The difficulty in beating a market is that you must not only predict the future but you must predict it better than others. Until today I had never noticed the Iron Condor index CNDR. As shown below this index did quite well from the late 80s to about 2008. My guess is that this index of collecting option premiums did great in that time period because the option markets were not very efficient then and sellers had an advantage. Of course, overtime it is easy to lose an edge as more people discover it. I believe this is why this index has had a near zero return since 2008 and likely will have a long term near zero return going forward.
The other interesting thing is that even in the period that this index was doing very well the return was in the ballpark of the S&P 500 price return for much of the time as shown below.
Data like this is what makes it very difficult for me to trust youtubers like invest with henry that seem to present options strategies as a safe and easy way to make lots of money. IMHO that is a pipe dream.
Disclaimer
This is not investment advice. This website is designed to talk about investments but it is not designed to give you personalized investment advice. This site is generic and should not be used as the basis for any investment decisions. This is for entertainment and educational purposes only.
The owner of PatienceToInvest.com is also a trade leader on Collective2.com. We may receive compensation by promoting some collective2 strategies over others.
Investing is risky and can result in the loss of all your capital and even more than your original capital in some cases.
I recently had a discussion with someone on the Collective2 forums where they claimed they have never had a single losing month in their trading history. That smells like a lie to me. It certainly is possible but please point me in the direction of one person with a verified track record where they have had no losing months despite trading profitable for many years? To no one’s surprise the person was unwilling to prove it.
Something as blatant as saying you have had zero losing months is pretty easy to identify as a likely lie, but it is often easier to be swayed my less blatant lies like the idea that you can get a 30% annualized return and never have a drawdown of more than 15% etc. The best thing to do is ignore these claims and move on to more realistic possibilities.
This is not investment advice. This website is designed to talk about investments but it is not designed to give you personalized investment advice. This site is generic and should not be used as the basis for any investment decisions. This is for entertainment and educational purposes only.
The owner of PatienceToInvest.com is also a trade leader on Collective2.com. We may receive compensation by promoting some collective2 strategies over others.
Investing is risky and can result in the loss of all your capital and even more than your original capital in some cases.
I typically prefer to buy ETFs rather than options. I find the bid ask spread easier to manage and liquidity keeps things simple. However, I do occasionally worry that my broker will stop allowing certain ETFs I use in my IRA accounts because they generate K-1 forms. Fortunately, some of those ETFs such as VIXY can be replaced with VXX, which has no K-1 form. However, should my broker ban SVIX, I then need a new way to short vol inside my IRA accounts. I could of course switch brokers. For example in my HSA at Schwab and my IRAs at Interactive Brokers I am able to trade SVIX without a problem. Hopefully they wouldn’t both change policies at the same time.
Should they do so, I am also working out the intricacies of replacing SVIX with VXX put options. This doable in theory, but there are some intricacies that do need to be taken into account. This is why I started a new strategy at collective2 that simulates doing this. Trying this at C2 is a pretty conservative test because C2 always buys with market orders. Therefore all trades take place with buys at the ask and sells at the bid – except for if the leader is using broker transmit. This creates a pretty big drag on the strategy. Therefore, if I can successfully do this at C2 I feel confident I can do it with real money should the need arise.
This is not investment advice. This website is designed to talk about investments but it is not designed to give you personalized investment advice. This site is generic and should not be used as the basis for any investment decisions. This is for entertainment and educational purposes only.
The owner of PatienceToInvest.com is also a trade leader on Collective2.com. We may receive compensation by promoting some collective2 strategies over others.
Investing is risky and can result in the loss of all your capital and even more than your original capital in some cases.
Over the last week or so I have been modifying my crypto positions to keep similar amounts of exposure while freeing up some capital to fund my families HSA. Just yesterday the HSA funding arrived and I deployed it to my HSA strategy which included some GBTC. I’m glad I deployed it yesterday since GBTC happened to get some good news today. That is pure luck!
Disclaimer
This is not investment advice. This website is designed to talk about investments but it is not designed to give you personalized investment advice. This site is generic and should not be used as the basis for any investment decisions. This is for entertainment and educational purposes only.
The owner of PatienceToInvest.com is also a trade leader on Collective2.com. We may receive compensation by promoting some collective2 strategies over others.
Investing is risky and can result in the loss of all your capital and even more than your original capital in some cases.
I was recently caught up in videos by the world traveling, money is no issue, and ostensibly Tesla owning trading influencer Invest with Henry. In his videos he teaches his listeners how to make money trading options often inside his $2 million Robinhood account. If you watch enough of his videos (or similar influencers) you will see them mention covered calls as a way to earn reliable income. This is in my opinion bad advice. Let me give a quick example of why.
There are funds out there where you can pool your money together with other investors and sell thousands and thousands of covered calls on indexes such as the S&P 500 and Nasdaq 100. I often see these funds promoted because of their high dividend yield. However, I think most people should stay away from covered calls whether they are doing them manually or via a fund like those I mentioned. This is because they drastically underperform simply buying and holding the stocks or indexes in the long run.
XYLD is an ETF that sells covered calls on the S&P 500. It currently has a distribution yield of 11.19%. So why wouldn’t you want to buy it. In this first image below you can see the price performance of this ETF.
It is important to make sure we include dividends in the calculations. So this second graph shows the return when you include price and dividends. Now it actually looks pretty good.
Unfortunately, there is no free money out there to be had despite what covered call promoters make it sound like. Now in red you can see the results of the regular S&P 500 index ETF SPY with dividends reinvested. It drastically beat the total return of XYLD and was much more tax efficient. If you want money to spend just slowly sell little bits of it.
To show whether or not Henry is doing better by selling covered calls is pretty hard to prove one way or the other. But this professionally managed covered call ETF shows that making more money by using covered call ETFs is highly unlikely for anyone.
Disclaimer
This is not investment advice. This website is designed to talk about investments but it is not designed to give you personalized investment advice. This site is generic and should not be used as the basis for any investment decisions. This is for entertainment and educational purposes only.
The owner of PatienceToInvest.com is also a trade leader on Collective2.com. We may receive compensation by promoting some collective2 strategies over others.
Investing is risky and can result in the loss of all your capital and even more than your original capital in some cases.
I have been trading crypto since 2017 and have done quite well. But at the moment I have some Bitcoin that has a negative unrealized loss. I have been considering long term BITO call options to maintain my current exposure to Bitcoin price while freeing up cash to spend, diversify into other assets, or double down on crypto.
Today I sold a total of $8,827.89 worth of Bitcoin and bought $3,950 worth of 6/20/2025 call options on BITO. I have 7 contracts and control 700 shares of BITO. Below are some estimates of how much cash I freed up and managed to keep roughly the same Bitcoin price exposure should it climb. I have reduced my max loss, but increased the chance of loss if Bitcoin stays where it is or drops. However, this frees up cash to fund our HSA, take a trip, or do something else with it. Per the table below I have freed up about $5,424 with the downside that I have borrowing costs essentially. But I probably couldn’t go get a loan for decent price for this and I prefer to enter positions where I know the max loss and am comfortable with it.
Item
Strike
Expiration
Contracts
Cost
BITO Price Now * Share
Underlying at Open
Underlying Price
Break Even Price
Break Even Move
Time Value
Time Value Annualized Cost
BITO Call
10
6/20/2025
3
$1,455.00
$4,017.00
$13.39
$13.34
$14.85
10.90%
$438.00
10.90%
BITO Call
9
6/20/2025
2
$1,040.00
$2,678.00
$13.39
$13.34
$14.20
6.05%
$162.00
6.05%
BITO Call
7
6/20/2025
1
$680.00
$1,339.00
$13.39
$13.34
$13.80
3.06%
$41.00
3.06%
BITO Call
6
6/20/2025
1
$775.00
$1,340.00
$13.40
$13.34
$13.75
2.61%
$35.00
2.61%
Total
$3,950.00
$9,374.00
Correction for Same DaY
I decided to sell a little more so I would have enough cash on hand to max out our HSA for the year. Unfortunately I made a mistake and instead of entering a buy order I entered a sell order for two contracts of the $9 call for $900. I meant to buy. So then that left me with a position of 0 contracts for the $9 strike. So I went an bought four for the price of $2,060. That was a little frustrating, but now I have a spare $5,000 free to deposit to our HSA which will help me max it out in combination with the employer contribution. In the table I just do the math to ignore the sale and include its drag on the purchase of 2 additional contracts.
Item
Strike
Expiration
Contracts
Cost
BITO Price * Share
Underlying at Open
Underlying Price
Break Even Price
Break Even Move
Time Value
Time Value Annualized Cost
BITO Call
10
6/20/2025
3
$1,455.00
$4,017.00
$13.39
$13.30
$14.85
10.90%
$438.00
10.90%
BITO Call
9
6/20/2025
2
$1,040.00
$2,678.00
$13.39
$13.30
$14.20
6.05%
$162.00
6.05%
BITO Call
7
6/20/2025
1
$680.00
$1,339.00
$13.39
$13.30
$13.80
3.06%
$41.00
3.06%
BITO Call
6
6/20/2025
1
$775.00
$1,340.00
$13.40
$13.30
$13.75
2.61%
$35.00
2.61%
BITO Call
9
6/20/2025
2
$1,160.00
$2,660.00
$13.30
$13.30
$14.80
11.28%
$300.00
11.28%
Total
$5,110.00
$12,034.00
Disclaimer
This is not investment advice. This website is designed to talk about investments but it is not designed to give you personalized investment advice. This site is generic and should not be used as the basis for any investment decisions. This is for entertainment and educational purposes only.
The owner of PatienceToInvest.com is also a trade leader on Collective2.com. We may receive compensation by promoting some collective2 strategies over others.
Investing is risky and can result in the loss of all your capital and even more than your original capital in some cases.
I recently decided to commit the cardinal sin for many crypto enthusiast. I moved my self custody crypto to Robinhood. I did this because I am considering selling some in order to buy options on crypto ETFs to add in a leverage factor. I also wanted to test out the Robinhood send and receive features etc. Fortunately sending into Robinhood worked great, but I did find that like most exchanges they then show my cost basis as zero since there is no way for Robinhood to calculate where I bought the crypto and for how much etc. Fortunately, it appears that though I do get a 1099 from Robinhood Crypto they only report proceeds to the IRS not basis. This is good since it would be incorrect. Fortunately, I am using Koinly already to calculate my crypto basis etc. I just have to import my Robinhood transactions into Koinly and keep giving my Koinly tax report to my accountant. I like using Robinhood because I can immediately convert to stocks, options, cash, crypto, and back. Also I did confirm with a rep and I have to say that Robinhood is much better than it was in the past in terms of customer service. I have been a long-term inconsistent user. But I may start keeping some funds in Robinhood as they have been adding good new features.
Disclaimer
This is not investment advice. This website is designed to talk about investments but it is not designed to give you personalized investment advice. This site is generic and should not be used as the basis for any investment decisions. This is for entertainment and educational purposes only.
The owner of PatienceToInvest.com is also a trade leader on Collective2.com. We may receive compensation by promoting some collective2 strategies over others.
Investing is risky and can result in the loss of all your capital and even more than your original capital in some cases.
Crypto has taken quite the hit in the last few days. I certainly find myself unsure of where it will go next. The portion of my crypto that I have designated as America doomsday insurance I am just hanging on to and haven’t made any changes. The algorithmic portion of my portfolio that trades BITO has been out completely since it sold its last shares on August 10th, 2023 at $15.21 avoiding the roughly 10% drop since.
I have been tempted though to open another position in crypto within my portfolio that is my discretionary entry and exit section. In general I think crypto isn’t going away and when drops like this happen it does seem like a decent buying opportunity. I don’t have much in terms of free cash on hand at the moment. Though I am very familiar with options I don’t trade them frequently. So I’m going to double dip here and open a small options position on BITO in one of my small taxable accounts.
This isn’t a trade that is going to be recorded in my collective2 strategies because I am doing it in a very small roughly $10,000 taxable account that C2 doesn’t track.
This is almost more of a experiment and silver lining trade. I don’t want to miss out completely on this dip buying opportunity but don’t want to go in big, because I just really don’t know what will happen with crypto in the coming months.
The first position is designed to be a play that I can leave open until expiration without even thinking about it through December. The max loss of $1,140 is something I can live with. At that point I would be more disappointed about my buy and hold crypto portfolio which is larger than this.
The second play is designed to similarly be a loss I can live with but I gave it a shorter window to move.
These will be interesting to watch, but the truth is I really have no idea what direction BITO will take or how fast, but I am bullish on BITO in the long-run so I would say based on that the average day I can expect a positive move. Hopefully this period is a good period for crypto.
This is not investment advice for you. This website is designed to talk about investments but it is not designed to give you personalized investment advice. This site contains generic information that does not have the capability of taking your personal risk tolerance, goals, assets, or other factors into account. Therefore, this site and all of its related content is for entertainment, informational, and educational purposes only.
The owner of PatienceToInvest.com is also a trade leader on Collective2.com. We may receive compensation by promoting some collective2 strategies over others. Should you decide to make or avoid any investments or use any service due to the information on this site or related information you assume full responsibility and risks and will not hold howiinvest.com it’s associated sites or its owners responsible. You also acknowledge investing is risky and can result in the loss of all your capital and even more than your original capital in some cases.
This is one of the most interesting strategies I have seen in a while. It has done extremely well. The leader is a real person you can find on LinkedIn with what seems to be a very successful career. Chris Page has also given some very interesting details in his strategy descriptions and I find them quite compelling. Plus Collective2 has verified that the user is trading with real money in their own account. The trade leader has been very helpful and informative in the forums as well. The results so far for the strategy have also been very very good.
But before I consider allocating any money to any investment strategy I try to poke holes in it then only invest in it should I remain convinced the strategy is good. So in this post I am going to document myself trying to poke holes in the strategy. If anyone including Chris is reading this I hope you know that I can be wrong. This strategy could be the best investment opportunity of the decade. So please take no offense. This is just me documenting my process. I hope it is the investment strategy of the decade and I can’t poke holes in it – resulting in me investing it myself. This is simply my process.
Links
For sake of ease I am going to post the relevant links here.
I love that the user trades this with real money. It makes me feel like there should be some motivation to not just blow up the account. I also like that the strategy is only trading S&P 500 futures. There is no weird manipulation of penny stocks etc.
I find it very interesting that the system is algorithmic and using AI that each weekend is tuned. Being tunned each weekend in my opinion isn’t inherently a good thing. It causes me to worry that things could be changed due to shorter-term performance being poor. I think performance chasing can cause problems in the long run.
I find it interesting that the strategy is running on a dedicated trading server with very small latency. I think that is interesting but it surprises me that it is mentioned. As a subscriber to a collective2 strategy there is inherently going to be some built in latency for subscribers. Therefore, it doesn’t seem to matter. I’m not saying there are not algo traders that do use latency differences to their advantage, but Collective2 in my opinion is inherently not the place for this. The trades in the strategy so far seem to not be so short in length that the 2ms latency would seem to matter though. All in all the latency discussion seems like something the user is proud of but doesn’t matter. That seems slightly odd to me.
The user says they have been trading as a full-time gig for the last five years. Normally I would just disregard that, but since they seem to be a person using their real name via linkedIn it does seem like a good thing. Of course, I never thought about this until just now but I guess it is possible someone could be utilizing the Chris Page without actually being Chris Page. You know like a catfisher. Chris Page doesn’t say anything on their LinkedIn about collective2 from what I can see. However, I think this is unlikely.
Long & Short strategies inherently cause me hesitation when a user regularly shorts appreciating assets such as stocks, treasuries, etc. The shorting concerns me because the odds are so strongly against having success shorting stocks long term. Even a really bad trader sticking to only going long has decent odds of making money. The odds of shorting the S&P 500 are much much lower.
I will say thought that I find it very impressive that the performance of the short trades is positive. That is a good sign.
The description mentions that the LIVE ROI since May 2022 is 93.5%. Now I would love to make 93.5% long-term but I can’t help think that it just isn’t realistic. So when i see see someone promote the strategy and highlight that it worries me. I’m sure I have done similar, but I don’t find it compelling. There are so many types of investment methods that give amazing returns like 93.5% for a year then do terrible in the following years.
I do like that the strategy is using the VIX index. I believe the VIX index is a decent indicator to be using, but I would like to see more details to really convince me.
Performance Analysis
At first glance this performance looks amazing and is very tantalizing. But I am here to poke holes right. The average leverage use is 4.66. That is a bit higher than I like but not crazy. Since this strategy is trading only S&P 500 futures I thought I would compare investing in the S&P500 with a buy and hold position of 4.66 leverage. The chart below is only monthly close data, so the intramonth drawdown was likely higher. Likewise the start date isn’t the exact same. I started at the end of January as the results are more conservative, but the results are actually better than the C2 strategy.
I don’t plan to buy and hold the S&P with that level of leverage, but this does seem to be evidence – not proof – that the performance of the strategy could just be a good streak. It is hard to say.
More time will be needed to show if this is really a strategy worth following for me. I have added this strategy but it just seems to plausible to me that the great performance is simply because it has been a good period of growth. For now I will wait and observe and hope to get some indication that the strategy is a good one.
This is not investment advice for you. This website is designed to talk about investments but it is not designed to give you personalized investment advice. This site contains generic information that does not have the capability of taking your personal risk tolerance, goals, assets, or other factors into account. Therefore, this site and all of its related content is for entertainment, informational, and educational purposes only.
The owner of PatienceToInvest.com is also a trade leader on Collective2.com. We may receive compensation by promoting some collective2 strategies over others. Should you decide to make or avoid any investments or use any service due to the information on this site or related information you assume full responsibility and risks and will not hold howiinvest.com it’s associated sites or its owners responsible. You also acknowledge investing is risky and can result in the loss of all your capital and even more than your original capital in some cases.
If you have been following you will know that I just said I thought Ethereum may be at a good buying opportunity. Then exactly like I predicted…oh wait. Then exactly unlike I predicted Ethereum dropped pretty strongly below its 200 day moving average. That is not a good sign in my opinion, but I still find myself bullish on Ethereum. No support like a 200 day moving average is an exact yes or no indicator. If we take a look at Bitcoin it had a similar drop, but is still not quite at its 200 day moving average. However, the total crypto market cap has broken through its 200 day moving average. So we have a mix of signals here. My active trading strategies at Collective2 were mostly out of crypto already. However, my discretionary trading elsewhere does still have some crypto exposure. I am still hopeful that the bull trend in crypto continues but it certainly isn’t a great sign that the total market cap and Ethereum have both broken their 200 day moving average.
The Bitcoin chart is certainly the most bullish of the three.
This is not investment advice for you. This website is designed to talk about investments but it is not designed to give you personalized investment advice. This site contains generic information that does not have the capability of taking your personal risk tolerance, goals, assets, or other factors into account. Therefore, this site and all of its related content is for entertainment, informational, and educational purposes only.
The owner of PatienceToInvest.com is also a trade leader on Collective2.com. We may receive compensation by promoting some collective2 strategies over others. Should you decide to make or avoid any investments or use any service due to the information on this site or related information you assume full responsibility and risks and will not hold howiinvest.com it’s associated sites or its owners responsible. You also acknowledge investing is risky and can result in the loss of all your capital and even more than your original capital in some cases.
How I Invest 