Most of the market is fixated on predicting which stock will be the next big winner, yet the truly durable income is found by asking a different question: "How can I profit from the predictable chaos of that speculation itself?"
I see posts like these ALL the time:
In the comments, everyone’s trying to reverse-engineer someone else’s luck. It’s a soup of tickers, FOMO, and hope.
I am not going to step in to argue about which moonshot might work.
I’d rather show you how to profit from the entire pattern.
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If you’ve spent any time in the markets, you’ve seen this pattern before: Dot-com. SPACs. Cannabis. EVs. AI. Space.
Each wave brings a fresh crop of retail investors rushing in late, chasing what’s already moved, and looking for one more shot.
The people I write for are not after lottery tickets.
But I do understand the temptation.
Every day, you’re bombarded by : “What’s the next Tesla?” “This stock could 10x in a year!” “Don’t miss this moonshot.”
And if you’re not careful, it’s easy to feel like you’re missing something or you need to “get in before it’s too late.”
That mindset is costing people so much more than they realize.
Not just in dollars lost, but in sleep, confidence, and the ability to live off your portfolio without being glued to a screen.
Most investors I speak with aren’t chasing riches. They’re looking for stability. Simplicity. Something they can understand and rely on for a usable monthly income.
How?
The money isn’t made by guessing where the crowd is going. The money is made by building systems that profit from the crowd’s behavior.
And right now, there’s one type of market behavior that’s monetizing beautifully — if you know where to look.
It’s called Implied Volatility.
Implied Volatility (IV) is the market’s best guess at how much a stock might move— up or down —over a given period.
It’s not a prediction of direction. It’s a measurement of expected magnitude.
Think of it this way:
A stock like KO is calm, predictable. It trades in a narrow range. → The market doesn’t expect big swings. Its IV is low—around 20%.
A stock like ASTS, on the other hand, is speculative. It has no profits, tons of hype, and wild price swings. → The market expects fireworks. Its IV often sits over 100%.
That difference in IV directly impacts how much income you can collect by selling options.
When IV is high, the options market is saying, “This stock could move a lot. We don’t know how, but we expect turbulence.”
To compensate for that uncertainty, option premiums increase.
This premium exists for a simple, human reason: most investors buy options as a lottery ticket, not as a calculated tool. They are willing to consistently overpay for the small chance of a massive payoff. As an operator, you aren't buying the ticket, because you are acting as the "house," selling the ticket and collecting the reliable premium that this behavior generates.
And the market does.
The Case Study: One Put Contract vs. a Thousand Threads
Rule #1 - we are not chasing the most volatile ticker of the day.
This is a disciplined process.
We only focus on a small universe of companies that meet strict, non-negotiable criteria. The tickers you see in my Thursday and Sunday deep-dives are not chosen on a whim, they must first be approved by my proprietary screening algorithm, VADER, which ensures they meet a strict set of non-negotiable criteria.
This filtering process is what separates systematic income generation from gambling.
As an example, let's use AST SpaceMobile (ASTS), a favorite from that Reddit thread, since we already talked about it.
Instead of buying shares and praying, let's sell insurance to the people who are.
The “Redditor's” Trade:
The Redditor, infected with FOMO, buys 100 shares of ASTS at, say, $43.97 per share. → Total Capital Outlay: $4,397 → Path to Profit: The stock must go up. If it goes down or sideways, they lose or make nothing. → Breakeven: $43.97 + trading fees.
The Operator's Trade: You, the operator, look at the options chain. You see the rich premium and decide to sell insurance.
→ Action: Sell one cash-secured put contract on ASTS with a $35.00 strike price that expires in 35 days (August 14, 2025). → Premium Collected: $163 ($1.63 per share × 100 shares). → Capital Secured: $3,500 → Return on Capital: 4.7% yield in 35 days, or ~48% annualized.
Let me be clear: this is not a whole-portfolio return. That would be unrealistic. This is a high-yield generated on a small, specific, and risk-defined segment of your capital.
This feels less like investing and more like underwriting. You are not forecasting a price — you are pricing risk for a defined period. It requires a mindset shift.
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Here are the two primary outcomes:
Outcome A: ASTS closesabove $35.00 → the option expires worthless. You keep the $163.
Outcome B: ASTS closes below $35.00 → you’re assigned the shares at an effective cost basis of $33.37. While the speculator is bag-holding from $43.97, you’re sitting on a 24% discount—and can immediately sell covered calls.
The Redditor has to be right. You just have to be disciplined.
That $163 isn’t pocket change. It’s the seed of a system that multiplies itself every 30 days.
The goal is to create a self-reinforcing system.
HARVEST: You sell puts on chaos (like ASTS), generating cash (the $163 premium).
FORTIFY: You take that harvested cash and use it to buy assets of indisputable quality. That $163 doesn’t go to a new watch; it buys a fractional share of a company like Verizon (VZ) or Realty Income (O)—boring, cash-gushing fortresses that pay you a dividend.
COMPOUND: You are using the predictable frenzy of speculators to systematically build a base of resilient, income-producing assets. If you get assigned the speculative stock (ASTS at $33.37), you simply shift to Harvest Mode on that asset, selling covered calls until it’s called away at a profit.
The Philosophical Payoff
This was never about ASTS. It’s about learning how to thrive in the informational chaos on the internet.
Redditors are emotionally tethered to tickers: their hopes rise and fall with price.
Operators don’t need the price to move.
They extract value fromvolatility itself.
Tom in Ohio, 67, joined in late May, $40,000 parked in idle cash. He sold three puts in month one (KO, Verizon, Pepsi). Collected $318. Covered his Medicare supplement for the quarter. He gave me his permission to share the message he sent:
Tom’s yield — 7.3%. And he didn’t have to watch the market once.
¹ Tom's story and message are shared with his permission.
The point is not to be clever. The point is to be consistent.
Let others chase dopamine and better focus on collecting checks.
Now, take a moment to look at your brokerage statement. How much actual cash did your portfolio pay you last month? — Not some quarterly dividend. Real, spendable money.
For most investors, the answer is little or nothing.
Inaction isn’t neutral. It’s costing you real money—month after month.
If you had written even one covered call on a stock you already own, you could’ve earned $200–$400 in premium last month alone — enough to cover your electric bill, take your spouse to dinner, or top off your travel fund.
And that’s just one trade…
The $299 annual subscription is therefore designed to be recovered by the profit from your very first trade.
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This Sunday, I will publish our weekly covered call portfolio update and detail the new trades for the week ahead. As with every strategy we employ, the post will cover both setup and ongoing management, and all trades will be tracked with full transparency from open to close.
For those who are new, Thursday's deep dive on our cash-secured put strategy follows this same comprehensive format and is available here:
Thank you for your continued support of this project. Have a wonderful weekend!
Mike Thornton, Ph.D.
Disclaimer: This is not financial advice. I am a retired econometrician, not your financial advisor. Options trading involves substantial risk and is not suitable for every investor. The examples provided are for illustrative purposes only and are not trade recommendations. All numerical data is precise as provided and has not been altered. Be sure to perform your own due diligence.
