently received. (Since I’m not a professional financial advisor, please understand I don’t go around giving advice! These are just my spouse and friend asking my opinion, so I feel okay showing them what I know! I tell them to educate themselves because this stuff isn’t too hard to understand.)

Anyway, I told my friend all about DRIPs and how it removed a lot of the fear in the market for me because you start to see the incredible benefits of up and down markets, just like with options. So even if this market is moving toward a minor pullback with increased volatility, or a major correction, these are two great investing and trading strategies to get under your belt. And the time spent learning just how useful they are has been so worth it for me and my family.

Good luck to you and yours, and enjoy these two books included here in their original versions, minus a few formatting changes to create this bundle.