Grandma’s
Simple Secret
For Extra
Income
By Wendy Kirkland
Grandma’s Simple Secret For Extra Income
By
Wendy Kirkland
1
Copyright © 2016 by Universal Financial Independence
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, scanned, or distributed in any
printed or electronic form without permission.
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Index
Realize the Dream- Financial Freedom ……………………………………
4
What Happened When Life Turned for the Worse? …………………….
5
The Solution ……………………………………………………………………
6
Is it Legal? ………………………………………………………………………
6
What Exactly is an Option? ………………………………………………….
6
So who Am I Trading With? ………………………………………………….
7
Why Would a Market-Maker Want To Trade With Me?……………….
8
Do I Need to be Licensed to Trade Options? …………………………….
9
You Can Do This! ……………………………………………………………… 10
From Beginning to End .……………………………………………………… 11
Myths ……………………………………………………………………………. 13
Step by Step .…………………………………………………………………... 14
Common Mistakes ……………………………………………………………. 15
Getting Started ………………………………………………………………… 16
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Realize The Dream- Financial Freedom
My name is Wendy Kirkland (yes, I am a grandmother and actually a greatgrandmother) and I help everyday people earn more money and achieve financial
independence.
Are you familiar with the monetary-frustration of knowing you can do better, but
feel tethered to exactly where you are?
I’m sure you can relate - many highly creative, intelligent and productive
individuals are familiar with the feeling of consistently falling short each month which is
even more frustrating because they know the lack-of-money is below their own
expectations and potential.
Most people are in need of extra income. Often we feel isolated, like we are the
only ones who seem to be falling behind in our bills with never enough for the
unexpected things that all too regularly strike our bank account.
Do you dread late Summer because back-to-school expenses are right around
the corner? Does it take 9 months to pay off last year’s Christmas gifts? Do you only
pay the minimum requirement on your credit cards? Do you juggle which monthly bills
to pay first? Are you stressing about how to send your child (who has tried really hard)
to college? Are you regularly funding your retirement account?
If any of those statements apply to you, you are a member of a huge club.
Most of us hope if we continue to work hard throughout our lives, we will be in a
financial position to enjoy the “golden years” of retirement. But, statistics tell a different
story.
According to the Social Security Administration, of people age 65 and older:
•39.6% have incomes under $20,000
•28.2% have incomes from $20,000 to $40,000
•18.9% have incomes from $40,000 to $75,000
•Only 13.3% have incomes in excess of $75,000
Living comfortably on $40,000 a year in retirement, which would require a $1
million plus nest egg by the time you reach the retirement age, will depend on your
expenses, investment returns and health-care costs. This figure does not factor in other
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benefits, like pensions and Social Security, which can boost your retirement income but
is often much less than we expect for a life-time of work.
This said, for those who live month to month with never enough to put aside into
savings, they can look forward to working as a Walmart greeter through their retirement
or will move in with their kids because a $1-million-dollar retirement account is a pie-inthe-sky dream.
What Happened When Life Turned for the Worse?
In 2004, my husband Jack and I had owned and operated our gift shop for 16
years. We raised three children, managed to send them to college and were overjoyed
to welcome the first of our seven grandchildren. Years earlier, we had opened a
retirement account with the good intention of adding funds each year, but when the
flood waters of Tropical Storm Frances and two week later, Tropical Storm Ivan hit
flooding our shop with 5 feet of water twice, the balance in that savings account was
little more than the beginning balance needed to open it.
We were wiped out with no savings to draw from or flood insurance to cover the
loss. It doesn’t flood in the mountains of Western North Carolina. All our work equity,
building décor, inventory and displays ended up in the dumpster delivered and placed
beside the back door.
It was going to take months to dry out and fight the possibility of mold, even if we
found a way to replace the merchandise. Jack and I asked each other how we were
going to keep our home and pay the bills that were going to roll in whether the shop was
open or not. We needed a new source of income and needed it fast.
The Solution
During this desperate time, a friend told me about option trading. I had never
even heard that term before, but this is a story for another time. Most people don’t
know about or understand what stock options are. I quickly learned option trading was
to be the answer for how Jack and I would not only keep a roof over our head, but we
reopened the shop, fully funded our retirement account, bought a second house and a
large piece of land adjacent to our mountain home.
I was an artist, a shop-owner and at 56 years old, without a special college
degree and on a shoe-string investment, I learned to successfully trade stock options.
Truly, my family and I have been blessed behind measure by the income earned
through option trading. Now teaching others to become financially independent is my
way of repaying these blessings.
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The best part of my day is hearing from people I’ve taught whose lives have
changed for the better through option trading. Their success stories send my heart
soaring.
I received an email recently from a man who explained he had been laid off and
ultimately let-go by the company he had worked for 12 years because they were
downsizing. He heard about my book and option trading, began to study and now 9
months later is excited he is making more money each week than he did after 12 years
of employment with regular cost of living raises.
The same day I heard from a woman who is a stay-at-home-mom with two young
children. She studied and then applied the option trading principles in a way that she
was able to select trades to enter in the evening a couple nights a week after her
children were in bed and then monitored the trades during their nap time.
She said she was happy to earn weekly date-night-money and enough to fund
two week-long family vacations a year.
In a chatroom I monitor to answer traders’ questions, a man recently posted he’d
had a good trading week and earned $2884 or an average of $577 a day and then he
added that his birthday was coming up on July 1st and he would be 86 years old.
There's no doubt that these people made these results happen because
they let a feisty old woman like me follow my dreams, cheer them on, and they
absorbed my ideas and incorporated them with their own to achieve financial
success.
Is This Legal?
Back when my friend mentioned she was exploring trading stock options, I didn’t
have a clue what she was talking about. I’d never even heard the term before.
When I first started digging into the details, I had all kinds of questions. First off, I
wondered if it was legal? Did I need to be licensed to trade stock options? I had a
general idea what stock shares were as they related to a company, but what was an
option? If I was trading these stock options, who was I trading them with? Did I need to
go out and find a buyer or a seller?
Being in the retail business, I understood buy and selling and buying customers
were hard to come by.
Maybe you have some of the same questions, so let me share the answers.
What Exactly is an Option?
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Most of us understand that as a holder of share of stock (a shareholder), we
have claim to a part of the corporation's assets and earnings. In other words, a
shareholder is an owner of a company. Ownership is determined by the number of
shares a person owns relative to the number of outstanding shares.
A stock option gives the holder of the option the opportunity (but not the
obligation) to purchase or sell shares of a company’s stock at a certain price during a
set time. The benefit of holding an option is that you benefit from the stock’s price
movement during the period of time that you hold the option.
Let me give you an example:
Let’s say your husband is excited about trading-in his iPhone for the latest
version that is to be released next month. You feel that many people will update their
phones to this new version and you think Apple’s stock will increase in value because of
this demand for the new product.
Apple’s shares of stock are currently priced at $130 per share. Buying just 10
shares of stock would run $1,300. So instead, you purchase one option contract (which
is for 100 shares of stock) at the guaranteed price of $130 per share which will expire in
60 days. The cost for this option is a premium of $2.45 per share or $245 for the one
contract on the 100 shares of Apple’s stock.
For 60 days, you will reap the benefit of the price changes of these 100 shares of
Apple’s stock. If Apple’s stock increases in value by $7.50 after the release of the new
phone so it is now $137.50 per share, your option increases by a large percentage of
that $7.50 move, perhaps about $5.00. (There is a percentage built into the pricing of
the option that is calculated for you by the stock exchange.)
A week or so after the release of the new phone, you decide the hype is over and
you decide to sell your option contract. There is still 30 days left before your option
contract expires, which means it still has half its time value ($2.45 divided by 2 = $1.22)
So your premium retains that time value, plus the percentage of the increase in the
stock’s value. ($1.22 plus 5.00 = $6.22 per share or $622 for the 100 share contract.)
You paid $245 to control 100 shares of Apple’s stock for 60 days. When you
choose to sell your option 30 days before expiration, the premium is $622 for that one
contract. Your profit from the trade is $377 or a 154% gain because your option value
went from $245 to $622.
You can see through this example that a lot of money can be made if you know
when a company’s price is going to go up or down.
So Who Am I Trading With?
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Much of the option trading transaction happens behind the scene at the stock
exchange. When you choose to purchase an option. The exchange posts the offer and
another trader, often one they call a market-maker, accepts the trade conditions, in this
case, to sell you 100 shares of Apple’s stock for $130 per share when you ask to buy
them within the next 60 days.
When you choose to sell the contract, the exchange contacts the market-maker
and buys the shares at $130 each from them and then sells them for the current price of
the stock $137.50. The stock exchange receives a portion of the $7.50 increase for
handling the trade transaction for you (in this example $2.50 and your portion is $5.00)
and your account increases to $6.22 per share or $622 for the one 100 share contact.
This buying and selling happens within seconds.
You don’t have to find a buyer or a seller, it happens for you behind the scenes at
the stock exchange.
Why Would a Market-Maker Want To Trade With Me?
Market-makers know that many retail traders, everyday people like you and me,
enter trades willy-nilly just because they like a company or because their Uncle Joe told
them to invest in this great company that is going to do well. After all, his automechanic told him it was a sure thing.
If during the period of time that the trader is holding the option, the price of the
stock drops, the option premium also decreases.
Using the price of the Apple trade as an example again, if the price of the stock
drops from $130 to $128, the option premium of $2.45 per share will also drop a
percentage of that $2.00 decrease, perhaps about .50 so the premium now is valued at
$1.95 per share. The option contract for the 100 shares is now worth $195. This $50
loss to the option holder is a $50 gain to the market-maker.
A stock’s price can drop to zero. Apple’s stock could drop from $130 to zero, but
you can never lose more than the option’s premium and you know the full amount at risk
right from the get-go. In our example, $245 which was the initial cost of the option is the
most that can be lost. When a retail trader enters a trade, they should know their “stop”,
the loss that is acceptable and the signal that it is time close the trade, perhaps about a
20%.
A key to option trading success is to let your profits continue to run up and to cut
losses short. You want to have a plan (this is where I come in) and many retail traders
fail to do this. When a loss happens, fear sets in and paralyzes them. They continue to
hold a losing trade, hoping and hoping its premium will go back up, and before it
recovers, their expiration time runs out and the time premium has run out, too, until it
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has no value. If you sell at a fixed point, it still retains some of it time value and it isn’t a
total loss.
Also, many retail traders don’t have a clue how to know when a stock is going to
go up in price or when it is going to drop. Again, this is something I teach you. The
average trader enters a trade based on wishful thinking or advice from others, not
based on solid technical indicators that can be learned.
Do I Need to Be Licensed to Trade Options?
No, you don’t have to be licensed to trade options. To trade, you need a
computer and internet connection. By way of a computer, you set up an online
brokerage account through which you place your trades and either with this online
brokerage account or through another charting service, you will view a company’s price
chart.
A stock’s chart will let you know what its price is apt to do. Is it likely to go up in
the near further or is it overbought and ready to pullback and drop?
You don’t have to have a financial or banking degree or be a math-wiz to read a
stock’s price chart. It can be taught and learned.
I can hear you saying, “Ya, right. Prove it. Prove to me that this is something I
can learn to do without a college degree or enrolling in a tech-school.”
You Can Do This!
Let me show you a stock’s price chart and I will prove you can read it and know
when a stock’s price is going to go up or down.
The image of the chart below is for Johnson & Johnson, the baby oil company.
The red and black marks from left to right are called candlesticks and they represent the
price action for the “day” since this is a daily time-frame-chart.
The candlesticks on the left go back further in time and the ones on the right are
the most recent days. The last one on the right is the most current day.
I have place two lines on the chart called moving averages. The blue line is the
average of the last 5 periods. On this chart, it is the last 5 trading days. Notice how
closely this line follows the candlesticks. The red line is an average of the last 20
trading days or 4 five-day trading weeks (almost a month).
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You don’t need to know any more than this to be able to determine what is going
to happen next with the price of the chart.
Notice what happens when the blue line crosses up and over the red line. When
it crosses up, price goes up. The numbers running vertically up the right side of the
chart is the stock’s price. When the blue line crosses down and over the red line, price
goes down.
If you were to have noticed the cross of the blue line up and over the red line on
27th of January, you could have entered an option trade on that day and have stayed in
the trade until May if you had purchased an expiration out that far in time. Or you would
have closed your trade any time along the way prior to your option’s expiration.
I have not mentioned this, but there are two types of options. One you enter
when you expect the price of the stock to go up and the other you enter when you
expect the price of the stock to go down.
I will share more information on these two option-types at a later time. In the
meantime, let’s cut-to-the-chase and take a look at the chart.
Chart Courtesy of Stockcharts.com
Notice there aren’t any false signals of the 5 EMA line or moving average line
crossing up or down over the 20 EMA line. When it crosses up and over the 20 EMA
line, it stays above for a period of time. Sometimes it drifts lower and the candlesticks
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get close or maybe even touch the 20 EMA, but it then bounces off (like a trampoline)
and continues up or down.
Also, notice that it is just as easy to spot the cross to the downside on January
2nd when price dropped from 100 down to 94.
I will post another chart so you can see that Johnson & Johnson’s chart is not
unusual.
The chart below is for Caterpillar (CAT), the company that builds commercial
tractors and earth moving equipment.
The moving average lines crossing up and down are easy to identify and
accurately predict the direction of future movement of the stock’s price.
Of course, I could have explained all of this to you in technical jargon that would
have you scratching your head and perhaps, thinking Wendy, she is a financial genius,
but there isn’t any need for the technical terms and formulas to explain what you are
viewing. My brief explanation is all you need to be able to be able to interpret the price
chart.
Truth be known, with this briefest of explanations, you now know more than 98%
of the world’s population about determining the future price movement of a company’s
stock.
Chart Courtesy of Stockcharts.com
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From Beginning to End
The chart below is for Coca Cola (KO) and shows what you might be looking for
as an entry signal. In this case, you notice the 5 EMA has just crossed the 20 EMA and
you decide to open a trade soon after the cross up of the 5 EMA.
You decide to purchase the April 43 strike for $1.01 per share or $101 for the 100
share contract. This give the trade plenty of time to develop, almost 3 months. You
choose to purchase 5 contracts for a total investment of $505.
Chart courtesy of Stockcharts.com
You check on the chart every day when you have time in the evening. You
review the daily price activity watching for the 9 EMA to drop and cross the 20 EMA.
There were a couple days after you entered where the 5 EMA dropped down
toward the 20 EMA but it never really touched or crossed down.
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Chart Courtesy of Stockcharts.com
Chart courtesy of Stockcharts.com
Price has been steadily climbed for a couple months. Your expiration date is
coming up on April 16, 2016 and price has flattened out for the last week or so, trading
in a straight line. April 11th was a down day and with your expiration day coming up
next week, you decide to close the position rather than risk a drop with no time to
recover.
The bid premium when you close the position on April 11th is $3.40. You paid
$1.01 to open the trade. You have earned a profit of $2.39 per share. You purchased 5
contracts, for a total investment of $505. This means you gained $1,190 profit on those
5 contracts. ($3.40 received on the sell less 1.01 you paid = $2.39 profit x 500 shares =
$1,190 total profit or 237%)
That was an awesome trade. Easy to see on the entry on the chart and easy to
execute.
Myths
Many people are under the impression that you need to have special education
or a college degree to be able to trade on the stock market. Others feel their accounts
must be managed by a broker or professional money-manager who then charges big
fees to move in and out of trades while the account balance decreases after covering
those costs.
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This isn’t true. Anyone can open an online brokerage account. There are a
number of brokers to choose from that offer a variety of services and charge a range of
fees. It is easy to make a comparison and select one that is right for you and the
services you want.
I always suggest selecting a broker that offers virtual trading that can be used
before funding the account. This way you practice and know exactly how to fill in the
forms to open and close a trade before you ever have money at risk. This also builds
your confidence level as your practice-account grows in value.
The broker will want to know if you have had experience trading options and will
want to know your level of understanding of various strategies. My instruction and
materials help you to be an informed trader and the virtual trading gives you practice as
if you were trading with real money.
Buying and selling straight call and put options is Level Two trading. This is a
level anyone can achieve, use to gain experience and earn financial independence.
Virtual trading, it is practical experience. You will have studied a strategy course
and practiced, so when you fund an account and are asked if you have experience
trading options you will be able to answer and assure the broker you have studied and
traded options, using their virtual service for the last 3 months or 6 months or whatever
amount of time it has been until you have gain confidence to move ahead.
In addition to thinking that an advance education is necessary to trade options,
other traders think they are too old or too young or some other negative business or
work experience disqualifies them from achieving success.
There is no age restriction (once you are over 18 years of age), education
requirement, work or experience qualification. Anyone can trade options! Not only can
anyone trade options, they can do it from anywhere they have access to a computer
and internet.
The only thing holding anyone back from learning option trading and being
successful is their own negative or limited view of their own potential. Anyone can learn
to trade and practice the principles to grow a trade account.
Step by Step
You have already taken the first step. You have shown interest in learning
something new that can improve your financial situation. You have read up to this point
and if you were able to follow the price movement on the charts posted above, you have
proven to yourself that you have what it takes to learn to trade options.
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Now is the time to decide to take the next step.
There is more to understand about option trading like which option strike price
and expiration to select, but none if it is more complicated than what you have already
absorbed.
You will also want to learn about opening a brokerage trade account and filing in
the option trade forms in that account to enter and exit a trade.
As I mentioned earlier, there are two types of options. One you enter when you
expect the price of the stock to go up (they are called Calls) and one when you feel it
will go down (they are called Puts) and you will want to understand exactly how these
options work. Again, none of this is tough, they are just details to understand and
incorporate in the trading process.
The special offer below is for an easy to read manual, obtainable right away as
an e-book. It goes through chart reading, option details (call and put options) and the
trade process, step by step. It includes lots of images of the type of forms and details
you will need to understand to make the right choices to trade successfully.
Common Mistakes
I often hear from people who heard about option trading and figured it was a get
rich program they jumped into without any instruction at all. Perhaps, they read an ad
online or a family member or friend mentioned that they were delving into option trading
and because their own financial need was great, they dove in head first. They quickly
discovered they’d moved too fast and were in over their head.
Because they didn’t really understand the inner workings of option trading, they
got into trouble. Maybe they selected the wrong strike price that had too far to move
before it was profitable. Or maybe they were tempted to buy cheap option premiums
and they didn’t purchase enough time for the stock’s price to move enough to be
profitable before time expired and the option was worthless. Some lost most of their
trading account by placing too much in just one or two trades.
They felt the pressure to make a quick-buck and made novice or newbie
mistakes that market-makers are expecting new retail traders to make. These mistakes
are what keep the market-makers in business. They are counting on inexperienced
traders to open trade accounts and plunging in without practice or a trade plan. The
market-makers know new traders will be influenced by one of two emotions: Greed or
Fear and operating from either one will most likely result in a losing trade and one the
market-makers will profit from.
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Market-makers are not used to trading with educated traders who know how to
read a price chart, who know which option strike price and expiration has the best
chance for success. More often than not, traders approach their trade choices as if they
were throwing a dart to select the option they’ll use or they go with a gut-feeling rather
than an educated choice.
Getting Started
Stress-Free Wealth Building: Fast Track to Option Trading Success covers all the
details needed for the average everyday person to understand and make informed
option trade decisions.
Congratulations on making the choice to change and improve your financial
future. Once you’ve read through the e-Book you will be ready to open a trade account
and begin successfully practice trading to build your level of confidence in your own
abilities.
WTG! (Way to go!) You are on your way.
You are more powerful, imaginative, and stronger than you imagine.
I had no reason to believe I could one day live my dream as an option trader and
writer; no reason to believe, I suppose, except that my heart told me it was my path,
except that my mind invented dreams that felt very real, that faith said all the struggle
and the hardship and the toil would be worth it.
Please, my friends, believe in your goal with conviction and a full, grateful heart
even when it's difficult.
The journey to success begins the moment our bias for ease and comfort is
overpowered by our drive for challenge and desire to stretch and reach beyond what we
have gotten used to, our current comfort-zone.
Don't forget that growth and greatness often come from events that may seem
negative (like a life-changing flood) and those seemingly endless, sometimes frustrating
days and nights of faith and discipline.
Keep working, keep at it, do the part that you can do and believe the rest will
happen. You don't need to know the how-details right now.
No matter how small you start, start. Start something that will change your
future.
I believe in you!
Wendy Kirkland
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