When it comes to trading, direction doesn’t matter. Down is good, up is always better, side is the best revenge.

When you trade options, there are many ways to win – you can profit if stocks fall a little, when they go higher, or if they don’t do much. Compare that to the standard investment method, which is to buy a share. You can only profit if it goes up.

Even when you first buy a stock, you are already in the red. The buy (ask) price is always higher than the sell (bid) price. More there are commissions. Unless you are a commission-free floor trader and can take advantage of arbitrage, there is no sure winner.

That said, there are ways to turn the odds in your favor. Putting put options, when used properly, is one of the most misunderstood but valuable transactions on the market. On the one hand, you immediately start from scratch, obtaining a cash credit to place a position. You don’t even have to own the shares, you just assume the possibility of owning it at a discounted price. Think of it like buying a car. Have you ever paid a sticker price?

The strategy I use involves one of two types of operations: selling a put option with the possibility of owning the shares OR selling a call option against a share that I already own.

The key to all trading is limiting your risk, whether it’s through technical analysis or sticking with the highest quality “boring” household name companies that have been around for decades. In my case, using a combination of both strategies greatly increases the chances of success.

That said, you never want to overpay for a stock, even if it is a large company. But with simple chart observations, you can identify the price points where the big bucks start pouring in to support.

Let’s take an example of one of my 25 favorites on the list, the retail giant Walmart. Walmart is a stake in Berkshire Hathaway of superinvestor Warren Buffet and has been increasing its dividend payment for many years. All the ingredients of a great company.

In the graph shown here we can see how to analyze this value and when is the best time to enter a trade.

Watch what happens on this 1-year price chart when the stock drops to around 72.5. Whenever the price reaches that value, a large amount of money comes in to “support” Walmart at that price, and the stock rallies. It happened twice in the last year already and recently did it again in the periodic market correction that started in July 2014. So my favorite strategy to implement here would be to sell the September put option of 72.5, on which I would get immediately a cash credit to my account. Since that cash is in my account, it could be used as stock purchase credit should it drop below 72.5 on expiration day.

This would force me to buy the stock at 72.5 should it fall below that level at expiration. But in each case that never happened, so the contracts expire worthless and I just pocket the cash I received for taking that risk and walk away.

Now I would not do this trade when I hit the 80 level because I would not get enough credit at the 72.5 strike price, but I could make the 80 option, but there is a good chance that I will be allocated the shares. But again, what is the risk? You would still have a large stock at a discounted price and could write call options against the allocated shares (which generally pay more than the quarterly dividend). Oneself get paid while waiting to sell my shares at the price I bought.

I only “lose” if the stock falls off a cliff. But wait, isn’t that exactly the same risk as buying the stocks? You can bet your bile duct that it is. However, I still have the advantage that I own the shares at a lower cost than the investor who buys the shares. The cash I receive reduces my cost base and therefore my risk vs. buying it directly.

Even if you are a buying and holding person, you can profit by selling call options against your shares. Using simple charting techniques, there are favorable times to do this, increasing the chances that you will not have to sell your shares. You only keep the immediate credit you get for selling the option.

No complicated math, just a simple clear observation of market psychology. If you could convince him that putting put is a safe and profitable strategy, would you be willing to make it part of your future permanent investor? Maybe you’ve thought about having a cash-generating home business with no products or sales involved.