The Blue Hour

Welcome to The Blue Hour

The blue hour is the period of twilight during dawn each morning and dusk each evening when the sun is a significant distance below the horizon and the residual, indirect sunlight takes on a predominantly blue hue (typically 40 minutes in length).

The BCI team will use this theme to provide additional educational content to our members in the form of webinars, Q&A, interviews with experts and much more. Our initial 30 – 40-minute trial run will be held on July 28th at 9 PM ET in the form of a webinar with Q&A and additional comments. Alan will be hosting the webinars and Barry Bergman, the BCI Director of Research will be responding to your questions simultaneously. These events will be free to premium members who sign up and will be recorded and available on the premium member site and free to all our premium members. We will be providing a series of six these educational events to our premium members throughout the year. These presentations will also be available to non-members at a modest fee. Ultimately, the development and format of The Blue Hour will depend on your suggestions and feedback as we continue our mission to become CEO of our own money. Education is power!

Free to Premium Members only.
For details on benefits of premium membership & Information on The Blue Hour, click the arrow below.

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SO WHY WAIT? JOIN THE BLUE COLLAR INVESTOR PREMIUM MEMBERS TODAY FOR IMMEDIATE ACCESS

If you are already a Premium Member you can access The blue Hour through your Premium Member account. To gain more information on The Blue Hour click the login button below.

The Blue Hour – April 27 – 2016Tickets Available – Book Your Spot!!*

Join Alan Ellman for another launch of the Blue Hour. The Top 5 Option Questions from 2016.
April 27th at 9 PM ET.
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Evaluating Mutual Fund Portfolios and Financial Advisors
Plus: The Top 5 Option Questions from 2016

This is a 2-part webinar presentation:

1: Many of us hold portfolios of actively-managed mutual funds that we’ve either selected ourselves or, more likely, been based on financial advisor advice. This webinar will provide a user-friendly technique to evaluate the performance of these portfolios and hence the performance of our financial advisors. We should commend those advisers who are out-performing the overall market and certainly question those who are under-performing the market and charging us fees to fall short. “Indexing will be defined and explained and a system to set up comparison charts (FOR FREE) will be highlighted.

2: The BCI team has gone through thousands of questions sent to us in 2016 and selected the top-5 most frequently asked questions to ask and answer in the second part of this webinar.

As always, written questions will be answered live by Barry Bergman, the BCI Director of Research, while Alan hosts the presentation.
***Written questions will be answered live during the webinar
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The Blue Hour – July 29 – 2016 *Available to Watch in Members area*

Join Alan Ellman for another Blue Hour. Bear Market Strategies
July 29 sign up to watch.
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Learn how to structure and manage our covered call writing and put-selling portfolios when market forces are bearish in nature. Stock and option selection as well as position management skills will enhance our opportunities for success and provide protection to assist in our goal of capital preservation.

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The Blue Hour – January 27 – 2016 *Available to Watch in Members area*

Join Alan Ellman for another launch of the Blue Hour. Poor Man’s Covered Call
January 27 at 9 PM ET / sign up today.
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Poor Man’s Covered Call (PMCC)- Course Outline
Hosted by:Dr. Alan Ellman.

Topics discussed
• Strategy overview
• Overview of traditional covered call writing
• The PMCC defined
• Levels of trading approval
• Broker commissions
• Pros and cons of the PMCC
• Best underlying securities
• How to structure a trade
• Strike price selection
• INTC example
• MRK example
• XLK example
• Initial calculations
• Maximum profit and breakeven
• Maximum loss
• Risk-reward profile
• Closing a winning trade
• Greeks perspective
• Earnings reports
• Ex-dividend dates
• Changes in cost basis
• Rolling LEAPS
• Position management/ exit strategies
• Strategy summary
• And So Much More
***Written questions will be answered live during the webinar

The Poor Man’s Covered Call (PMCC)- Overview

The Poor Man’s Covered Call is a non-traditional way of using covered call writing at a reduced capital outlay. Its technical term is a long call diagonal debit spread where long-dated options known as LEAPS are used to replace stocks or ETFs. The cost of buying LEAPS is much less than that of purchasing stocks themselves and so the outlay is much less and potential return on capital can be significantly higher.

Like all strategies, there are pros and cons related to this strategy and specific ways to set up and manage trades. There is no free lunch as some would expect when simply looking at the definition of the strategy.

This presentation will get into the specifics of the strategy and provide information (I believe) found nowhere else.

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The Blue Hour – December 1st – 2016 *Available to Watch in Members area*

Join Alan Ellman for the third launch of the Blue Hour. This will be a introduction to the Blue Hour, ask question get answers and meet the BCI community.
December 1st at 9 PM ET.
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Stock Investing for Students and Those Not Near Retirement A Plan to Get Rich Slowly and Retire Young
Hosted by:Dr. Alan Ellman.

Topics discussed
• Strategy overview
• Compounding example
• Dollar-cost averaging example
• Dividend reinvestment example
• Basic assumptions
• Long-term goal
• Compound savings calculator: www.bankrate.com
 The first 20 years
 The last 20 years
• Mutual funds versus ETFs
• Why favor index mutual funds?
• The “Kiplinger 25” versus the Vanguard S&P 500 index fund (admiral)
• Moving from mutual funds to individual stocks
• Stock screening categories
• Online stock screener
• Watch list with industry/sector breakdown
• And So Much More
***Written questions will be answered live during the webinar

Stock Investing For Students and Those Not Near Retirement

Self-investing starting at a young age can ensure a successful financial future and an early and comfortable retirement. So why is nobody doing this? The answer is complicated and includes such factors and the social pressures facing our youth, certain pre-conceived ideas regarding our ability to successfully self-invest and the education or lack thereof needed to motivate our youth to undertake such a long-term project.
How often have we heard the expression “if I only knew then what I know now….” You said it, I said it and many of our friends and family have also used that comment because it is true. By the time we realize that we should have, would have and could have, we start playing catch-up and in many cases it’s too late. Our youth is simply not educated in a practical manner as to how to self-invest despite the fact that it is one of the most critical skills they need to be taught. My hope is that this presentation will, in some ways, change that and have a lasting impact on the quality of life of our children and those not near retirement. My goals are two-fold:
 Educate our youth on the basics of stock investing so the concept will not be intimidating
 Set up a user-friendly game plan based on historical statistics that will lead to a wealthy
and secure retirement
I will use basic financial concepts that have been proven effective over the years such as dollar- cost-averaging, cash allocation, dividend re-investment as well as fundamental and technical analysis. Certain basic assumptions are made that can be adjusted according to the investor’s specific situation but here are the basic assumptions:
 You invest 10% of your gross income each year (earn $50k, invest $5k)
 Start at age 18 (can be adjusted)
 Average gross annual income of $60k for the first 20 years and $80k for the second 20 years of our 40-year plan (can be adjusted)
 Start off using broad market mutual funds until portfolio value reaches $25k
 Switch to individual stocks after $25k
 Set up specific guidelines for exiting a position that can be automated
 Use an online stock screener using fundamental, technical, descriptive and common sense requirements for stock selection a few years after beginning to self-invest
 Portfolio re-balancing annually
Given these parameters, here is what a retirement portfolio will look like after 40-years using conservative historical statistics:

Stock Investing for Students and those not near retirement: 40-year plan

Using a savings calculator, conservative historical statistics and basic financial principles you can retire at age 58 with $1.8 million. The key is to start at a young age and use the power of compounding, the 8th wonder of the world. The techniques presented in the webinar are for everybody because they are user friendly and self-motivational as our youth watches their portfolio grow larger and larger as will their confidence and quality of life. This is my hope and my dream.
Alan
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The Blue Hour – September 29 – 2017 *Available to watch in Members area*

Join Alan Ellman for the secound launch of the Blue Hour. Using Put Options to Buy and Sell Stock
September 29 at 9 PM ET / sign up today.
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Using Put Options to Buy and Sell Stock

Covered call writing and put-selling are conservative option strategies which provide means to generate monthly cash flow. In my books, DVDs and journal articles, there have been discussions of how puts can also be used to buy stocks at a discount or to protect against substantial price depreciation. In this webinar, a strategy will be proposed using puts to both buy and sell stocks so as to provide protection on both the buying and selling aspects of our stock portfolios.

Strategy overview
Stocks will initially be purchased by selling out-of-the-money cash-secured puts which, when exercised, will allow us to buy the stock at a discount:
Cost basis of stock = Strike price – put premium
Once the shares are “put to us” an out-of-the-money protective put is purchased giving us protection against catastrophic share depreciation.

Discussion
Put options are generally used to generate monthly cash flow but can also be used to buy a stock at a discount and to protect against catastrophic share depreciation.

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The Blue Hour – July 28 – 2017 *Available to watch in Members area*

Join Alan Ellman for the first launch of the Blue Hour. This will be a introduction to the Blue Hour, ask question get answers and meet the BCI community.
July 28th at 9 PM ET.
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Portfolio Overwriting
Increasing Profits in Your Buy-And-Hold Portfolios Using Covered Call Writing
Learn how to increase portfolio returns by selling stocks options while simultaneously reducing the risk of having low cost basis and dividend –producing stocks sold as a result of the option commitment. This webinar will demonstrate how to generate monthly cash flow by selling options while at the same time continuing the flow of dividends from our shares and still retaining our shares and dramatically reducing the risk of tax issues despite our option obligation.

Topics discussed
• Brief review of covered call writing
• Calculating covered call returns
• Stock example
• Exchange-traded fund example
• Strike price selection
• Portfolio overwriting defined
• Pros and cons of portfolio overwriting
• Why early exercise is so rare
• Rolling options
• Role of dividends
• Locating ex-dividend dates
• How to avoid early exercise
• Home depot example
• Summary
• Member benefits
***Written questions will be answered live during the webinar
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