Don't Get Blindsided: Use Options Launchpad for Better Risk Management

Good evening, VV Nation. This is Ron Wheeler, manager of options trading, and it's my pleasure to bring you tonight's special presentation, Launch Your Next Options Trade. And furthering that, I'm even more excited to show you our new options analysis software, Options Launchpad. And this is by far the most exciting thing I've done here at Vectorve Vest in the last 11 years because we are truly with Options Launchpad bringing options trading to everyone. It doesn't matter if you're a beginner, it doesn't matter if you're more advanced. This software will allow you to quickly analyze an options trade, setting you up for the best possible performance. But instead of just describing it to you, I want to show it to you tonight. So, let's take a dive into options and let's take a dive into how Options Launchpad is going to catapult you into being a proficient options trader. Before I jump into the software and the analysis, I want to set kind of a a baseline here for Vectorve Vest and what we think about options. We think that every investor should be using options as a strategic part of their overall investment plan. And it does not have to be complex. You can make this very very simple. And remember the fifth secret to making money with Vectorve Vest is to learn how to trade options. And the reason why we say that is because we can use options for both leverage. Maybe you have a really expensive stock that you don't want to commit the capital to, but you want to take part in the movement. Or maybe, you know, you're getting to the point and we're getting to the point where there's a confirmed down call or your stocks are starting to turn against you and you want a way to protect that position just in case the market or the stock drops even more. Or maybe you just want to add some income to your portfolio. So, we're going to discuss the basic options trades that all investors should know. and you'll see how our new options launchpad is going to make using options so easy for everyone regardless of your experience level. So, I want to start off with the most basic options trades, the long call and the long put. This is something you're going to use where if you think a stock is going to go up in price or for the put, if you think it's going to go down in price, you want to take advantage of that move, but you want to limit your risk. That way, in case the stock has a catastrophic move against you, you only have a limited defined risk. And you want a way to leverage your money. So, you don't have to buy a hundred shares of a $1,000 stock or a 100 shares of a $500 stock. You just want to make this as simple as possible. So, let's start off with VectorVest and let's take a look at some stocks. So, I'm going to start at the Vectorve Vest homepage and we can kind of see that as of today, September 25th. Right now, we are in kind of a confirmed downtrend. The market's been kind of ugly. But, you know what? Let's just set that aside for a minute. I'm going to go over to my viewers. We're going to go to the stock viewer. And as you know, when I go into the stock viewer, it's going to look at stocks that are top VST stocks. So, even though we're in a down sequence right now, these are some very good stocks that, you know, hey, even in a downtrend, maybe you want to take advantage of these for some reason. So, let's do this. Let's take the first 20 stocks. So, we'll go the first 20. Now, there's a new button up here called Options Launchpad. Now, I'm just going to click the Options Launchpad button. And in the Options Launchpad, I'm going to say I want to select the top 20 stocks. And I want to look for some bullish positions on these things. So let's just go ahead and go to analyze. Options launchpad appears. And now very very quickly on the right hand side you will see some optimal options trades for these stocks. So starting on the left we have Valero Energy. Valero has been a great stock. You can actually see it right here in the graph in options launchpad. You can even see the underlying fundamentals. The VST is very strong. Fantastic. RS RT is great. Earnings per share rising. Now, you want to create an options trade for this. Well, what is the best options trade right now for Valero? Now, over to the right, you're going to see the trade trade portion of Options Launchpad, and it's going to lay out for you three independent trades. The first trade is we just buy a 100 shares of Valero. That's going to cost me $37,388 with a potential profit. Now, the potential profit is based on if the stock goes to $465 a share by December 18th. So, that's the objective. If that happens, we're going to make $9,161 on the position for a return of about 24%. Not bad. Now, if we go over to the next one, this is buying a December 18th, 2026 350 call. Now, for those of you that are easy on the option side, well, Ron, how do I know to buy the 350? How do I know I go to December? Because this is the most optimal options trade based on how we trade options here at VectorVest. We'll talk a little bit about that as we continue the presentation. Based on that, it's choosing this option for you. It's going to say, "This trade is going to cost me $5,290." Look at the significant difference in outlay of that trade. My profit, if it does that, is going to be $6,259 or a $118% return. Well, guess what? That's much better than simply just buying the stock. There you go. There's the leverage of that position. Now, unfortunately, there's an options play score, or I should say fortunately. Unfortunately, the options play score gives us a little bit of information here. The options play score ranks a trade from zero all the way up to over 200. Now, optimally, we would like to see the options play score over 100. In a perfect world, over 100. Optimally, anything over 90 is good. And the reason why this is coming in very, very low right now for Valero, there's a couple of reasons. Number one, look at the profit and look at the return. Now, you might look at that return and say, "Hey, that's not bad, right? I'm still making 118%." But that is not good enough for an options trade. This trade has a little bit too much risk and not enough reward. That's telling you right there that buying a call right now on Valero is not a good idea. And if you want to dig a little bit deeper into why it's not a good idea, over on the left hand side, you're going to see what's called the IV rank. Now, implied volatility or IV can tell you if an option is too expensive. If options are too expensive and they have very high IV ranks, that can give us a very, very poor options performance. So, the fact that this has a very high IV ranking, this trade might not be the right one to make right now. And you could see it in the low options play score and in the poor performance of the return. Now, if I move over to the right, this is a bull call vertical spread that expires in November. And again, why November? because it's using pre-esigned and pre-inputed factors into when the expiration should be and what options we should be trading. Now, this one has an options place score of 95. Okay, we're we have a $1,600 trade cost. The profit of 2335 if it hits that 6465 price by December 18th. And in this case, we could actually move that expiration down since it's November. Even so, still the same thing. We're going to make the same amount when that option expires in November, but that has a 140% return. That would be the best options play for this particular stock. So, right away, you can see how the trades are laid out for you. So, for Valero, I would recommend if you're comfortable with it, we would do the vertical spread. Now, if you're not comfortable with the vertical spread and you need to know a little bit more information about it, well, down at the bottom, I can simply scroll over and I can have that trade explained to me in plain English. This is a bullish strategy with a limited risk of 1665 and a limited potential reward of 2335. This strategy will profit if the stock closes above 38665 by November 20th, 2026. And there is a 39% probability that this will happen. Now, what if I wanted to take this to my broker? What do I do? Well, if I hit the trade button, it'll tell you exactly what to do. We're going to buy to open one November 20th 370 call. The premium is $35. We're going to sell to open in one transaction, the November 20th 410 strike at 1910. We're going to aim to get into that trade at $16.65. It is 56 days to expiration. And you can see a couple of warnings down here. Number one, the stock trend you've chosen is bullish. However, you're going against the trend of the market. That is true as we saw on the homepage, right? The market strategy, okay, is bullish. So, the stock is bullish. The options play score is 95. So, it's good. It's not the greatest, but it is good. And it also lets you know that there is an earnings call on October 22nd, which is prior to the expiration date of the trade. So keep that in mind. Now, if we like that trade, there you go. If you're not comfortable doing a spread, well, right now, you're better off buying the shares of Valero as opposed to just buying a call. Now, if I go a little bit further down the list. Now, let's do one more thing here. One of the things that you can see in the list of the stocks, there's a little uh raindrop, if you will. That raindrop can be full like you see on Valero and that means that the options are very liquid. If you see that drop kind of going lower like on ring you can see if I click on that that means the liquidity or the options liquidity is somewhat liquid. So let's do this. Let's rank the options by how liquid they are. So let's go to liquidity. And with the liquidity let's take a look at some of the highly liquid options but maybe a little bit lower on the IV ranking side. So let's take a look at Celestica. Now Celestica based on the IV rank may be a good option to buy. Well again we can very much see here if we buy the shares we have an 87 options play score. Now for buying the stock or even buying a call 80s are not bad. I still like to see things above 90 if I can get it. For spreads I like to see it over 100. But anything in the 80s is good. Over 90 is better. But even when we look at CLS, buying the shares is much better than simply buying the option. Your risk is way too much for the potential reward. Hence the low options play score. Now, same thing with the vertical spread we see over here on the right. That has a much better score because you're getting 164% potential return on this trade. So, even though the IV rank is low, this is still not a suitable option to purchase. That's it. That's all you need to know. There's no second-guing it. There's no, "But what about this or what about this or what about that expiration?" It's over. Do not buy a call on CLS. If you're uncomfortable doing a spread, then you should not trade an option on CLS. You are better off buying the stock. How about Marll? Marll gets us into the 74. So again, not great. 135% return. Eh, it's okay. But again, the beauty of options is the leverage. I should be getting a much higher return, and I'm not. Take a look at the vertical spread. 170% return. If you're not comfortable doing the spread, then you should just simply buy the stock. If I scroll down a little bit more, here's one on Augo, also very low, but it has low liquidity, but I wanted to show you guys an example of this one is an options play score of 80. So, it's it's kind of at the bottom end of acceptable, but take a look. The return on that options 145%. That's getting into the bare minimums of what I would call acceptable for buying a call. So, this one could be a call that we buy. The spread, take a look at a little bit better. You are getting a little bit more return, but the trade cost is a lot less. It's only going to cost you $600 for an $8.95 return versus an $1,100 outlay for a $1,700. That's why this has a little bit better options play score because you're spending less money to do that trade. So, this would be a trade right here. And if I hit trade, well, the options play score of 80 is good. Good. It's good. It's not great, but it's good. This is one that I might take a chance on. Now, the liquidity is a little bit low, so it might be harder to get into that trade, but that is an example of a trade that I would potentially buy a call on. So, we talked about calls. Well, right now, the market's in a downtrend. So, let's take a look at puts. The market's going down. Maybe you're in an IRA or 401k where you can't short stocks, but you can buy puts. Let's take an example of a put. All right, so let's go back to VectorVest. And in this example, I'm going to go to the unis search, and I've chosen just a basic uh shorting scan. I went into the folder, searches short, and I just said stocks to sell short. Find stocks over $10. Now, I did make one little adjustment here. I did make it over 50. I want to deal with some more expensive stocks, but you can keep it at 10. That's fine, too. with well below average safety and below average price appreciation. This sort will bring the lowest VST stocks. This is a shorting search. So now we've got a list of stocks. I'm going to go ahead and hit options launchpad. But now I'm going to have it bring all of them over. There's only 14. And I'm going to choose bearish. We'll go ahead and analyze the options. Now some of those stocks that you guys can see here are nonoptionable. So like uh this one here, I could just hit the X and take that out of the list if I want to. Same with Monopart Therapeutics and even Hovindian Enterprises. But we've got a list of stocks, okay, ranked in here. We've got Fovial SA and you can see there's no optimal options trades for these at the time. So, we go to the next one, iron. All right, take a look at that. Buying a December 18th, 2026 $80 put. Look at the options play score on that. If you're comfortable buying a put, that's your trade right there. The cost of the trade 2100, profit 22.91, 106% return, 84 days to expiration. Probability of profits in this trade, it's 51%. While the return is not nice, this one does have a high probability of working. And that's one of the things that the options play score does take into account. It's not necessarily just the risk on the trade. It's also how probable are you to being profitable. So that's an example of an $80 put that we could trade. Over here we've got the November 20th 7050 put vertical. So again, now we've got an options place score of 140 with a 156% return and a $1,200 profit. So both of those trades actually work out pretty well. Even though the returns a little bit lower, the percentage of profitability on this one is very, very high. And we can keep going right down the list. Knife River Corp. Are there any trades on it? Yes. The put vertical good return 144% $465 trade cost $671 profit. This has a good options play score at 100. Doing the vertical spread actually is not quite as good. Go figure. Buying the stock is okay. But this is it. This is the analysis. You're done. Hit trade. It tells you what to do. Go out there, buy a November 20th $55 put. It should cost you $4.65. Hey, and you're done. That's your options trade. It's as simple as that. How about Flutter Entertainment? Okay, there we go. A put looks pretty good, 118%. But the probability of profitability is 44%. Pretty good. And you are good to go. Now, one more thing while I'm doing this on the bearish side, and this applies to the bullish side as well. Let's say, you know what, I'm a more advanced options trader, Ron, I want to do something different. I want to do a more advanced strategy. Great. No issues with that. If you click on one of the trades and I click modify, you'll notice that there is a strategy dropdown. And within that strategy dropdown, there are a ton of trades that you can do. We're focusing on the basic ones right now, but these are all of the strategies that you can choose. So maybe you're a credit spread person. I am I can do a short call vertical or the bare call spread and I can set that trade up. So options launchpad has you covered no matter what from simple good options play score, buy a put stock going down, do a vertical spread when the stock's going up based on the options play score, it's got you covered. It's very very easy to use. All right, so let's switch some gears here and let's take a look at Options Launchpad from the next perspective. So let's say you have a portfolio of stocks and you're looking to create some extra income. Well, one of the things that we believe all investors should do is called a covered call. And a covered call, essentially you're selling the right to buy your stock at a future price. And the goal is to put that price out there far enough where you have a very high percentage of keeping the premium. So, let me explain how this works. I'm gonna go back into Vectorvest. I'm going to go to my portfolios tab. So, let's go back to Vectorve Vest again. Let's click on the portfolios tab. And this is a portfolio I put together a while back. This is ruler stocks. And this is a list of stock positions that I have in that portfolio. Now, to do a covered call, you have to own at least 100 shares of stock. So, out of my portfolio, I've got Amphanol at 300, I've got Pneumont at 200, and I've got Nvidia at 100. So, I'm going to take those stocks. I'm going to hold the control key down. I'm going to click on Amphanol, Pneumont, and then Nvidia. I'm going to rightclick on those, and I'm going to select options Launchpad. It's going to bring up my window again. This time I'm going to choose income and select analyze options. Now over to the right as the trades build you're going to see a list of income prodducing trades. So on Amphenol right here is a November 20th, 2026 $95 covered call. That's it. That's the covered call. How is that the covered call? Because when I do a covered call, I'm looking for a specific expiration. The November happens to be the expiration I'm looking for. I'm looking for a certain percentage return and I'm looking for a certain percentage that that trade will expire being worthless. So, all of that can be seen if I just look on my strategy area. I'm going to sell one November 20th $95 covered call. If I click down here, it's going to tell me this trade has a probability of expiring worthless at 77%. So 77% of the time this trade will expire worthless. And here's the kicker. If it does, I'm going to collect $258 per contract. Now if I click modify and if you remember on amphenol I had okay 300 shares. So I can click one two three I'm going to collect $774 on this trade as long as it expires worthless and there's a 77% chance that'll happen. That gives me a return of 3% of my position. I'm going to make an additional 3% if this actually occurs. that returns to a yearly of 20%. And that's it. That's the trade. You can see right away we have a 111 options play score. That's what I would want to do. It's very simple. Now, if you're wondering about this trade over on the left, this is what you would do if you bought the stock and you sold the option. It's called a buy rate. That's another way to produce income. But that's if you buy the stock and do the option at the same time. Right now, we're just talking about stocks we already own. There you go. the $95 covered call. I want to have at least a 70% chance of that thing expiring worthless. I want to make sure the yield is at least about 1% a year. And guess what? It found it. What about pneumont I've got a November 20th 140 covered call. Really good options play score. Take a look at the interior. 2.2% 2% return, 15% a year. Probability of expiring worthless, 82%. That's it. That's the trade. That's all you have to do. Click on trade. It's going to tell you what to do. You're going to sell to open one NEM November 20th 140 covered call at 271. Okay, that's it. That is the proper covered call. There's no whatifs. There's no but what about. It's set up to design and give you the best trade available. What about Nvidia? Same thing with Nvidia, right? 111 options play score. Really, really good. Sell a November 250 covered call. Take a look. 460% 2% raw return on that. And what that means is, let's say you have a $100 stock. The option premium is $2. You're going to collect 200 bucks. It's a 2% yield or a 2% return annually. That advertises out to 13% based on the days to expiration at 56. you are done. That's the trade to take. It's as simple as that. There's no going through an options chain. There's no doing the math to make sure the return is right. It's designed to get you the trade as quick as possible. That's the beauty of Options Launchpad. We want to bring options to everyone because remember the fifth secret is learn to trade options. Leverage. Put that money in your pocket. Create that income. Now, speaking of learn to trade options, let's talk about the last thing, preserve. So, when we say preserve, preserve is all about protecting your portfolio, protecting the stocks that you already own. So, let's go back over to VectorVest. And again, these are the stocks that I own. And again, when you do option protection, you're generally going to need to have a 100 shares. Now, you could buy a put on a stock that you own less than 100 shares on. You'll just be what we call overprotected, if you will. So the last bastion is buying puts on stocks that you own can help protect you during market pullbacks, protect you from things like earnings. With a protective put, you're guaranteeing a sell price on your stock no matter what the market does. So let's take those options or let's take those stocks. We'll use the same ones, Amphanol, Pneumont, and Nvidia. Let's go ahead and rightclick on those again. I'm going to click on options launchpad. And instead of doing bullish, bearish or income, let's choose protection and let's analyze the options. Now again, as the trades are building over to the right, it's going to give you three examples of protective measures you can take on the stock. So the first one is a protective put. Okay? Now, the protective put is essentially this. You are going to buy a put on the stock. Typically, these are done at the money. Typically, these are going to give you the maximum protection. This is like, uhoh, I better protect this thing because the market's headed down majorly. So, if I had Amphanol, I go out there and again, I have 300 shares of Amphanol. So, I would go out there and buy instead of one, I would just buy three puts. Now, again, you don't have to look at anything. You can look at the deltas under here and you want to you can look at the different expirations. Don't get me wrong, but the trade is set up for you properly to profit from this position. Okay? If I do a put and the stock were to drop, let's say to, and I'll expand this out. Let's say the stock were to drop down to $75. I'm going to make $1,500 on my hedge. That's going to offset any loss that the stock would take. Okay? So, we can combine that into the position that you already have. Now, another trade that I really like because the downside of buying a put is it does cost you a little bit of money. It's going to cost me $2,200. Now, the options play score on that trade is perfectly fine because it's a protective put, right? So, the options play score is fine. Do it. If you are worried about your stock, buy a put, protect it. I, on the other hand, like to do what's called the collar trade. The collar trade is where you go ahead and you still buy a put. We're going to buy a $70 put on amphidol, but then we're going to sell a $100 call. How do I know that? What? How do I know that's what I'm going to do? Well, remember if you click on trade, it tells you what to do. You're going to buy a November $70 put. You're going to sell a $100 call. Tells you. Now, the beauty of this is that trade only cost me $48. 48 bucks. That's it. That's it. It's a beautiful thing. Much much cheaper than buying a put. Now, there's downsides to it. The downside is it does cap you if the stock goes back up. But that's far enough out there where generally speaking that put that call's probably going to expire. Now, remember, if you're having trouble with the trade, you could also, of course, go to plain English and it tells you everything that you need to know about it. bullish strategy, limited risk potential. Okay, so with this trade and if I do this on three, I'm going to show you how this works. Three contracts, the absolute worst that can happen is that I can lose $4,100 on that stock. Now, that seems like a lot, right? You can lose $4,000. But think if Amphanol dropped to $50 a share, right? I own this stock for $80. I have technically an unlimited loss down to zero. This protects that trade a little bit more. Now, remember, this is a starting point. You don't have to necessarily buy a $70 put. If I modify that and say, you know what, maybe I'm willing to pay a little bit more. I can move that up a little bit. And it might also move this up a little bit for you, too. It's going to allow you to modify the trade. And then from there, we can kind of take a look at what the expectation is. Now, I reduced it down to about $3,700. No matter what the stock does, it limits my exposure to a $3,700 loss. That loss is locked in for a very, very small cost of only $150. That's it. So, that trade can be modified somewhat as well. Now, the last thing that we see on the protection side of this, it's just a covered call, right? Very similar to what we did in income. And the way I look at these trades is this. I look at these as kind of like your three uh oh settings, right? This is kind of like the the the long put. Uh oh, I really got to do something here because the market's falling apart and I still want to keep this stock. Maybe it's a good dividend stock, right? I want to keep that stock. I got to take max protection. Confirmed call down. Terrible news in the economy. Everything's falling apart. This is kind of like, yes, but I also don't want to spend a lot of money doing it, right? I like the collar. The collar is a cheap trade. It's my favorite, honestly. And then the last one is just to sell a call. Like I said, very similar to what we did for income. You can use the call as kind of your starting approach to protection. Sell a call against a stock that's falling. At least you'll generate some premium off that thing. It's the very least you can do. It's also going to pay you, which is very, very nice. So, very good scenarios here for this particular trade. So, like I said, um, doesn't really matter ultimately the trade you put in there. It's going to come out there, give you the stocks, give you the trades that you need to know, and it will automatically find the best opportunities. That really is the power of Options Launchpad. You don't have to go through a option chain. You don't have to guess which options to use, guess which options to sell. It's all right there for you, programmed to the most optimal setting, backed up by the options play score, which will tell you if it's a good trade. So, to kind of wrap it up, using Options Launchpad can take any investor, no matter what your experience level is with options, and it helps you identify the best trades in just seconds. You don't have to search for it. It's right there. So whether you're looking to profit, provide, or protect, any of these trades are easy with Options Launchpad. So we're launching Options Launchpad, and we got a special promotion for you if you're interested. If you sign up for Options Launchpad on a one-year subscription, we are going to include the Options Jumpstarter course. Now, this is all new and updated for for 2026. It starts October 6. It is a live course. Um, you can also watch the recordings as well if you can't view the live curriculum, but we're going to include that in the options launchpad subscription. So, as you were watching the course or the demonstration, you may say, "Well, Ron, that's great. I found the trade. Now, what do I do with it?" Well, the options jumpstarter, we're going to help you know what to do with that trade and how to manage it appropriately. Also, we're offering a 60-day money back guarantee if you order by October 6, 2026. Now, the options launchpad, if you order it again before October 6, 2026, it is 6.45. That is a one-year subscription to the software, that includes the options jumpstarter. And again, if you order by this date, we will also throw in a 60-day money back guarantee. Try it out. We are willing to bet that you will find this is the solution for easily adding options into your portfolio. So, just go to vectorvest.comolp, get yourself signed up for it. We're really excited about it and I look forward to teaching you more in our options jumpstarter. So, I want to thank you for watching tonight's presentation. Wish you the best of success going forward and hope to see you soon in one of our options courses. Take care everyone. [music] >> [music] >> 2. [music] Yeah.