by Karim Rahemtulla, Advisory Panelist

Recently, I explained the nuts and bolts of covered call investing - a bullish strategy that focuses more on returns than it does on risk. In my column, I used the example of Yamana Gold (NYSE: ), showing you how to reduce your cost when buying stocks - and thereby increasing your upside potential if the shares move higher.

Today, we’re going to kick things up a notch and explain how you can cleverly take the same covered call strategy and add a twist, by using deep-in-the-money covered calls. When you do so, you can achieve more consistent returns over time, while also protecting your capital.

Simply put, I’m going to focus on mitigating risk…

Getting Deep-In-The-Money… An Unconventional Covered Call Strategy

With a conventional covered call strategy, you buy regular shares of a stock and then sell a call option against them, whose strike price is higher than the current share price. Your aim is that the shares will move higher and will get called away at expiration for a profit.

While this does happen, it doesn’t occur as often as you might think. Plus, it usually only happens during an upward moving market.

However, with the deep-in-the-money (DITM) covered call strategy I’m focusing on today, we’re not expecting the shares to move higher. In fact, we don’t even need the stock to trade higher in order for us to make money. It can actually go lower (sometimes much lower) and we’ll still make money.

Pretty compelling, right?

In short, what we’re seeking is safety. And to get it, we need to employ a strategy that protects us much more often than not.

So how about a win/loss ratio of 75%? That’s the performance the deep-in-the-money strategy recorded over the past 13 years that I’ve used it. That means we’ve only lost money or broken even 2.5 times out of 10. At all other times, we’ve made money, usually notching up market-beating returns.