What's a Covered Call?

Zynga Inc. (ZNGA) pulls a Hail Mary pass and traders pushed up shares of its stock on Vegas like dreams. That's right, Zynga wants be a legal online website for gamling.  Role the dice investors.

What's a Covered Call?

The covered call is a strategy where an investor writes a call option contract (sells an option) while at the same time owning an equivalent number of shares of the underlying stock.If this stock is purchased simultaneously with writing the call contract, the strategy is commonly referred to as a buy-write.

While you may have heard that trading options is risky business, covered calls are actually a very conservative strategy, and most brokerages even allow retirement IRA accounts to write covered calls.

We are all responsible for keeping our portfolios alive. Its up to the individual investor to make the right choices and pull the trigger when necessary on buys and sells.  Mastery is taking the time to remind you of 5 helpful tips to increase your portfolio holdings.

Could Electronic Arts (EA) really be up for sale?  Its a big whatever but gamers are spending more time is cyberspace.  Thanks to buyout rumors and positive gaming news its helping Take-Two (TTWO) as well.

Mastery identified some stocks fighting to move up since hitting 12 month lows last week including Netflix (NFLX), Las Vegas Sands (LVS), Znga (ZNGA) and more.  We also found a few stocks worth checking out including 3D Systems (DDD) and the VXX.  We relive the first week of trading in August 2012.

Behold the greatness.

Shares of Las Vegas Sands (LVS), Netflix Inc. (NFLX), Zynga Inc (ZNGA), Take-Two Interactive (TTWO) and even Facebook (FB) bounced today.  This week they all got a piece of their ear removed and hit new 12 month low prices.  Today they have finally reversed course.

Shares of Facebook (FB), Las Vegas Sands (LVS), Netflix Inc. (NFLX), Zynga Inc (ZNGA), and Take-Two Interactive (TTWO) all got a piece of their ear removed hitting new 12 month low prices.  Mastery believes a few of these 5 stocks can return to greatness but not all of them.

What's a Covered Call?

The covered call is a strategy where an investor writes a call option contract (sells an option) while at the same time owning an equivalent number of shares of the underlying stock.If this stock is purchased simultaneously with writing the call contract, the strategy is commonly referred to as a buy-write.

While you may have heard that trading options is risky business, covered calls are actually a very conservative strategy, and most brokerages even allow retirement IRA accounts to write covered calls.

The stocks in question are Zynga (ZNGA) Yelp (YELP) Safeway (SWY). All of which have greater than 25% short interest!