Haven’t shared this before, but a lot of people ask me how I do it, so here goes:
Long-dated options, or LEAPS, are a powerful way to aggressively compound portfolio gains if you have high conviction about the future price of a stock. I have personally made a lot of money doing this. Yes it works!
LEAPS gives you opportunity to control at least 100 shares of a stock without owning them. I use this mostly for swing trades I plan to dump in <1 year or two. No point doing this for long term holds.
Eg: A stock trades at $10 and you believe it can hit $20 within a year, Instead of spending $1,000 to buy 100 shares, you buy 3 call contracts with $11 strike (will explain this later), expiring roughly a year from now. Some people do short dated ones too. That’s fine as look as it’s not too short. You need time for your thesis to play out. Avoid ODTEs if you know what’s good for you except you’re an idiot.
Assume premium is say $3 per share? Each contract would cost: $3 x 100 = $300. 3 contracts would cost: $300 x 3 = $900. Total cost = $900
Now suppose the stock doubles to $20 in one year, just as you projected.
Each contract is now worth:
($20 - $11) x 100 = $900. Meaning 3 contracts you bought would be worth $2700
Summary:
Initial cost: $900
Final value: $2700
Profit: $1800
Assuming you bought the stock outright:
100 shares at $10= $1k. If the stock goes to $20, your shares are worth $2k. Profit: $1k.
In other words, LEAPS compounded your returns with lesser capital and vice versa.
Are there risks involved ? Of course. A lot of risk.
If the stock does not rerate meaningfully higher, you can lose most or all of your capital.
A wise man once said, “Leverage is for idiots.” and he wasn’t exactly wrong.
This isn’t something you YOLO, and definitely not with a large chunk of your port. I personally never risk more than 10% of my port (Okay fine, I’m lying. It goes as high as 20% sometimes)
You only use LEAPS when your conviction is extremely high and you believe the stock can rerate aggressively to the upside.
Now here’s the real alpha:
How do you manage risk and find the right stock for this kind of bet?
This is the filter that has consistently worked for me:
1. I like beaten down assets with improving business margins ie Growing revs & bottom line, positive or improving EBITDA (adj), and a low D/E ratio.
On the technical side, the stock should be trading within say 10% of their 52-week low, RSI below 40, and sitting on key support across all long timeframes.
The goal is to always find a mispriced asset, not to catch a falling knife.
2. Buy around 10% OTM strikes ie If a stock is at $10, I’m looking around the $11 strike.
That way, the stock only needs to move above the strike plus the premium paid for the trade to become profitable. If you buy very far OTM strikes, you can still lose money even if the stock moves meaningfully higher. This is essentially baba ijebu.
3. Theres no point holding the contract into the final 60 days unless it is already deep ITM and you are comfortably profitable. Read up about something called thetas and option decays.
At that point, either sell it, roll it, convert to shares, or take the loss on the chin. You live to fight another day.
4. Only buy LEAPS when implied volatility is low cos Low IV = cheaper premium. Thats when LEAPS make the most sense cos you don’t want to overpay for optionality, then be directionally right and still get hurt cos IV compresses.
My current LEAPS:
$HIMS
$SOFI
As always, This is not financial advice. Just sharing what works for me.
There are tons of tutorials on YouTube that explain the mechanics better, but take this as a primer.
You’re welcome :)
A billionaire went bankrupt.
Only $200 left. And one expensive designer suit.
One day he walked into a hotel & asked:
“How much to buy this place?”
Owner: “$5 Million.”
Billionaire: Okay, ‘‘I’ll pay $500K in cash right now & give me control for 30 days”
Next day: ↓↓↓
This is Pastor Iren's message that changed my life and mentality.
It's been over 5yrs in my phone and every time I feel dismayed and backward I go back to it.
Thank you Pastor @pst_iren
A barber said a teenage boy came in every Friday for the exact same haircut.
Same clothes.
Same silence.
Same $20 tip.
After almost a year the barber finally joked:
“Trying to impress somebody?”
The kid answered:
“No.
@TheDumbTechGuy The fact that your trad bank are still with it doesn’t make it fine. I have had the privilege of modernizing one of such project and hell no that that shit out of my sight
I once worked with a senior backend engineer who believed that the strongest backend systems were the ones where logic is written more on the database layer than on the code layer.
The normal if-else statement you would write to check a users balance, bro writes all that logic directly on the DB, there were triggers, database functions etc.
Bro was literally coding with SQL. At that point I didn’t know SQL could even do all that.
Bro would review my code then and ask me why was I writing all that logic in code when it could reside directly on the db😂.
This was way before AI and bro would prefer to write every single thing by hand rather than install a package, he felt they were not secure.
Bro uses a framework just to repurpose it and customize everything!
At The point working with bro, he was almost 40.
Man! I’ve worked with cracked devs, and I’m grateful for every experience that has shaped me.
A while ago, I was working with a third-party API and the documentation was terrible. One company even documented their API in a PDF 😅
That experience made me realize a lot of developers still struggle with API documentation and testing tools.
Some developers hate Postman because they feel it’s too complex or not beginner-friendly.
Others avoid Swagger because it can quickly make your codebase messy if not carefully managed.
So I built Rauts.
Rauts scans your codebase and automatically generates clean API documentation with request/response examples. It also lets you test your APIs directly from the platform.
What makes it different:
Connect your GitHub repo and Rauts continuously scans your code whenever you push updates
Use the CLI to scan your code locally
Tunnel your local environment so you can test local APIs easily
Works with JavaScript backend frameworks and Laravel for now (more frameworks coming soon)
The goal is simple:
Make API documentation and testing easier, cleaner, and more beginner-friendly.
Would love feedback from developers here 👇
Check it out: https://t.co/JtyJyjq7ra