>>27808786
>opportunities where my loss is limited
CDs They're federally insured.
>worst outcome is I lose all my stake
Long-term, deep in the money calls. Wins will bubble to the surface, and you sell off your wins while you buy more of them. Your CDs are your safe start-up reserves, while you wait for your middle-losses (total losses on a deep in the money call, are a win, because you really don't want a stock that just crashed that hard, at that strike price). So your middle losses will stick you with a stock that is not currently profitable. You sit on it and wait for it to go up, then you start selling calls against it to lower its cost basis. Eventually, you'll lose it, but for a price that you chose beforehand, so you chose your victory condition. This method has 3 stages. Each stage has 2 win conditions and one loss condition. In the first 2 stages, the loss condition simply moves it up in profitability, but also in time required for payoff. THis is my main technique, and I find that it works well for me. My biggest concern about it is that the longest-term options tend to all expire in January, which really generates a predictable battlefield for all involved... So this needs to be accounted for... Also, you're going to end up holding a lot of stocks that didn't do that well in the first two stages, so looking at some that put out good dividends to help with margin fees, would be a good idea.