Jay Soloff
Jay is an options trading expert with 20+ years of experience, from the Wheat Futures pit at the Kansas City Board of Trade to market making on the CBOE. A University of Illinois economics graduate with an MBA and MS from Arizona State, he has also served as a senior hedge fund analyst. Today, Jay teaches advanced options strategies at NetPicks, helping retail traders use volatility and options to build consistent cash flow.
Jay Soloff's Latest Posts
Stop Chasing High IV: Why Your Options Strategy Is Failing
I’ve analyzed enough order flow to know you’re likely misinterpreting implied volatility. You chase rich premiums, ignoring the statistical reality of mean reversion. It’s not just about selling high; it’s about contextualizing that data against historical ranges. Without this, you’re simply overtrading unstable assets and risking a total drawdown. I’ll identify the specific analytical error that silently drains your […]
Unlocking Hidden Income With Cash-Secured Puts
I view cash-secured puts as a mechanism to extract yield from distinct support zones. By selling options against cash reserves, I capture premiums that immediately reduce my cost basis. It’s a calculated method for monetizing volatility without margin exposure. Yet, this strategy’s true potential fails if you ignore the specific mathematical criteria required for ideal strike selection. The Executive Summary […]
One Way To Double Your Dividend From Corporate Bonds
Corporate bonds are near all-time highs as yield seekers are looking to improve on low yields from government bonds. The iShares iBoxx $ Investment Grade Corporate Bond ETF (LQD) is one of the most popular vehicles for getting exposure to high quality corporate bonds. However, the dividend yield is only 2.3% for LQD, and the […]
Stocks Are Plunging – Is Gold The Right Hedge?
When the stock market does its best impression of a swan dive, it tends to come from an unexpected catalyst. It’s generally not something about interest rates or corporate earnings or jobless numbers. Those factors matter over time, but they don’t usually cause sudden, severe moves in the market. No, very large selloffs often come […]
Will Stocks Continue To Rally Despite The Coronavirus Scare?
The stock market can be a crazy place. The unpredictability of the financial markets is what makes them so exciting and challenging for traders (and investors). While the long-term direction of stocks has always been up, there are definitely significant periods of volatility over shorter time frames. For instance, this year we’ve already had a […]
Here’s What A One-Year Covered Call In Microsoft Looks Like
In the era of ultra-low interest rates, yield enhancement strategies have become prolific. Actually, let’s take a step back. It used to be that you could generate a reasonable yield from fixed interest investments, like government or corporate bonds. However, with interest rates approaching zero, those types of investments just don’t provide robust yields. So […]
Is The Low Volatility Market At An End?
2019 can be roughly divided into two market regimes. There were periods of high volatility and market choppiness, notably in June, August, and early October. Then, there were the stretches of low and falling volatility – January through May and mid-October through the end of the year. It certainly seemed like January of 2020 was […]
What’s In Store For Chipmakers In 2020?
2019 is at an end, and it was undoubtedly a great year for stocks. The S&P 500 was up over 28% for the year. However, semiconductor companies had an even better year. VanEck Vectors Semiconductor ETF (SMH) was up nearly 62% over the same period. Granted, SMH did plunge sharply at the end of 2018, so it had […]
