InvestingWithBrandon

97% of companies I go analyze.
I say no.
Not because I am being difficult.
Because most companies do not pass the filter.
Every company must check all 5 boxes:
1. Below intrinsic value
2. Has a moat
3. Has pricing power
4. Durable competitive advantage
5. OK to hold long term if assigned
Miss one. It is a no. Move on.
The name of the game is saying no.
Not finding reasons to say yes.
When something passes all 5.
That is when I allocate.
That is when I sell the put.
That is when I buy the LEAP.
That is when the position makes sense.
Most people are too eager to say yes.
That is why they lose mo

Retired at 31 selling options. No inheritance. No lucky coin flip. No rich parents.
I don't day trade. I don't read charts. I couldn't tell you what the market did this morning & I don't care...
I buy great companies for less than they're worth & use long duration options to magnify the most bullish setups
Then I sell portfolio secured puts & take the cashflow to buy more shares & calls
10 minutes a day
It's not complicated
It's just the opposite of everything they taught you
Fibonacci Bollinger Band VWAP that!

Buying shares
Selling 1+ year portfolio secured puts
Buying 1+ year calls
when a great company is trading below intrinsic value is the BEST way to make money in the stock market.
PERIOD.

Retail investor: My covered calls aren't about capping anything. They're downside protection. The premium cushions my drops.
Me: Ok, let's test that on a real chart. MSFT's 52 week range... $352 low, $542 high.
Retail investor: Wild range for Microsoft honestly.
Me: Right? Now say you owned $100k of it near the highs, selling your monthly calls for what... $1,500 a month?
Retail investor: About that, yeah.
Me: The slide toward $352 knocks over $35k off your position at the lows. Your "protection" collected a few thousand bucks. You ate basically the ENTIRE drop.
Retail investor: The premium di

Retail investor: I nailed the $GOOG "panic" in July. Sold a cash secured put right when it dropped to $316. Expired worthless, kept every dollar.
Me: Nice timing, seriously. That was max fear. How much premium did you get?
Retail investor: About $1,200.
Me: & what did the $50k+ of cash securing it do while $GOOG bounced 12% off that low?
Retail investor: ...sat in my account. It has to sit there.
Me: It doesn't though. If that collateral had been shares itself you woulda made 12% on the $50k which is about $6k. Instead you made $1,200...
Retail investor: So I called the bottom "perfectly" & go

This chart is what your cash secured put collateral missed this year.
Q: +24% over the past 12 months.
Every CSP seller had piles of cash benched all year "securing" their puts. Best case it earned ~4% in a sweep account... taxed as ordinary income.
My collateral IS this chart. The $VOO & $Q securing my puts rode every point of that 24%... WHILE collecting the same premiums the cash guys collected.
Same trades. Same premiums. One collateral did 4%. The other did this chart.
Run that gap for 10 years & it's not a detail anymore... it's the difference of millions between accounts.

$NVDA. 5 years. Averaged roughly 60% a YEAR over this stretch.
Now pick any point on this chart & draw a horizontal line 5% above it. That's your covered call strike.
See how fast the chart blows through your line? That's your shares getting called away. Everything above the line... that upside belongs to someone else now. You got a few hundred bucks is premium cause you wanted to "do something"
& notice what the line DIDN'T do. Every red stretch on this chart... you were fully exposed. The premium covered a sliver of it.
That's the covered call on a great company. Caps the exact moves that ma

Here's the covered call problem on the most boring chart possible. Not a moonshot stock... just $VOO .
2022... down about 25%. The covered call guy thinks he is a genius as he helped pad his downside a tad.
Then look what this chart does next.
2023... +24%
2024... +26%
2025... +16%
2026... +11% YTD
Back to back to back to back. The 4 years that scaled everyone's accounts well beyond all time highs.
Except the covered call guy got CAPPED. Over & over. Shares called away, rebuy higher, cap again, called away again... all the way up 4 of the best consecutive years in recent memory. He collected pe