This book features straightforward stock market strategies that offer exceptional returns and cash flow while substantially reducing market risk. With only minimal extra effort each month, you can do better - a lot better - than buy-and-hold. To earn solid returns while effectively managing risk, millions of investors in whipsaw financial markets have learned that basic option writing strategies can make a dramatic improvement in their investment returns. "Option Writing Strategies for Extraordinary Returns" details put and call writing techniques that investors from conservative to aggressive are using to both generate and protect portfolio profits in bull, bear, and non-trending markets. Whether your goal is to create better-than-average long-term growth or generate better-than-average current income, this timely book provides step-by-step directions you can follow to create a stock option strategy that allows you to: combine the purchase of blue chip stock with the writing of puts and calls on that stock; increase your long position in the future, if the put is exercised, at a fixed price that is guaranteed to be lower than the current price; and, generate significant interest on cash received when you write options. It's not as complex as it sounds; it is, however, proven effective at reducing the risk of owning common stocks. "Option Writing Strategies for Extraordinary Returns" will change the way you look at stock ownership and option writing by combining the two into an effective, all-weather investing program. For too long, individual investors have been inundated with stories on the perils of option buying. Brokers and money managers who passed along these scare stories could hardly be blamed, since more often than not they had never taken the time to understand the profitable merits of writing options. "Option Writing Strategies for Extraordinary Returns" explains, in everyday language and without complex mathematics, how you can use option writing strategies to improve your investment returns while shielding your portfolio from unexpected loss. It explodes the prevailing myth that writing options exposes an investor to unpredictable and unlimited risk by detailing how, when used correctly, option writing is in fact among the most easy-to-use methodologies for shielding your portfolio from such risk. Using tables and charts to illustrate each step, veteran options expert David Funk details an innovative 'three-legged' model that involves the purchase of a stock position and the simultaneous writing of both put and call options with different strike prices on that position. This model reduces the amount of downside risk assumed versus buying stock alone, while allowing you the flexibility to increase your upside potential when you feel circumstances warrant. This well-organized guidebook takes you through an innovative program designed to turn basic put and call option writing into powerful income and capital building tools: Section one covers the basic concepts of covered call and cash-collateralized put writing; Section two explains how to design an investment program focused on capital appreciation; Section three shows how to adjust that program to maximize current income; Section four explores advanced strategies for extending positions, profiting from unusual events, and more; Section 5 shows you how to prepare for, and even profit from, early assignments and other unexpected occurrences; and, Section 6 takes a more in-depth look at the underlying theory of option writing. "Option Writing Strategies for Extraordinary Returns" isn't a get-rich-quick book that promises to double your money each year. What David Funk's book does promise is to introduce you to a commonsense, market-proven investing strategy for making more money than the majority of investors, while providing your portfolio with specific loss limits when the market drops. 'These savvy investors likely outperform 98 percent of all investors over the years' - Yale Hirsch, Founder, "The Stock Trader's Almanac". 'Superbly written...irresistibly clever ways to cope with the market's stubborn refusal to publish an itinerary of the future' - Don Worden, Worden Brothers, Inc., publishers of TeleChart, www.worden.com. 'Clear, concise, and easy to read...an excellent job of making strategies involving short options accessible to everyone' - James B. Bittman, Senior Instructor, CBOE Options Institute, and author of "Options for the Stock Investor". 'This method works exceptionally well no matter which way the market swings...an excellent way to establish an investment portfolio' - Brooks Harrison, Former Chief Technical Analyst, John Magee, Inc. 'This book presents sophisticated investment strategies in simple and clear language, enabling investors to improve their returns and reduce risks' - Pedro Belli, Economist, formerly with the World Bank.