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Will the Dog Collar when the fundamentals of Apple is negative ie long term trend is down. Warren Buffet has proven he is smart and lucky enough to realize it and probably dumped everything. China is expected to have its own EUV machine anytime up to 3 years and also alternate type of advanced chips. When it happen, the chips wars is over as everybody will be scrambling to sell anything China wants because that is last chance. At that point Apple PE should be reduced to 5 or 80% down and there goes Walls Street. Just remember China developed DeepSeek at cost of $6 million whereas Silicon Valley spent billions and billions and is still behind in AI technology.

Apple: Why I Don't Care As Much About The Q1 Earnings Report

SummaryApple's upcoming earnings report is highly anticipated, especially with the stock down 15% in the past month, reflecting broader market trends.Despite Apple's profitability and wide moat, I am

Apple: Why I Don't Care As Much About The Q1 Earnings Report

# Apple Earnings Looming: How Do You View Analysts' Downgrade?

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Warren Buffet has proven he is smart and lucky enough to realize it and probably dumped everything. &nbsp;China is expected to have its own EUV machine anytime up to 3 years and also alternate type of advanced chips. &nbsp;When it happen, the chips wars is over as everybody will be scrambling to sell anything China wants because that is last chance. At that point Apple PE should be reduced to 5 or 80% down and there goes Walls Street. &nbsp;Just remember China developed DeepSeek at cost of $6 million whereas Silicon Valley spent billions and billions and is still behind in AI technology.</p>\n<p><br></p></body></html>","htmlText":"<html><head></head><body><p>Will the Dog Collar when the fundamentals of Apple is negative ie long term trend is down. Warren Buffet has proven he is smart and lucky enough to realize it and probably dumped everything. &nbsp;China is expected to have its own EUV machine anytime up to 3 years and also alternate type of advanced chips. &nbsp;When it happen, the chips wars is over as everybody will be scrambling to sell anything China wants because that is last chance. At that point Apple PE should be reduced to 5 or 80% down and there goes Walls Street. &nbsp;Just remember China developed DeepSeek at cost of $6 million whereas Silicon Valley spent billions and billions and is still behind in AI technology.</p>\n<p><br></p></body></html>","text":"Will the Dog Collar when the fundamentals of Apple is negative ie long term trend is down. Warren Buffet has proven he is smart and lucky enough to realize it and probably dumped everything. China is expected to have its own EUV machine anytime up to 3 years and also alternate type of advanced chips. When it happen, the chips wars is over as everybody will be scrambling to sell anything China wants because that is last chance. At that point Apple PE should be reduced to 5 or 80% down and there goes Walls Street. Just remember China developed DeepSeek at cost of $6 million whereas Silicon Valley spent billions and billions and is still behind in AI technology.","highlighted":1,"essential":1,"paper":1,"likeSize":2,"commentSize":0,"repostSize":0,"favoriteSize":0,"link":"https://ttm.financial/post/396665584108104","repostId":1158498879,"repostType":4,"repost":{"id":"1158498879","kind":"news","pubTimestamp":1737856800,"share":"https://www.laohu8.com/m/news/1158498879?lang=&edition=full","pubTime":"2025-01-26 10:00","market":"us","language":"en","title":"Apple: Why I Don't Care As Much About The Q1 Earnings Report","url":"https://stock-news.laohu8.com/highlight/detail?id=1158498879","media":"Seeking Alpha","summary":"SummaryApple's upcoming earnings report is highly anticipated, especially with the stock down 15% in the past month, reflecting broader market trends.Despite Apple's profitability and wide moat, I am ","content":"<html><head></head><body><h2 id=\"id_3585124944\">Summary</h2><ul style=\"\"><li><p>Apple&#39;s upcoming earnings report is highly anticipated, especially with the stock down 15% in the past month, reflecting broader market trends.</p></li><li><p>Despite Apple&#39;s profitability and wide moat, I am less concerned about the earnings due to my strategic use of option collars.</p></li><li><p>I employ a &#34;dog collar&#34; strategy to limit downside risk while maintaining upside potential, ensuring a favorable risk-reward ratio.</p></li><li><p>This approach allows me to own AAPL with defined risk, focusing on how I own it rather than just owning it outright.</p></li></ul><p class=\"t-img-caption\"><img src=\"https://community-static.tradeup.com/news/841d11cc18e9ecc18b74684b7b996ce8\" alt=\"ozgurdonmaz\" title=\"ozgurdonmaz\" tg-width=\"750\" tg-height=\"481\"/><span>ozgurdonmaz</span></p><p>Apple Inc. (NASDAQ:AAPL) reports quarterly earnings for its first fiscal quarter (ended December 2023) this Thursday after market close. As always, it will be a &#34;grab the popcorn&#34; event for fundamental analysts, traders and even casual market observers. This company&#39;s ongoing progress says a lot about consumer trends, in addition to the usual updated inspection of how this iconic company is operating. And with the stock down about 15% in just the past month, investors and traders are understandably going to read a lot into what Tim Cook and crew say on the earnings call.</p><p>Here&#39;s the snapshot view on that, highlighted (or lowlighted) by many more recent analyst downgrades than upgrades. That, and some prior quarter data, conspires to provide a C- revisions grade from Seeking Alpha&#39;s quant team.</p><p class=\"t-img-caption\"><img src=\"https://community-static.tradeup.com/news/e41da68e7b88b640810f338363cb961a\" alt=\"Seeking Alpha\" title=\"Seeking Alpha\" tg-width=\"640\" tg-height=\"282\"/><span>Seeking Alpha</span></p><h2 id=\"id_674388383\">Why I don&#39;t care... as much as I normally might</h2><p>In my last article on AAPL back on October 25, I placed a hold rating on it. The stock is down 3% since that time, versus a gain of more than 4% for the S&amp;P 500, where AAPL is a 6.5% weighting, second in size only to Nvidia (NVDA).</p><p>And when I looked back over that before writing this, I noticed this final paragraph, which indicates everything I have to say about this stock three months later.</p><blockquote><p>There&#39;s always a way when you are a flexible investor. I found ways to participate and get my &#34;fair share&#34; of the tech wave of the past decade. And I&#39;m looking forward to finding innovative ways to keep doing that, at a time when that part of the market might just be priced for perfection.</p></blockquote><p>As a non-fundamental analyst whose personal investing, research, writing and oversight of the investing group Sungarden YARP Portfolio, I don&#39;t have much to add to the dozens of Seeking Alpha analysts when it comes to financial forecasts, dissecting the balance sheet and income statement, and evaluating the potential for sales of new and existing Apple products.</p><p>But before I get to what does matter in my own investing world (and to some degree by association, my investing group subscribers), here&#39;s a quick update on the closest thing I get to fundamental analysis: interpreting some of the Seeking Alpha quant factor grades. AAPL is still an A+ for profitability, which is the one I rely on the most. It is hard to see that changing any time soon, given the wide moat and switching cost advantages the company has built up since the days of Steve Jobs. And the iPod mini, for that matter.</p><p>Valuation is statistically rich, as it is for many tech stocks. What remains to be seen is whether the market cares about that, and also whether the company&#39;s performance allows them to &#34;grow into&#34; those earnings. That&#39;s a tall task, I think.</p><p>Growth is now up to a D from D- but that is not saying much. And the C grade for momentum, down from B+, syncs up with my earlier comments about the stock falling sharply the past month, and now about flat for nearly the past eight months. That is quite typical for a lot of stocks I observe. They can make 10-15%, but they can&#39;t keep those gains for too long.</p><p class=\"t-img-caption\"><img src=\"https://community-static.tradeup.com/news/f41ef0482f17d4632f5c4ac57fd06893\" alt=\"Seeking Alpha\" title=\"Seeking Alpha\" tg-width=\"640\" tg-height=\"320\"/><span>Seeking Alpha</span></p><p>And that is a nice transition to why I don&#39;t care as much about AAPL&#39;s upcoming earnings. To be clear, I hope they &#34;crush it&#34; and the stock flies higher. But I did something recently in my portfolio, discussed it at length in a recent live session with subscribers (video available by request in the comments) and my AAPL position was one of the first iterations. Iterations of what? Something I have concluded that for my own objectives, is where I&#39;m pivoting a significant amount of my own assets to. It is much less about WHAT I own, and all about HOW I own it.</p><p>Because to me, everything is driven by objective. My objective. In the case of stocks in 2024, I was happy to rotate position sizes and among positions, grabbing dividend yield along the way. But somewhere along the line last year, I noted a market shift. I think markets reward different things than they did even last year, much less pre-pandemic. So, while in this case, my goal was to &#34;own stock in AAPL as part of my portfolio,&#34; there are countless ways to do that in these modern markets.</p><p>For instance, in addition to buying shares of AAPL, there are leveraged and inverse ETFs that use that stock or derivatives that synthetically create essentially a stock position. And in the case of Apple, it is one of about 30 single stock ETFs available from YieldMax, a firm whose products essentially try to use options and T-bills to allow holders to trade off some stock price appreciations for a higher level of income.</p><p>With AAPL, while I like to think of myself as prioritizing dividend income in my portfolio, this stock&#39;s yield doesn&#39;t amount to enough. Of course the safety rating is A+, the company is a cash machine, but uses very little of it to pay out to shareholders as a dividend.</p><p class=\"t-img-caption\"><img src=\"https://community-static.tradeup.com/news/9abb5cc174ffe5d010ec4b2c5bd54692\" alt=\"Seeking Alpha\" title=\"Seeking Alpha\" tg-width=\"640\" tg-height=\"449\"/><span>Seeking Alpha</span></p><p>So APLY, which aims to earn about 80% of AAPL&#39;s total return with about 80% of its risk over time, was a convenient way for me to step into the stock. I bought APLY on December 10, received a hefty 2%+ monthly dividend in December and January, but endured the price drop in the stock. All that was par for the course. This is equity investing, after all.</p><p class=\"t-img-caption\"><img src=\"https://community-static.tradeup.com/news/4b62abd5ed7f62dda837d7c13ea145aa\" alt=\"TC2000\" title=\"TC2000\" tg-width=\"640\" tg-height=\"620\"/><span>TC2000</span></p><p>But when I saw the stock start to reach an important &#34;decision point&#34; technically (see chart above), I realized that this would be an ideal situation to pivot. Not in my continued exposure to AAPL. But in the way I gained that exposure. And how I gained something else:<strong> the ability to customize the amount of risk I was taking to own it.</strong></p><p>This is something I am doing across much of the Sungarden YARP Portfolio, and in our weekly live sessions, I expect it will be a central educational topic. Because the structure I now use to own AAPL, or more properly what I do around that share position, is what I think will define both my own results and the service going forward. And, with what I can tell already is the highest SWAN (sleep well at night) factor I have had in my career.</p><h2 id=\"id_168090607\">The &#34;Dog Collar&#34; Portfolio: high-level introduction</h2><p>The quick history on this is that back in 2007, when I was an investment advisor and soon to be mutual fund manager, I became concerned enough about the stock market&#39;s risk level that I wanted to create a way to protect client assets. And thus, my own income, since back then my earnings were based solely on assets under management. At the same time, I was no stranger to bubbles, or at least markets that rise for longer than most expect. The structure I chose is not at all new, and is popular in some corners of the traditional and hedge fund investing community. The option collar.</p><p>Starting a strategy that defines &#34;maximum loss&#34; at the time the underlying stock is bought turned out to be just the thing when, in 2008, the S&amp;P 500 fell 37%. I ran a portfolio of collars from 2007 though 2010, and while I am not predicting a repeat of 2008, I certainly won&#39;t rule it out. So here we are again, with a stock market that keeps giving, with a set of mega-sized stocks leading it, and with downside risk also very high in my view.</p><h2 id=\"id_2710250246\">Who let the dogs out?</h2><p>We also have a time where the non-AAPLs of the stock market, several industrial, consumer and other blue chip stocks, have been extreme laggards. I&#39;ll stick to AAPL here, but the idea of bringing back the option collar around many of my stock and even ETF positions is to be able to invest more comfortably, and with a longer-term focus, in what I believe is a large number of potential contrarian comeback stories. I&#39;ve written about some here, and will write on several others soon. In fact, I&#39;m likely to frame many of my articles this way, in terms of whether I believe that options in some form make a good partner for those underlying stocks and ETFs.</p><p>Option-aided investing is all the rage, in ETF form. YieldMax, JEPI, etc. are wildly popular. But taking AAPL as a case in point, I want to go a step further. I want to own the stock myself, but not be fully exposed to the potential that the company blows earnings or that the market caves in quickly. I want to define my worst-case scenario. Stop orders can&#39;t do that.</p><p>Why &#34;dog collar?&#34; Because I&#39;m using a collar around out of favor assets, i.e. &#34;dogs.&#34; AAPL is a short-term dog as noted, with the 15% dip in a month&#39;s time. But most stocks I&#39;m using this way are much bigger dogs. And as they say, you&#39;ve got to let the big dogs hunt!</p><h2 id=\"id_2722098706\">Collars: the basics (using my AAPL experience)</h2><p>Note that in order to do this &#34;cleanly&#34; one needs to be able to buy at least 100 shares of the stock. Options trade in &#34;round lots&#34; of 100 shares each.</p><p>Using that minimum as an example, the combination works like this.</p><ul style=\"\"><li><p>Buy 100 shares of AAPL ($222 was my rounded cost per share)</p></li><li><p>Buy 1 put option contract on AAPL at a strike price of $220</p></li><li><p>Sell 1 call option contract on AAPL at a strike price of $260</p></li></ul><p>I chose to put this on through 6/20/25, though I can unwind one or more parts of it any time before then. The most likely events would be:</p><ul style=\"\"><li><p>If AAPL stock crashes, I can sell the stock at $220 at any point until June 20 of this year.</p></li><li><p>If the stock flies higher, above $260, I will likely be forced (more likely in June than prior) to sell my 100 shares of AAPL at $260. However, I can also decide to buy more stock, buy call options for more upside, or even go back and buy APLY to again to try to continue my bullish ride in AAPL. I could even take a small position in a 2X AAPL ETF, though that&#39;s not in my field of vision just yet.</p></li></ul><p>The cost of the put was about $11 per share (times the 100 share &#34;lot&#34; and that&#39;s $1,100 out of pocket to pay for the puts). The call offset that somewhat, as for giving up the upside above $260 (the recent high price from last December), I received $3 a share or $300 now. So the &#34;net cost&#34; per share of setting clear lines on my best/worst case was $8.</p><p>To complete the math, I have now taken a $222 stock that I am concerned about blowing earnings, but which I want to continue to own since it is at &#34;technical resistance&#34; and let&#39;s face it, the market tends to give stocks nine lives (cat joke mixed into the dog collar, if you will).</p><p>So what&#39;s my best and worst case? Take those strike prices on the options, subtract that $8 net cost of the options pair, and we get:</p><h3 id=\"id_3980262364\">Upside = $252 / Downside = $212</h3><p>That&#39;s $30 of upside (15%) against just $10 of downside (5%). That 3:1 ratio is what I consider to be sufficient for a 5-month time frame.</p><h2 id=\"id_1542808617\">That&#39;s why I &#34;don&#39;t care&#34; about the upcoming earnings event for AAPL</h2><p>I want to own AAPL, and I want to pursue lots of upside if this quarter, next quarter, or some other time frame produces a comeback toward those all-time highs and beyond. But I&#39;m unwilling to risk 10%, 20% or more of my position at this time. The dog collar is my chosen solution, here and in a lot of other situations I see. I plan to be essentially &#34;dog collar central&#34; for my subscribers, so they can decide for themselves with each stock or ETF I research HOW they want to own it, not just IF they want to own it.</p></body></html>","source":"lsy1728464409321","collect":0,"html":"<!DOCTYPE html>\n<html>\n<head>\n<meta http-equiv=\"Content-Type\" content=\"text/html; charset=utf-8\" />\n<meta name=\"viewport\" content=\"width=device-width,initial-scale=1.0,minimum-scale=1.0,maximum-scale=1.0,user-scalable=no\"/>\n<meta name=\"format-detection\" content=\"telephone=no,email=no,address=no\" />\n<title>Apple: Why I Don't Care As Much About The Q1 Earnings Report</title>\n<style type=\"text/css\">\na,abbr,acronym,address,applet,article,aside,audio,b,big,blockquote,body,canvas,caption,center,cite,code,dd,del,details,dfn,div,dl,dt,\nem,embed,fieldset,figcaption,figure,footer,form,h1,h2,h3,h4,h5,h6,header,hgroup,html,i,iframe,img,ins,kbd,label,legend,li,mark,menu,nav,\nobject,ol,output,p,pre,q,ruby,s,samp,section,small,span,strike,strong,sub,summary,sup,table,tbody,td,tfoot,th,thead,time,tr,tt,u,ul,var,video{ font:inherit;margin:0;padding:0;vertical-align:baseline;border:0 }\nbody{ font-size:16px; line-height:1.5; color:#999; background:transparent; }\n.wrapper{ overflow:hidden;word-break:break-all;padding:10px; }\nh1,h2{ font-weight:normal; line-height:1.35; margin-bottom:.6em; }\nh3,h4,h5,h6{ line-height:1.35; margin-bottom:1em; }\nh1{ font-size:24px; }\nh2{ font-size:20px; }\nh3{ font-size:18px; }\nh4{ font-size:16px; }\nh5{ font-size:14px; }\nh6{ font-size:12px; }\np,ul,ol,blockquote,dl,table{ margin:1.2em 0; }\nul,ol{ margin-left:2em; }\nul{ list-style:disc; }\nol{ list-style:decimal; }\nli,li p{ margin:10px 0;}\nimg{ max-width:100%;display:block;margin:0 auto 1em; }\nblockquote{ color:#B5B2B1; border-left:3px solid #aaa; padding:1em; }\nstrong,b{font-weight:bold;}\nem,i{font-style:italic;}\ntable{ width:100%;border-collapse:collapse;border-spacing:1px;margin:1em 0;font-size:.9em; }\nth,td{ padding:5px;text-align:left;border:1px solid #aaa; }\nth{ font-weight:bold;background:#5d5d5d; }\n.symbol-link{font-weight:bold;}\n/* header{ border-bottom:1px solid #494756; } */\n.title{ margin:0 0 8px;line-height:1.3;color:#ddd; }\n.meta {color:#5e5c6d;font-size:13px;margin:0 0 .5em; }\na{text-decoration:none; color:#2a4b87;}\n.meta .head { display: inline-block; overflow: hidden}\n.head .h-thumb { width: 30px; height: 30px; margin: 0; padding: 0; border-radius: 50%; float: left;}\n.head .h-content { margin: 0; padding: 0 0 0 9px; float: left;}\n.head .h-name {font-size: 13px; color: #eee; margin: 0;}\n.head .h-time {font-size: 11px; color: #7E829C; margin: 0;line-height: 11px;}\n.small {font-size: 12.5px; display: inline-block; transform: scale(0.9); -webkit-transform: scale(0.9); transform-origin: left; -webkit-transform-origin: left;}\n.smaller {font-size: 12.5px; display: inline-block; transform: scale(0.8); -webkit-transform: scale(0.8); transform-origin: left; -webkit-transform-origin: left;}\n.bt-text {font-size: 12px;margin: 1.5em 0 0 0}\n.bt-text p {margin: 0}\n</style>\n</head>\n<body>\n<div class=\"wrapper\">\n<header>\n<h2 class=\"title\">\nApple: Why I Don't Care As Much About The Q1 Earnings Report\n</h2>\n\n<h4 class=\"meta\">\n\n\n2025-01-26 10:00 GMT+8&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;<a href=https://seekingalpha.com/article/4751924-apple-why-i-dont-care-much-about-q1-earnings-report><strong>Seeking Alpha</strong></a>\n\n\n</h4>\n\n</header>\n<article>\n<div>\n<p>SummaryApple's upcoming earnings report is highly anticipated, especially with the stock down 15% in the past month, reflecting broader market trends.Despite Apple's profitability and wide moat, I am ...</p>\n\n<a href=\"https://seekingalpha.com/article/4751924-apple-why-i-dont-care-much-about-q1-earnings-report\">Web Link</a>\n\n</div>\n\n\n</article>\n</div>\n</body>\n</html>\n","type":0,"thumbnail":"","relate_stocks":{"AAPL":"苹果"},"source_url":"https://seekingalpha.com/article/4751924-apple-why-i-dont-care-much-about-q1-earnings-report","is_english":true,"share_image_url":"https://static.laohu8.com/e9f99090a1c2ed51c021029395664489","article_id":"1158498879","content_text":"SummaryApple's upcoming earnings report is highly anticipated, especially with the stock down 15% in the past month, reflecting broader market trends.Despite Apple's profitability and wide moat, I am less concerned about the earnings due to my strategic use of option collars.I employ a \"dog collar\" strategy to limit downside risk while maintaining upside potential, ensuring a favorable risk-reward ratio.This approach allows me to own AAPL with defined risk, focusing on how I own it rather than just owning it outright.ozgurdonmazApple Inc. (NASDAQ:AAPL) reports quarterly earnings for its first fiscal quarter (ended December 2023) this Thursday after market close. As always, it will be a \"grab the popcorn\" event for fundamental analysts, traders and even casual market observers. This company's ongoing progress says a lot about consumer trends, in addition to the usual updated inspection of how this iconic company is operating. And with the stock down about 15% in just the past month, investors and traders are understandably going to read a lot into what Tim Cook and crew say on the earnings call.Here's the snapshot view on that, highlighted (or lowlighted) by many more recent analyst downgrades than upgrades. That, and some prior quarter data, conspires to provide a C- revisions grade from Seeking Alpha's quant team.Seeking AlphaWhy I don't care... as much as I normally mightIn my last article on AAPL back on October 25, I placed a hold rating on it. The stock is down 3% since that time, versus a gain of more than 4% for the S&P 500, where AAPL is a 6.5% weighting, second in size only to Nvidia (NVDA).And when I looked back over that before writing this, I noticed this final paragraph, which indicates everything I have to say about this stock three months later.There's always a way when you are a flexible investor. I found ways to participate and get my \"fair share\" of the tech wave of the past decade. And I'm looking forward to finding innovative ways to keep doing that, at a time when that part of the market might just be priced for perfection.As a non-fundamental analyst whose personal investing, research, writing and oversight of the investing group Sungarden YARP Portfolio, I don't have much to add to the dozens of Seeking Alpha analysts when it comes to financial forecasts, dissecting the balance sheet and income statement, and evaluating the potential for sales of new and existing Apple products.But before I get to what does matter in my own investing world (and to some degree by association, my investing group subscribers), here's a quick update on the closest thing I get to fundamental analysis: interpreting some of the Seeking Alpha quant factor grades. AAPL is still an A+ for profitability, which is the one I rely on the most. It is hard to see that changing any time soon, given the wide moat and switching cost advantages the company has built up since the days of Steve Jobs. And the iPod mini, for that matter.Valuation is statistically rich, as it is for many tech stocks. What remains to be seen is whether the market cares about that, and also whether the company's performance allows them to \"grow into\" those earnings. That's a tall task, I think.Growth is now up to a D from D- but that is not saying much. And the C grade for momentum, down from B+, syncs up with my earlier comments about the stock falling sharply the past month, and now about flat for nearly the past eight months. That is quite typical for a lot of stocks I observe. They can make 10-15%, but they can't keep those gains for too long.Seeking AlphaAnd that is a nice transition to why I don't care as much about AAPL's upcoming earnings. To be clear, I hope they \"crush it\" and the stock flies higher. But I did something recently in my portfolio, discussed it at length in a recent live session with subscribers (video available by request in the comments) and my AAPL position was one of the first iterations. Iterations of what? Something I have concluded that for my own objectives, is where I'm pivoting a significant amount of my own assets to. It is much less about WHAT I own, and all about HOW I own it.Because to me, everything is driven by objective. My objective. In the case of stocks in 2024, I was happy to rotate position sizes and among positions, grabbing dividend yield along the way. But somewhere along the line last year, I noted a market shift. I think markets reward different things than they did even last year, much less pre-pandemic. So, while in this case, my goal was to \"own stock in AAPL as part of my portfolio,\" there are countless ways to do that in these modern markets.For instance, in addition to buying shares of AAPL, there are leveraged and inverse ETFs that use that stock or derivatives that synthetically create essentially a stock position. And in the case of Apple, it is one of about 30 single stock ETFs available from YieldMax, a firm whose products essentially try to use options and T-bills to allow holders to trade off some stock price appreciations for a higher level of income.With AAPL, while I like to think of myself as prioritizing dividend income in my portfolio, this stock's yield doesn't amount to enough. Of course the safety rating is A+, the company is a cash machine, but uses very little of it to pay out to shareholders as a dividend.Seeking AlphaSo APLY, which aims to earn about 80% of AAPL's total return with about 80% of its risk over time, was a convenient way for me to step into the stock. I bought APLY on December 10, received a hefty 2%+ monthly dividend in December and January, but endured the price drop in the stock. All that was par for the course. This is equity investing, after all.TC2000But when I saw the stock start to reach an important \"decision point\" technically (see chart above), I realized that this would be an ideal situation to pivot. Not in my continued exposure to AAPL. But in the way I gained that exposure. And how I gained something else: the ability to customize the amount of risk I was taking to own it.This is something I am doing across much of the Sungarden YARP Portfolio, and in our weekly live sessions, I expect it will be a central educational topic. Because the structure I now use to own AAPL, or more properly what I do around that share position, is what I think will define both my own results and the service going forward. And, with what I can tell already is the highest SWAN (sleep well at night) factor I have had in my career.The \"Dog Collar\" Portfolio: high-level introductionThe quick history on this is that back in 2007, when I was an investment advisor and soon to be mutual fund manager, I became concerned enough about the stock market's risk level that I wanted to create a way to protect client assets. And thus, my own income, since back then my earnings were based solely on assets under management. At the same time, I was no stranger to bubbles, or at least markets that rise for longer than most expect. The structure I chose is not at all new, and is popular in some corners of the traditional and hedge fund investing community. The option collar.Starting a strategy that defines \"maximum loss\" at the time the underlying stock is bought turned out to be just the thing when, in 2008, the S&P 500 fell 37%. I ran a portfolio of collars from 2007 though 2010, and while I am not predicting a repeat of 2008, I certainly won't rule it out. So here we are again, with a stock market that keeps giving, with a set of mega-sized stocks leading it, and with downside risk also very high in my view.Who let the dogs out?We also have a time where the non-AAPLs of the stock market, several industrial, consumer and other blue chip stocks, have been extreme laggards. I'll stick to AAPL here, but the idea of bringing back the option collar around many of my stock and even ETF positions is to be able to invest more comfortably, and with a longer-term focus, in what I believe is a large number of potential contrarian comeback stories. I've written about some here, and will write on several others soon. In fact, I'm likely to frame many of my articles this way, in terms of whether I believe that options in some form make a good partner for those underlying stocks and ETFs.Option-aided investing is all the rage, in ETF form. YieldMax, JEPI, etc. are wildly popular. But taking AAPL as a case in point, I want to go a step further. I want to own the stock myself, but not be fully exposed to the potential that the company blows earnings or that the market caves in quickly. I want to define my worst-case scenario. Stop orders can't do that.Why \"dog collar?\" Because I'm using a collar around out of favor assets, i.e. \"dogs.\" AAPL is a short-term dog as noted, with the 15% dip in a month's time. But most stocks I'm using this way are much bigger dogs. And as they say, you've got to let the big dogs hunt!Collars: the basics (using my AAPL experience)Note that in order to do this \"cleanly\" one needs to be able to buy at least 100 shares of the stock. Options trade in \"round lots\" of 100 shares each.Using that minimum as an example, the combination works like this.Buy 100 shares of AAPL ($222 was my rounded cost per share)Buy 1 put option contract on AAPL at a strike price of $220Sell 1 call option contract on AAPL at a strike price of $260I chose to put this on through 6/20/25, though I can unwind one or more parts of it any time before then. The most likely events would be:If AAPL stock crashes, I can sell the stock at $220 at any point until June 20 of this year.If the stock flies higher, above $260, I will likely be forced (more likely in June than prior) to sell my 100 shares of AAPL at $260. However, I can also decide to buy more stock, buy call options for more upside, or even go back and buy APLY to again to try to continue my bullish ride in AAPL. I could even take a small position in a 2X AAPL ETF, though that's not in my field of vision just yet.The cost of the put was about $11 per share (times the 100 share \"lot\" and that's $1,100 out of pocket to pay for the puts). The call offset that somewhat, as for giving up the upside above $260 (the recent high price from last December), I received $3 a share or $300 now. So the \"net cost\" per share of setting clear lines on my best/worst case was $8.To complete the math, I have now taken a $222 stock that I am concerned about blowing earnings, but which I want to continue to own since it is at \"technical resistance\" and let's face it, the market tends to give stocks nine lives (cat joke mixed into the dog collar, if you will).So what's my best and worst case? Take those strike prices on the options, subtract that $8 net cost of the options pair, and we get:Upside = $252 / Downside = $212That's $30 of upside (15%) against just $10 of downside (5%). That 3:1 ratio is what I consider to be sufficient for a 5-month time frame.That's why I \"don't care\" about the upcoming earnings event for AAPLI want to own AAPL, and I want to pursue lots of upside if this quarter, next quarter, or some other time frame produces a comeback toward those all-time highs and beyond. But I'm unwilling to risk 10%, 20% or more of my position at this time. The dog collar is my chosen solution, here and in a lot of other situations I see. I plan to be essentially \"dog collar central\" for my subscribers, so they can decide for themselves with each stock or ETF I research HOW they want to own it, not just IF they want to own it.","news_type":1},"isVote":1,"tweetType":1,"viewCount":49,"commentLimit":10,"likeStatus":false,"favoriteStatus":false,"reportStatus":false,"symbols":[],"verified":2,"subType":0,"readableState":1,"langContent":"EN","currentLanguage":"EN","warmUpFlag":false,"orderFlag":false,"shareable":true,"causeOfNotShareable":"","featuresForAnalytics":[],"commentAndTweetFlag":false,"andRepostAutoSelectedFlag":false,"upFlag":false,"length":548,"optionInvolvedFlag":false,"xxTargetLangEnum":"ORIG"},"commentList":[],"hasMoreComment":false,"orderType":2}