THE ONE TICKER

RETIREMENT
PLAN
 THE ONE TICKER
RETIREMENT PLAN
BY LARRY BENEDICT, EDITOR, ONE TICKER TRADER

Welcome to One Ticker Trader! they may fly in the face of everything you’ve
been taught to believe about investing.
My name is Larry Benedict. Over the next 12
months, I’ll be your guide and your mentor. In 2008, when the world was melting down,
my hedge fund—Banyan Capital—generated 95
See, late last year, a friend and colleague asked me million dollars for our clients. And I did it using
the following question, which became the genesis the same rules I’m going to share with you here.
of the advisory you just subscribed to. He asked:
Because of this feat, Jack Schwager wrote
If you had to generate as much a chapter about me in Hedge Fund Market
money in the markets as you can… Wizards, the fourth book in the wildly successful
without taking crazy risks… what “Market Wizards” series.
would you do?
I say none of this to brag. Quite the opposite,
We looked at some of my trading statements, actually. What I’ve learned after all my time on
and I showed him exactly what I would do. Wall Street is this:

Here’s one of those statements: YOU CAN DO IT TOO.

That’s one of the great myths of Wall Street—that

you actually need them!

But as I’ve shown hundreds of traders over the

past 30 years… trading is a teachable skill. You
just need the right mentor.

Now what I’m about to share with you may come

as a surprise to you…
As you can see, I generated $2,179,066.22
that month—in profit. So, just be prepared to challenge some of your
existing beliefs.
And I’ve generated similar amounts—many
times… over many months—using exactly what After all, these are the ideas that helped me
I’m about to show you. become wealthy… and led to the success of my
$800 million hedge fund.
It all boils down to three simple rules… and

2 • THE ONE TICKER RETIREMENT PLAN

Okay, so first things, first… Can regular investors trade and invest in a way
that allows them to make outsized returns from
DIVERSIFICATION IS FOR major themes and trends?
RULE #1
DUMMIES
Yes, you can. And these simple strategies are
You know who says you should diversify? People largely responsible for the success of my own
who don’t know what they are doing. hedge fund.

If you know what you are doing (like I do… and Like Paulson and Burry, 2008-2009 was an
you will, soon)… then you should never diversify. incredibly profitable time for me too.

Diversification is the sign of a weak portfolio and But I didn’t do it with complex strategies like they
an unclear mind. used.

In One Ticker Trader, we will focus on just one So, how did I do it?
trading idea at a time.
Within weeks of the market hitting rock bottom
That’s the first thing I’d like you to know. in March 2009, I made one of my biggest and
In anything that you’re doing—whether it’s most profitable trades.
writing, business… and especially trading—focus
on one idea at a time. The trade was so simple that it involved
just a single play—just one symbol:
Let me give you an example…
(BAC)
It was March 2009. The S&P 500 was down 50%
from its high. No one was sure if the worst of the At the time, one of my market contacts told
Great Recession had passed. me the government was preparing to sell their
holdings in Bank of America. The position was
In fact, many wondered if markets would ever go worth $20 billion. With that much stock, selling
up again. it was sure to crater the share price.

Yet, a small group of Wall Street insiders made When the market knows a big owner of stock
fortunes – off a single idea! will need to sell their holdings, investors are
reluctant to pay a high price for it. That’s because
For example, hedge fund manager John Paulson
a mass unloading of stock will drive the price
personally made $4 billion betting against the
down.
housing and mortgage markets. He made even
more for his hedge fund clients. It’s a surefire way to lose money. So, most
investors stay away until the big seller begins to
Michael Burry’s hedge fund made $2.7 billion
offload their position.
from making largely the same trade.
Without investors buying, the stock can plummet
Now, they made huge bets using complex
to extremely cheap levels. As Warren Buffett
derivatives and trading strategies that aren’t
would say, it’s like buying $1 of assets for just .75
available to regular investors.
cents (or less!).
But is there an easier way?

3 • THE ONE TICKER RETIREMENT PLAN

And as the government sold their massive Let me explain…
position, savvy investors could take advantage of
this move to build a position while the stock price HOW I GET A “SNAPSHOT” OF THE
was low. MARKETS

Not only did we take advantage of the rise

When the selling was over, most investors would
in commodity prices… We capitalized on the
start buying the stock again. As a result, the stock
widespread market move out of tech and into
price would move higher… giving those who got
value stocks like ADM.
in early the chance to cash out in a rising market.
You see, when the Fed begins raising rates, it
That’s exactly what happened.
forces a change in the market. With higher rates,
I bought 10 million shares of Bank of America at tech valuations drop. Money simply becomes
around $2 per share for my hedge fund. I sold it more expensive. As a result, the market shifts
all later that day for around $3 per share, clearing towards value stocks like ADM that don’t need to
a $10 million profit. borrow money at high rates… and away from tech
stocks trading many multiples above their true
All from buying into a single security at the right worth.
time, and then cashing out when everything
played out as expected. After looking at the price action, and combining
that with the macro-economic story, I begin to
Now, I don’t cash-out of every trade as quickly as build a bigger picture for how the market will
that. Sometimes I’m in the trade for a few days or move. Not just today, but for the days and weeks
a few weeks. ahead.

For example, this past January we bought There’s no better way to look at the bigger picture
call options on agricultural processing giant, than two of my favorite indexes: the Invesco QQQ
Archer-Daniels-Midland (ADM). We Trust Series 1 (QQQ) and the SPDR S&P 500 ETF
knew the boom in commodities would be great Trust (SPY).
for companies like this… yet prices were still
undervalued. QQQ tracks the movement of the Nasdaq, while
SPY tracks the S&P 500.
We were right… and took a profit on the trade
These two tickers give me a “snapshot” of the
However, this trade took a little longer than economy and the markets in a single glance.
usual. In 23 days, we made a 147% gain. That’s
still more than double your money in less than a And so far this year, it has been a down year for
month. both indexes. Both the Nasdaq and the S&P 500
officially reached bear market territory. That has
It’s simple really… created a choppy, back and forth market that’s
frustrating for bulls and bears.
I look for market themes and events, find
opportunities where the market has mispriced For many investors and traders, that’s bad news.
the asset, and then I move.
They love to trade or invest when the market has
In fact, we took advantage of two themes in one a clear longer-term direction. But not me.
with this trade.

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This market action hasn’t stopped me from you in the dark… while they keep big profits for
trading it successfully. That’s why I love markets themselves.
like this.
Options were created as a way to manage risk
This year alone, I’ve traded QQQ and SPY over a more acutely. It’s just that people use them
dozen times. What’s more, because I don’t have incorrectly. Their ignorance, through no fault of
a bias either way on where the market should go, their own, puts them in risky situations.
I’m comfortable trading it regardless of whether
it’s going up or down. The fact is, options are an incredible risk
management tool. They let you risk less and
Half of the trades were calls, which meant betting potentially earn more. They allow you to distort
on the market going up. The other half were puts, the normal rules of risk vs reward.
which meant betting on the market falling.
That’s why professional traders like me always
Either way, I still boasted about an 80% win rate. look at the options table before executing a trade.

Now, these indexes simply give me a feel for What’s more, options tend to have an amplifying
the overall market. I can get a better sense of its effect on the gains you see from the underlying
direction, and what’s to come. stock movement.

But sometimes it’s necessary to home in on For example:

specific sectors. That’s why I like to pick just one
sector or one stock at a time, and focus in on it. Take the Airbnb call options we bought last
November. We sold these calls in just 4 days for
After carefully reviewing hundreds of stocks a 256% gain. Yet, the underlying stock only rose
across various market sectors, I’ll select the asset 18%.
class that I believe will give me the best chance to
make the biggest gains with the least amount of Or the Alibaba calls we bought this January. We
risk. sold them just 8 days later for a 112% gain… but
the underlying stock only rose 15% during that
But nowhere will you see me taking a “diversified stretch.
portfolio approach” to anything.
This is also the case when buying puts and the
One symbol. One trade. One idea. At a time. underlying stock drops.
Period.
For example, I figured the retail sector would
And that brings me to the second guideline or suffer in the face of inflation.
“rule” that I personally follow:
So, on November 19 last year I recommended put
WHENEVER POSSIBLE, options on the SPDR S&P Retail ETF (XRT). 14
RULE #2
TRADE OPTIONS ON THE days later, we sold the option for a 153% gain…
STOCK—RATHER THAN while the underlying ETF fell 10%.
THE UNDERLYING STOCK ITSELF.
As you can see, the gains tend to be 5-10-times
People think options are risky. That’s wrong! larger than what you see in the stock.
It’s just one more way Wall Street tries to keep
Did you notice something else?

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That’s right—the gains come much faster too! call options on the SPDR Gold Trust (GLD). We
were betting on the upside in gold prices. We
What might take a stock years to achieve, an closed the calls for a 73% gain in 11 days.
options play on the same stock can achieve in
weeks, even days. Then just two days after we sold the calls, we bet
on the downside in gold prices. So, we bought
In the case of Airbnb, the biggest rise from puts this time around. And in just five days… took
its lowest point to its highest was just in a 136% profit.
74%... and it took 3 months.
Nailed them both. In fact, often I’ll trade the
It took the extraordinary flooding of cash same stock one way and then the other as the
from the Fed and 14 months to get XRT to market turns.
rise 126%...
I call these “Double Dutch” trades — I’ll
And it took Alibaba more than a year to buy call options to play the rising stock
rise over 100% in 2017. price, then when it looks like the rally is
over, I’ll buy put options to profit as the
I hope you’re starting to see how this all works.
stock retraces lower.
But, there’s one more rule I follow…
Here’s an example…
It’s crucial to my new advisory. Really, it’s
essential to everything I do Inflation and interest rates have been one of the
biggest stories this year.
RULE #3
Be flexible. Sometimes gains can
come faster on bearish trades than What’s the best way to play that? Plenty of people
bullish ones! And sometimes bear will tell you to buy gold, commodities, oil stocks,
markets can provide even bigger gains than bull or real estate.
markets.
You could do all that.
That’s the best thing about this strategy…
Or you could use the security that I believe gives
I don’t care which way the market goes. I you the best opportunity to profit from interest
don’t care whether things are bullish or rate moves. It allows you to trade when the
bearish. market moves one way and then the other over
several weeks.
Options let me trade either direction the
underlying stock is moving – up or down. And It’s the iShares 20 Plus Year Treasury Bond
I get rewarded just the same for nailing those ETF (TLT). It’s a great way to play the market’s
directional moves. (I showed you earlier how I’ve attitude towards interest rates. As interest rates
done this with QQQ and SPY — an 80% win rate rise, the price of this security falls. As interest
on about a dozen trades.) rates fall, the price of the security goes up.

I do this regularly with gold too. Most traders are On January 12, I figured interest rates would
one-directional with gold… they only bet on the rise, so I recommended my subscribers buy put
upside. But that’s not how the market works… options on TLT. Remember, rising interest rates
mean the stock will fall. A put option allows us to
For example, on November 4 last year, we bought
profit from a falling stock.

6 • THE ONE TICKER RETIREMENT PLAN

One month later, the trade played out as Instead, they became experts in a small field of
expected. We collected a 117% return on our securities. Sometimes that was a single security —
option trade. in my case, it was the S&P 500. That’s all I traded.

One idea. One security. The truth is, you don’t need to trade dozens
or hundreds of stocks to profit from a specific
But that wasn’t the end of the interest rate trade. market move.
Two weeks later, I saw another opportunity.
Again, I figured that interest rates were heading One is enough.
higher, and that would cause the price of TLT to
fall. And as I mentioned, often that can mean trading
the same asset on the way up as well as the way
We entered a put option trade on February 22, down.
and then exited with an 83% gain just three
weeks later. Each month, I’ll identify the most tradeable
theme in the market, and then we’ll trade the
Again, one idea. One security. security that offers the best chance to profit from
that theme.
But there was more...
I’ll pick one stock to trade. We’ll either buy call
Three weeks later, it was time to “Double Dutch” options or put options. And we’ll aim to make up
the trade by taking the opposite view. to three trades on the stock per month.

I believed that interest rates had moved too far With our initial recommendation, we’ll detail why
for now and would snap back. That’s exactly how we chose the stock, what we think will happen,
it played out. and factors that could influence our trades.

We bought call options this time, on April 19. We We’ll explain exactly when it’s time to buy and
sold them one week later for a 25% gain. sell, with the prices to pay.

Two weeks later, we placed a trade for the same At the end of the month, we’ll send out a review
direction on May 6. We closed that position for a of the trades. We’ll talk about how much money
34% gain in just four days. we made, our total profit and loss (P/L), as well
as a preview of potential themes/stocks for the
Those winners were all from one stock, centered
next month.
around one specific event. Yet, we were able to
profit four times… I look forward to showing you the same
strategies I’ve used as a hedge fund manager and
That’s why it’s important to focus on just one
independent trader for 30+ years.
stock, and one event.
Remember, it doesn’t take an $800 million hedge
It’s exactly what I did when I began my career in
fund to make money… all it takes is one stock.
the trading pits in Chicago. There, each trader
specialized in specific securities. Regards,

They didn’t jump from one exchange to the next, Larry Benedict
trading things they knew nothing about. Editor, One Ticker Trader

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