 Hey everyone, Lee Lowell here, smartoptionseller.com. How's everyone doing? Today is Saturday, January 23rd, 2021. Hey, for our great free options information education today, we're going to be talking about a great strategy that can allow you to get into the stock market for 70% less risk, 70% less money on the line, and triple the returns. Yes, we are going to be talking about buying deep in the money call options. I've been getting lots of questions this week from readers and members about how they can get into the market. The market's just been going up, up, up, and they want to get on board. And what is the best way for them to do that using options? And my one and only buying options strategy is buying deep in the money call options. So we will be talking about that today. I'm going to show you an example, why it's the best way to get into the stock market. And after learning this strategy, you will never want to buy stocks again. You will only want to use deep in the money call options. So let's get right to it. Go to our cheat sheet here, and we are talking about buying deep in the money call options. What are deep in the money call options? What does in the money mean? So let's go over it a little bit here. When you buy a call option contract, you are bullish on the market, which means you want the stock to go up. So if you are interested in buying a stock, obviously you are bullish. But what can you do other than just buying the stock itself? Well, you can buy call options. And there are many different ways to buy call options. There are in the money call options, which is what we'll be talking about today. There are at the money call options, and there are out of the money call options. So those are three different ways that you can purchase call options. And they're definitely not the same. They're all different. But the one that I recommend, the one that I use is buying deep in the money call options. What does that mean? Well, let's say the stock is here. Well, you can buy a call option that has a strike price, which is the area where you would actually buy the stock. At the money means the strike price is the same or roughly the same as the current stock price. And out of the money call option, which is what most people do, and that's not the best way to do it, is out of the money meaning if the stock is here, they're gonna buy a strike price that's priced way above the current price of the stock. And in the money option, which is what we do, stock is here, we buy strike prices that are down here underneath the current stock price. And you get much better bang for your buck, and I'm gonna show you why that's the best way to buy call options. So we have in the money, at the money, and out of the money. And most people defer to the out of the money call options. And you know why? Because they're cheaper. They're cheaper on dollar terms. But doesn't necessarily mean that they're better. So I'm gonna teach you how to do it. The best way, in my opinion, is buying deep in the money call options. Okay, so what is, let's go over it a little bit more. Why do we wanna buy deep in the money call options? Well, in this particular example I'm going to show you today is because it's gonna have, you put out 70% less of your capital versus buying the stock itself. You can have, that means you'll also get 70% less risk in the trade, okay? If you have 70% less capital, that means you have 70% less risk. And you're gonna get triple the returns on versus buying the stock itself. So we're always talking about 100 shares of stock. Options contracts consist of 100 shares of stock. So we always have to compare it to buying 100 shares of stock. So in this case, all of these benefits apply versus buying 100 shares of stock. Now, how do you pick a deep in the money call options? The way that I do it is that you're gonna look for an option that has a 90% delta. And I've talked about this before and I've made videos about this before. Delta is very important. Delta is one of the Greek byproducts of the option pricing formula. And the delta has a couple different definitions but the best definition that I like to use for delta is that the delta will tell you how much that option price will change in according to how the stock price it changes itself. So you have a stock move and then you have an option move. The option price moves along with the stock move. And the options can move at varying levels, okay? So if the stock goes up a dollar, your option contract doesn't necessarily go up a dollar as well. Now the delta will determine how much your option price will follow the stock price. So you would think, okay, well, if the stock moves, I want my option price to move and that's what delta can help you. So deltas range from zero to 100%. So you wanna pick an option that has at least a 90% delta. That means the option price will move along with the stock price, about 90% of that move. Now, if you pick an option that has only a 10% delta, that option price is only gonna move about 10% of whatever the stock does. And that's not getting enough bang for your buck. You don't wanna do that. In my book, that's just not enough movement. So you wanna pick an option that has a 90% delta. How do you find deltas? Well, I'll show you. You can get it through the option chain that you look at in your broker wherever you look at an option chain, okay? And of course, options all have different expiration dates. So you have to choose an option with an expiration date that meets your outlook on the stock. Are you a day trader or a long-term trader? Are you looking to hold stocks for a week, months, six months, a year? You have to decide what your length in the trade wants to be. And once you decided that, now you go ahead and buy the deep in the money call option between the current bid and ask rate. Every option has a bid and ask price, just like every stock does. So you wanna buy the option, the deep in the money call option between its current bid and ask price. You wanna get a good deal. You don't wanna buy right at the ask price. So you wanna try to buy something in the middle. That's what we do. And so I have some other things here at expiration and the risks and all that, but let's go over the example first and it'll show you exactly what I'm talking about. Let's pull up a chart of Apple. Apple is what we're gonna be talking about today. Now, Apple closed yesterday, January 22nd, 2021, about $139 a share. So that's what we're going to use as our price point to compare buying 100 shares of Apple at $139 versus buying a deep in the money call option that has a 90% Delta. So let's go take a look at some Apple options and we'll figure out what we're going to do. Now here is my interactive brokers option chain for Apple. Got all the tabs at the top here so you can look at all different option chains. I have Apple pulled up. So we're gonna look at an Apple deep in the money call option for July 16th, 2021. It's got 174 days until expiration. So that's about six months out in time. And all you have to do to pick a deep in the money call option is to look at the Delta and find one that has closest to a 90% Delta. And the good thing about option chains, most of them can give you a column like this that'll tell you what the Delta is. So right here we have our Delta column and right here we have our strike prices for Apple that expire in July, 2021. So if you are bullish on Apple, now remember buying call options is a very bullish strategy. So you have to be bullish on the stock ahead of time. If you're not bullish, then there's no point in doing this trade, okay? So if you're bullish on whatever stock you're looking at, in this case our example, example only is we're bullish on Apple and we're gonna look for the strike price that has closest to a 90% Delta, okay? So we go down the Delta column here and we see that this $100 call, here's the strike price, 100 call has got a 0.906. So that's 90.6 that meets our threshold for a 90% Delta. That is the $100 strike call. Now, we know that the last price for Apple was $139 a share and the strike price of 100. So here's Apple at 139, our strike price is all the way down here at 100. That means we're contracting ourselves out to buy Apple at $100 a share, 100 shares at $100 per share, okay? Right now it's currently trading for $139. We're contracting ourselves out to buy it for $100. That's what the strike price tells you. That tells you where you can actually buy the stock. So no one's going to actually let you buy Apple for $100 when it currently trades for $139 in the open market. So you have to pay a price for this $100 call option. And what's the price of that call option? Well, you look at the current bid and ask price. Right here you can see it's got a 39 per contract bid at 43.20 per contract offer. We want to always try to buy or sell if we're going to sell. We want to try to buy it somewhere in between the bid and ask price. So we're thinking $41 per contract is right in the middle and that's the price that we would shoot for to buy this contract. Remember, we're buying it. So we want to buy it, put in a bid, a bid of $41 per contract, which would cost actually $4100 if the trade goes to remember. Each option contract consists of 100 shares. So you always have to multiply the prices you see here times 100. So if we put in a $41 bid times that by 100, that would cost $4100. So we're contracting ourselves out to buy the $100 call for $41 per contract. And what will that do for us actually? Well, let's go back to our cheat sheet here and our example is and I'll go back to this expiration and the risk in a little bit, but let's look at our example here. We're buying a $100 call for $41 per contract. That's a $4100 outlay and our break even. Now, this is a very important part of figuring out where the stock needs to be in order for you to break even on the trade. Now, if you buy Apple at $139 a share, you know that your break even is $139 a share. So whatever you buy the stock for, that's your break even. If it goes up, you're in the money. If it goes down, you're losing money, right? So $139 is your break even if you buy the stock. Now, if you buy the call option, the $100 call option costs $41. In order to find out the break even, you add the strike price of 100 plus the price per contract that you'll pay for the option. They add those together and you get $141. That is your break even on the option trade. As long as Apple goes up above $141 in the next six months, you're going to be making money, right? Now, if you just bought the stock, your break evens 139. You buy the option, your break evens 141. So that's a $2 difference between buying the stock or buying the call option. So once again, you're saying, well, if the break evens are different, why would I want to buy the call option instead? Well, you have to remember, if you buy 100 shares of Apple for $139 a share, that's an outlay of $13,900. If you're buying the call option, you have an outlay of just $4,100. That's over a 70% discount to what you have to pay versus buying 100 shares of stock. Now, what we want to know is, is it worth buying this call option if the stock moves? Well, now we're going to take a look at another example of why it's better to buy a deep in the money call option. So here I have a basically a P&L chart and a return on investment ROI of buying the stock versus buying the call option itself. So here in the middle, we have different prices for the stock Apple, I should say, over various times. And we want to know, so if Apple just goes bankrupt and goes down to $0 a share, what happens? Well, in that case, everyone's going to lose money. Apple's bankrupt, any shareholders are going to lose all their money and any call option buyers are going to lose all their money. So if Apple's at $0, the stock buyers are going to lose $13,900 on their 100 shares, they're going to lose 100% on their investment. Same thing with the call option, but the thing is you're only going to lose $4,100. When you buy an option, the most you can ever lose is what that option costs you in dollar terms. So you have a $4,100 loss that's still 100% loss, but it's still much, much less. That's almost $10,000 less than the stock buyers. So you're losing a lot less money. As I said, you have 70% less money at risk, which means your and your capital outlay is 70% less compared to the stock. So we've got these two things going for us already. Now, as we move up the price of the stock, we can go to, let's just say, Apple falls from $139 down to $100. Well, the stock buyers are going to lose $3,900, call option buyers are going to lose $4,100. So the dollar amounts are practically the same here. Now, as we move up in price, the stock buyers break even, of course, is $139. That's where you'll break even on the stock price. The option buyers will lose their $200. Okay, because that's the difference. Right at $139, you will lose $200 if you buy the call option and you'll have a negative 5% return on investment. Once you get up to, once Apple moves up to $141, now your option is at break even while the stock is making just a little bit of money. But as we move up higher and higher and higher into Apple, let's look at the $200. If Apple moves up to $200 per share, the call, the stock buyers are going to make $6,100 and the call buyers are going to make $5,900. And here's the big deal. The return on investment for the stock buyers, 44%. The return on investment for the call option buyer, the deep in the money call option buyer is 144% return on your money. It's over three times greater than the return on the stock investment. If Apple moves up to $300 a share, the stock buyers will make $16,100 and the call option buyers will make $15,900. So the dollar amounts are practically the same, but look at the returns, 116% return here, 388% return here, over three times larger. So breaking it down, buying the deep in the money call option, not only will you almost get dollar for dollar movement that the stock purchases will get, but the kicker is the return on investment. You're gonna have over three times the return and you know why? Because you're only putting up $4,100 for the trade. You're putting up $4,100 versus the $13,900 that the stock buyers have to put up. So you're getting everything that you need by buying the call option that you would get is if you bought shares of stock, but you have a lot less money at risk, you have a lot less money on the line and you're gonna get three times the return on your investment, it's a no brainer. Everybody should be buying deep in the money call options, okay? So we go back to our cheat sheet here. Remember, here's what we want. These are the reasons why we wanna do it. You got 70% less capital outlay, you have 70% less money on the line and you're gonna get triple the return. You're gonna pick a deep in the money call option with at least a 90% delta. You're gonna pick an expiration date that meets your outlook in time and you're gonna buy between the bid and as spread. So that's great. So now let's pretend that we bought a deep in the money call option today and we're holding it through July 2021 expiration. What happens at expiration? Okay, so when you buy a call option and it comes time to expiration and the stock has moved up higher and you're in the money and you've got all this money built up, what do you do? Because call options all have an expiration date and you have to make a decision on what you're going to do at that time. Now there's three things that could occur at expiration when you have an in the money call option and the call option is in the money because the stock price is still well above the breakeven price, okay? So let's just say Apple's at $200 a share. You have all this money built up, all this profit built up, what do you do? Well, at expiration you can exercise the option. You can actually turn that call option into actual shares of stock. But what's going to happen at that point is you're going to have to come up with the balance of the cost of the call option, which is the $100 strike times 100. So you're going to have to come up with an extra $10,000 to pay the balance of the trade. Now remember, when you purchase the call option, all you have to do is just pay whatever the call option costs. But it's like having a balloon payment at the end of the expiration. You'll have to come up with the rest of the money, which is the strike price times 100 shares. So that's $10,000. You'll have to come up with an extra $10,000 if you exercise the option. Now you don't have to exercise the option. Your choice number two is that you can sell the option for its current going rate. So whatever that option is worth at that time, you can sell it and just collect your money and move on, and you will have no more position. You don't have to pay the $10,000. You just sell the option out, trade is done, and you just take your profits and run. But you have no more stake in the market. Now, in the first case, if you exercise the option, now you control 100 shares of stock, you had to pay your $10,000 to pay off the call option. But now you have 100 shares of stock and if Apple keeps going up, you keep making money. In choice number two, if you sell the option, you're out, you're done. If Apple keeps going up, you're not in the game anymore. So you have to decide, do I want to stay in the game or do I want to sell out and take my profit? Now, the third option is called rolling the option. Now, if you don't want to pay your $10,000, but you still want to lock in some gains, what you can do is roll the option. And what does that mean? Well, you're going to sell out your current position, okay? You're gonna sell out the current position for a profit and you're gonna take those profits and reinvest into a new deep in the money call option for a further expiration date down the line, whatever you choose. So you're pulling in some profits, you're taking those profits and you're staying in the game by buying another deep in the money call option for whatever it costs at that time. So you don't have to make the balloon payment, you don't have to pay your $10,000, you're gonna sell the current option and buy a new deep in the money call option for somewhere down the road. So this keeps you in the game and yet you've been able to take some money off the table. So those are your three choices of what to do at expiration. Now, let's talk about the risk. What's the risk when you buy shares of stock? The risk is that the stock drops, right? The risk is that the stock falls and you've got like a paper profit, right? You have a paper profit, market's going down below your buying level, that's the risk. Same risk with the call option is that if the stock goes down, the call option value will go down as well. So you're holding something that has a current paper loss. Now if the stock goes down and you wanna get out of the trade, you can certainly do that. If you think, you know what? I'm done with Apple, it's never going up anymore. I wanna get out. Well, all you have to do is just sell the call option for whatever it's worth at that time. Now, if the stock's dropped below your buying level, then you'll probably take a loss on it. But if you get out at a certain point, your losses could be minimal. So you don't have to hold the option till expiration, you can do whatever you want. You can sell it the next day, next month, whatever. So if you're not happy or comfortable in the trade anymore or the stock's going down and it's getting close to your stop loss point, all you have to do is sell the option. Now you'll probably take a loss, but you're getting out of the trade. You have a risk management plan. So the risk is that the stock can drop on you. That's just the risk you take with any investment. So let's take a look at what are the probabilities here of the option being profitable for you. Now I'm going to compare it to a out of the money call option here. And so I've got two things to do. I want to go over this call option purchase, this out of the money call option purchase and the probability. So let me show you that. Let me show you the probability calculator right here. Here's what we're going to do. The probability calculator tells us what are the chances of the stock moving from point A to point B. Now, in the case of buying the shares of stock, I've got Apple up here. We put in the current prices of Apple $139. We have our expiration date of, let's say, what was the, we want July, right? July, was it 16th or so? July 16th, 2021. And we're going to, so 174 days and the future volatility of Apple that I checked at ivolatility.com. I've always mentioned ivolatility.com is about 40%. So we want to know what the chances are of Apple going from $139 and above $139 is our targets. Now, when you buy a stock, the chances of you making money are 50-50, right? You know, you buy in at $139. The next tick's either going to be above $139 or below $139. So you never have more than a 50% chance of making money by buying a stock. That's the best you'll ever get. So let's take a look, see what our chances are of Apple going from $139 to $141 in 174 days, okay? So, Apple's at $139. We want to know the chances of Apple in the next six months. What are the chances of Apple going up a measly $2 in the next six months? So we click on Go, and the probability calculator will tell us, here's the box we want to look at. Finishing above the highest heart, we want Apple to finish above $141. Well, that gives us practically a 48% chance of Apple going above $141 by expiration. So it's almost has the same chance as the stock itself. So the deep in the money call option is really a proxy or a substitute for buying the stock itself. It has almost the same 50% chance of getting to the break-even price. That's a great deal. So you have almost the same probabilities to the stock. You've got 70% less money on the line. You got a chance to triple your returns. Look at folks, buying deep in the money call option versus buying the stock, it's a no-brainer to me. You're getting all these benefits, okay? And you have so much less money at risk. Going back to our cheat sheet here, the risks is you can lose money if the stock drops. The other risk, and I don't even call this a risk, is that as an option buyer, as an option holder, call option buyer, you don't get to receive the dividends that the stock pays and you don't have any voting rights to vote your shares on how management runs the company. Now, is that enough for you not to buy the call options? That's up to you to decide. It doesn't matter to me. I'd rather have so much money, so much less money at risk, have a better return on my investment than getting the dividends. That's just me personally. Now, let's take a look. So most people think, well, buying deep in the money options, that's a lot of money. I mean, I have to spend $4,100 to buy these call options, why can't I just buy a $200 call option that'll only cost me $220? Where am I coming up with this information? Let's take a look at back at the option chain for Apple. If you go all the way up to the 200, and let me move myself out of the way here, if you go up to the 200 call option right here, that's gonna cost you roughly $225 total to buy it. That's $2.20 per contract. Times that by 100, you have a $220 outlay of cash, right? $220 for that call option. Apple's had $139 a share. You're buying a $200 strike call option all the way up here. How do you know Apple's gonna get all the way up to $200? Basically what you're doing is when you buy that $200 out of the money strike call option, you're essentially saying, I know Apple's going to go from $139 up to $200 in the next six months. Now it may do that, it may not, you never know. But what's the probability of that happening? Apple has to go up another, has to go up $61 per share, $61 per share before you even make any money if you hold that option to expiration. Let's say Apple goes from $139 all the way up to $199 in the next six months. Well, if you bought that $200 strike call option, you're gonna lose your money because Apple has to go above $200 in order to make money. Now, if you bought the deep in the money call option and Apple goes up to $200, you're making money. We already saw that in our sheet here. If Apple goes up to $200 a share, the deep in the money call option is gonna make $5,900. If you bought that $200 call option, you're not gonna make any money because Apple has to go above $200. So you've just lost all that appreciation from $139 up to $199, that's $60 of appreciation. That $200 call option, it's gonna expire worthless. You're not gonna make any money on it and everybody else participated in that nice $60 move. So that's one of the reasons why I don't like buying out-of-the-money call options because I don't know where the stock is going in that amount of time. I'd rather buy the deep in the money call option that acts just like the stock. So if the stock goes up, the deep in the money call option value goes up. So that's what you want. Yes, the deep in the money call option costs more dollars than an out-of-the-money call option. But that's the trade-off. That's the trade-off. I mean, when you're buying a $200 out-of-the-money call option, you're just speculating. You're hoping, you're thinking that Apple's gonna rise $60. But that's up to you. And what would be the probability? Let's just say Apple's at 139 and we wanna know what are the chances of it getting up above 202 because that's your break-even price on Apple. 202 in the next 174 days, click on Go. You only have an 8.8% chance of Apple getting above $202 in the next 174 days. It's a pretty low chance. That's not for me. I'd rather have my 48% chance or whatever it was that Apple can go up above my break-even price of $141. So buying those out-of-the-money call options, even though they cost a lot less, and that's what most people default to because they just don't know, is that you're not gonna get a lot of, you're gonna have a very small probability. Apple has to go up $60 a share in order for you to make money in the end if you hold that option to expiration. Okay, so that's critical right there. So make sure you understand that. So there you go. There's the reasons and the benefits for buying deep-in-the-money call options versus buying the stock itself. So the next time you're interested in buying shares of stock, at least 100 shares of stock, consider a deep-in-the-money call option. Just remember, if you're looking for that call option, look for the 90% delta and make sure you buy between the bid and ask spread and figure out what your break-even price would be. You wanna break-even price that's somewhat close to the current price of the stock. In this example, Apple's at 139, our break-even price would be 141. So that's only a $2 per share difference. You know Apple could move $2 in the next 174 days. So check your break-evens, check the deltas, and make sure you get in between the bid and ask price. And that's all you gotta do. It's a no-brainer, it's a no-brainer for me. Okay, everybody, that's your lesson today on buying deep-in-the-money call options. Let's move on to our Saturday synopsis where we take a look at the charts, we take a look at the indexes, we look at some individual stocks to see what's happened over the last week and see what may be coming ahead. We always, always, always start by looking at the SPY, the exchange-traded fund for the S&P 500. What's happened over the last week? Here, let's blow this up a little bit so we can get a little clearer image. SPY, I keep these patterns on the charts here over these weeks so everyone could see what we've done, what we've looked at, and you can see how history has presented itself. We know the market's been going up. We know the market has been going up since the coronavirus back last March, okay? Here's the bottom last March, the market's just been going up. And we've been talking about this nice W bullish pattern, we have the congestion pattern and the S&P 500's just been going up. It's been hugging along the uptrending, 20-day moving average. And we also have an uptrending 50-day. These are simple moving averages. People have asked me, do I use exponential or simple moving averages? These are all simple moving averages and we have our simple 200-day moving average. Everything's up-sloping, very important. If you wanna find bullish momentum stocks, you wanna make sure the moving averages are up-sloping and you can see how the S&P 500 has just been hugging the 20-day moving average. So this one right here, this bar right here, each bar is one day's worth of trading was the 15th. So last Friday, it had bounced right off the 20-day moving average and we talked about this last Saturday that this could be our next bounce right here. So what happened? Here's our whole week's worth of trading right here. The market went up again, making all-time new highs again on the S&P 500. What's gonna happen next week? Well, I mean, things still look bullish. There's really no reason why things should not be bullish. We have a new president here in the United States. Joe Biden went through the inauguration this week, so he is officially the new president. Coronavirus vaccines are being rolled out a little slower than we had hoped, but they're still being rolled out. The US government's trying to pass another stimulus package of $1.9 trillion. I mean, these things are working for the bullish side of the market. And where else are you gonna get a return on your money? Nowhere else, the Federal Reserve is keeping interest rates practically zero, so you're not gonna get any money by keeping your money in the bank or investing in CDs or Treasury bonds, Treasury bills, whatever, the stock market's where it's at. And companies are doing okay. Companies are doing okay. The companies that are in the stock market are doing well. So that just means we've got bullish momentum. And until I see otherwise, I'm bullish, I am bullish here. So I think next week, we could always get a pullback. We can wait for the 20-day moving average to move up. The market could pull back until they meet again, just like it met here and here and here and here. And if you're looking for an entry, maybe you wait for the next pullback. That's just how you can time your entries. Let's take a look at the NASDAQ. Let's take a look at the NASDAQ. Same thing. Let's blow this up a little bit. Look at this bounce. Last Friday just came very close to the 20-day moving average and here's our whole week's worth of trading right here. More all-time new highs. Powered higher. Powered higher this week. NASDAQ is basically unstoppable. Let's take a look at a monthly chart just so you can see where the NASDAQ's going. Look at this. Look at this nice move. I mean, this is just getting crazy. Keeps going up. But people ask me all the time, well, what happens when the market crashes? What are we gonna do? Can we take advantage of a downturn? And well, why are you waiting for a downturn? I mean, the market's just been going up, up, up, up. If it wasn't for the coronavirus, we wouldn't have had this little down move and look how short it was. It did even last that long. The market's a very optimistic place. And I would think that anytime we get any kind of pullbacks or decent pullbacks, you may, that's more of a buying opportunity for me. People are always talking about the next bear market, the next bear market. Well, here was your bear market. Did you get in? Did you buy at the bottom or were you too scared? You know, the market gives you opportunities, but when things look very bleak, most people just figure, I don't want to get in. I'm just gonna wait until it bottoms out and then I'll get in. Well, did you hit the bottom? Did you buy? Well, now people start talking. Well, I'm just gonna wait for the next pullback. Well, it keeps going up. Well, I'm just gonna wait for the next pullback and it keeps going up. Well, are you in or out? So I'm just telling you, the market goes up over time. That's just how it is. Wait for a pullback. And when the pullback comes, don't think that it's the beginning of the next bear market because people always say that, oh, here comes the bear market. Well, you know, if you thought this was the bear market right here and you're thinking, okay, the market's come down. I'm getting out. Well, it started to go back up. Here is your another opportunity right here to get in. No, no, no, it's going down. This is gonna be the big one. Well, it just went back up again. So you gotta have faith. That's all I'm saying. You gotta have faith in the market. Let's take a look at the Dow Jones. Same thing. Dow Jones hitting all-time new highs this week, hugging along the 20-day moving average. When markets are in a very good, bullish trend, they will either pull back to the 20-day or the 50-day moving average because those are very widely followed moving averages and people are making the same trades. Okay, so if the market's pulling back to the 20-day moving average, you're gonna find a lot of support there. And the next line in the sand would be the 50-day, but since stocks are so strongly uptrending, the 20-day moving average has been the nice, has been the support line. So that's what I'm seeing. The market, there's really nothing to pull this market down. We have earning season coming up. We're actually right in the middle of earning season, I should say the beginning of this month, this round of earning season. So we'll have a lot of companies reporting in the next four to six weeks. So we'll see what happens. If these companies did well, met expectations and put out good expectations and moving forward, this market's just gonna keep going up people. So be ready, be prepared. If you have some stocks on your list that you may be thinking about getting in, think about the lesson we just had about deep in the money call options. So the market looks strong here, bouncing off the 20-day moving average. The only thing I can see is it continuing to go up over time. Let's take a look at some individual stocks. We look at Apple, we always look at Apple. That's a favorite. And just to let everybody know, I'm Long Apple, so I'm hoping that Apple goes up. And Apple, on Friday, yesterday, January 22nd, 2021, hit all-time new highs. All-time new highs for Apple. Let's take a look, go out to the monthly chart. Here you go. Look how beautiful. Any long-term Apple holders are very, very happy right now. Okay, so what else am I seeing? Well, we had the congestion pattern. Apple finally broke out, had some pullbacks here, pullbacks here, had this nice congestion area, gave everybody a lot of opportunity to get into Apple. And then just yesterday, Thursday, and Friday, now made all-time new highs. Apple looks good. Apple has earnings coming out next week, I think on the 26th. So watch out for that, 26th or 27th of January. Watch for Apple earnings. Looks good, unless they really blow it, the only thing I can see is Apple keep going higher. Let's take a look at Tesla. Everybody's favorite Tesla. And what do we see here? Blow this up a little, pull this down. We had the congestion pattern. Last time, if you had the real opportunity to get in was $400 a share, just went ballistic. Everybody knows, 400, it's already doubled, more than doubled in price. $846, it closed on yesterday, Friday, January 22nd, 2021. What am I seeing here? Nice congestion pattern, people. If you're thinking about possibly getting into Tesla, it's giving you a opportunity. You know, I'm not gonna say to get long or short here. Tesla has earnings coming out this week as well. I think it's the 27th or 26th of January. So early on next week. Let's draw a little pattern here so everyone can see what I'm talking about. We got the triangle congestion pattern, right? Now let me edit this a little bit so you can see it better, change the color, change the width and do it for this one as well. Got some manual labor here. All right, so now you can see congestion pattern. Same as here, just a lot smaller, but Tesla will break out higher or lower. Tesla is going to blast higher or lower from this. It's storing up all this energy. Once those earnings come out next week, it's gonna rock it. It's gonna go up, you know, probably at least $100 a share higher or $100 a share lower. There's a, I mean, this thing's just been going up crazy. So watch this pattern sometime in the middle next week. You're gonna see Tesla trading up here or down here. Where am I slanted to? There's a lot of blows momentum behind Tesla. If they come out with earnings that meet expectations and they give good guidance going forward, it's gonna go ballistic. It's $1,000 a share is the next stop. If earnings are bad, if they didn't meet expectations and they're kind of, you know, iffy on future expectations, it's gonna drop big. So keep an eye on this. People will ask me, what can I do if I want to play both sides of the market? Well, straddles. Straddles are an option strategy where you buy both a call option and a put option at the same time. So no matter where it goes, there's potential to make money, but it has to move big. So we're not talking about straddles today. Maybe I'll talk about that in a future video. So anyway, Tesla, you know, this week, it's gonna blast either way. So keep an eye on Tesla. What else are we looking at? Microsoft is another one that we look at quite a bit. It had a good move this week. Had a pretty good move right here. So it's getting close to the top of this channel here. So keep an eye on Microsoft still staying within that range. What else do we see? What other stocks are we like? Intel had a pretty good move this week until once again, it had its earnings come out the other day and it got knocked back down. It was up here and then all of a sudden earnings came out, so it's come back down. Still well below the lows here until I don't really have anything exciting to say about them. What else do we look at? AMD is a stock we always look at as well. AMD, AMD, let's pull this down a little. Let's open this up, pull this down a little. It had this nice W pattern and now it's still kind of just congestion. It couldn't make the move to keep going higher but it bounced off the 50-day moving average here at the end of last week and it's finishing right near the resistance line. So keep an eye on AMD. They also have earnings coming out very soon. What other stocks do we like to look at? Oh, Amazon, Amazon's another one. Amazon, we've got the congestion pattern within this broader channel. Amazon, bounce from the lows of the up-trending line to the highs of the down-trending line. So it's moving from bottom to top. Will it get knocked back down again? We'll see. Or will it continue to go up through the triangle congestion pattern? Next week should be very telling. It's either gonna go up or it's gonna come back down to this lower line. Any other stocks that we like? Nike is another stock we like to look at. Nike had a nice run through this congestion pattern all the way up here. Was hugging the 20-day moving average, kind of fallen below it. You got the 50-day moving average right here waiting to catch it. Will Nike continue to go up? If you're looking to get long Nike, wait to see if there's any kind of bounce. If it drops below the 50-day moving average, we'll probably take it off the table. But if it bounces, the momentum is going to continue. So these are the kind of patterns you wanna look for. All right, so video. Once again, getting long. We're getting over 43 minutes here. Let's take a look quickly one more time. SPY market just continues to look strong. I really don't see anything in its way. We may have a pullback here. May come back to the 20-day moving average, but that could be the next buy point. So market looks good. Earnings are coming out. We got the coronavirus vaccine moving forward. Stimulus package in the US. So things are looking good. All right, so that's it for the assessment of what's happening. Let's once again go over to our website. Let me just show you a couple of things here. The deep in the money call options that we've been talking about. I wrote a three-year study on doing that with Warren Buffett, our friend Warren Buffett, to see how buying a deep in the money call option would work with following Warren Buffett. And if you have an interest in seeing what I wrote, you can click on the link. You go to our website, smartoptionsell.com, and click on the shop link. And I've got this report about how deep in the money calls work with Warren Buffett. We have our put-selling basics. Okay, don't forget, we're all about selling put options here. That's what we do. And if you want a free copy, put-selling basics. Just put in your name and email. We'll send you a free copy. And lastly, our services tab. This is what we do at Smart Option Sell. We have two newsletters. We sell Naked Puts, Smart Option Seller newsletter, and we sell vertical put option credit spreads in our vertical spread trader newsletter. And of course, we have our great one-on-one coaching. If anyone needs help, wants to take their game, their trading game to the next level, we can help you get there. All right, that's it for me today. This is Lilo, and I hope everyone has a great weekend. I will see you next Saturday.