Yes selling OTM puts can lead to regular income and I think they fall under friendly 1256 tax rules but I don't really remember... but if you're smart you will have them cash-secured, meaning if the market or stock symbol tanks and you're suddenly forced to buy the shares you can do it w/o going into a margin call.
HOWEVER - these days I would not be selling puts unless I wanted to own the underlying stock for a long term position, as there is the great likelihood that things will go south again quickly and blow out my short put positions. If volatility makes *very*very* OTM puts attractive I'd consider them for a trade, but unless you're looking to either trade them or accumulate stock, selling puts is NOT recommended during periods of market volatility even if the volatility makes puts 'attractive' because of the increased IV.
Conversely you could write covered calls on ETFs or stocks you own - such as quality dividend stocks. That way you can collect *something* more than MM rates, and you have some downside protection to exit your position before losses kick in. If the stock goes up, whoop-de-doo, you make a profit.
Index futures options (/ES) or index options (OEX, SPX) also have trading nuances such as wide bid-ask spreads, goofy settlement schedules, and depending on the vehicle, limited liquidity.

@msf - I started another thread on using options to generate income instead. Marcus and Amex Personal Savings are FDIC insured and yielding around 1.5%. Vanguard Prime is yielding around 0.6, Treasury MM little lower. There was as a Time Prime was yielding more than the FDIC insured accounts which is why I had parked my cash there - cash I need to pay college tuitions.
Right now, I'm thinking of moving it to one of the above two FDIC insured Bank MMs. Unless I hear what I want to hear in my other thread and want to try and eke out a bit more return with as low a risk as possible.

@FD1000 ... What is your source for the VIX?
FD1000 says, my reporting is wrong and ... "In the last 2 days, the VIX is around 40"
My source is linked below. I stand by my statement and it can be postured by visiting the link below. Just hover over the VIX in the matrix and you can see that for the past couple of days the VIX has been back of the 40's and in the mid 30's. Click in it and it becomes more revealing.
https://finviz.com/futures.ashx
This now makes count two, from my perspective, that you have engaged me and I have withstood the challenge coming from you, FD1000, not once but now twice.
This person certaintly seems to enjoy striffe not only with me but others as well. Howerver, on the bright side of things, their challenges, now twice failed, have given even more credence to my postings.

(link) to VIX numbers
April 15-16 VIX > 40
another (source)
Another (source)
==========
BTW, I can't remember the second challenge, please remind me :-)

Several comments
1) FMIJX ranks in M* in its category for YTD and 1-3 years at 92-94 which is at the bottom 6-8%. In the last 5 years it ranked in the top 10% in 3 years but at the bottom 2 years. That should tell you its inconsistency. Up to 2016 it was a much better performer.
2) From their 3/31/2020 outlook "At this early stage, COVID-19 has hurt value investors much more than their growth counterparts. Many sectors and industries in the value camp, such as financials, energy, industrials, travel and hospitality, have been the hardest hit by the virus. Intensifying the market pressure, Saudi Arabia’s unexpected move to open the spigots has crushed the price of oil. Nearly all energy-related companies, including businesses that only have moderate energy exposure, have seen their stocks decline precipitously. Year-to-date, value has underperformed growth by 10.69%, as the MSCI EAFE Value Index has declined 8.20%,"
3) You can switch to CWVGX with better performance + risk. See PV(link)
4) I have been avoiding international for years now. The SP500 gets about 40% of its earnings from abroad and QQQ about 50%.

Hi @VintageFreak, I share your concerns. With the low yields on cash ... and, the thought that equities will run low on gas ... I hope to be at my target allocation of 10% cash, 45% income and 45% equity come the first part of summer. Within equities I'm about half in the good dividend paying value type funds with the other half being in growth.

Just found Fidelity closed three of its money market funds a couple of weeks ago (sorry if this was already posted previously):
https://www.pionline.com/investing/fidelity-closes-3-money-market-funds-new-investors
or
https://www.nasdaq.com/articles/fidelity-shuts-three-money-market-funds-to-most-new-investors-2020-03-31
or
https://finance.yahoo.com/news/fidelity-shuts-three-money-market-205320236.html

Vanguard says this is to preserve yield as rates on Treasury paper plummet. If there isn't a lot of money flowing in (net), the fund doesn't have to buy a lot of low yielding notes all at once. So closing is a good thing for existing investors.
Based on that, I would expect it to reopen in 3-6 months, when most of the portfolio has turned over. By then, rates should have stabilized (at 0?). So even if it has to buy more paper after reopening later, that shouldn't hurt the yield.
I could have sworn that this fund was yielding around 1.2% not long ago. It's now down do 0.63%. So one can understand Vanguard's interest in doing what it can to slow the decline.
Even now, that 0.63% is so low that I'd rather keep money in a bank account. There are several yielding 1.5% or better.

I moved money from Vanguard Prime to this fund because it would be "safer". I need to move it to high interest money market I guess. Or make some other plans.

April 17th, 2020 Episode:

I thought we would make it to month end before I'd be scribing another barometer report but with Friday's upward move and +75 point day gain in the S&P 500 Index puts Old_Skeet's market barometer into overvalue range with a reading of 143. This is a 10 point decline for the week. The overvalue reading is on the low side of the barometer's scale, from fair value, with the readings of overbought and extremely overbought following as the barometer readings decline. Generally, a lower barometer reading indicates that there is less investment value in the Index over a higher barometer reading.
For the week the Index moved upward +85 points from 2790 to 2875 for a +3.0% gain. This puts the Index up off it's recent 52 week low by +28.5% but down by -15.1% off it's 52 week high. With this, the Index remains in correction territory. The yield advantage remains with the stock Index at 2.07% vs 0.65% for the US10YrT. Short volume in the Index remains high at 69% (weekly average) while the VIX has declined to the mid 30% range. Seems, the shorts continue to bet against the rally. For the week the three best performing sectors were consumer discretionary +7.86%, health care +6.34%, and technology +4.79%.
So where does this put Old_Skeet with respect to his portfolio? As of Friday my portfolio bubbles at 13% cash, 38% income and 49% equity. My temporary rebound asset allocation is 10% cash, 45% income and 45% equity. With the FOMC & Treasury buying bonds and lending to state and municipal governemnts I'm still with my plan to continue to buy on the income side of my portfolio. I plan to soon start a rebalance process where I will be reducing my equity allocation and moving the sell procees to the income side of my portfolio. Overall, my portfolio is performing much like a conserative asset allocation fund that holds 30% to 50% equity.
For the week my three best performing funds were on the equity side of the portfolio. They were SPECX +6.42% ... KAUAX +5.89% and, AGTHX +5.83%. Year-to-date my best performing fund is CTFAX +9.59%. It is a flexible portfolio fund that adjust it's stock allocation to the movement of the S&P 500 Index. At the beginning of the stock market swoon it was 15% equity and now holds 70% equity. Sometime within the next week (or the next) I look for it to start it's rebalance process where it will begin to sell down its equity allocation, booking some profit, and increasing it's bond allocation. Based upon the S&P 500 Index's current reading of 2875 I look for it to adjust to a 35% (maybe 40%) equity allocation with the balance being in bonds and cash.
For those interested, you can learn more about CTFAX by clicking on the below link.
https://www.columbiathreadneedleus.com/investment-products/mutual-funds/Columbia-Thermostat-Fund/Class-A/details/?cusip=197199755&_n=1
Thanks for stopping by and reading.
Take care ... be safe ... and, I wish all ... "Good Investing."
I am, Old_Skeet

Vanguard says this is to preserve yield as rates on Treasury paper plummet. If there isn't a lot of money flowing in (net), the fund doesn't have to buy a lot of low yielding notes all at once. So closing is a good thing for existing investors.
Based on that, I would expect it to reopen in 3-6 months, when most of the portfolio has turned over. By then, rates should have stabilized (at 0?). So even if it has to buy more paper after reopening later, that shouldn't hurt the yield.
I could have sworn that this fund was yielding around 1.2% not long ago. It's now down do 0.63%. So one can understand Vanguard's interest in doing what it can to slow the decline.
Even now, that 0.63% is so low that I'd rather keep money in a bank account. There are several yielding 1.5% or better.

From Vanguard's pressroom:
https://pressroom.vanguard.com/news/Press-Release-Vanguard-Closes-Treasury-Money-Market-Fund-New-Investors-041620.html

https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/891190/000168386320003566/f3655d1.htm
497 1 f3655d1.htm VANGUARD TREASURY MONEY MARKET FUND 497
Vanguard Treasury Money Market Fund
Supplement Dated April 16, 2020, to the Prospectus and Summary Prospectus Dated December 20, 2019
Vanguard Treasury Money Market Fund (the "Fund") is closed to all new investors (with the exception of participants who invest in the Fund only through defined contribution plans that offer the Fund as an existing option).
The Fund will remain closed until further notice and there is no specific timeframe for when the Fund will reopen. During the Fund's closed period, all current shareholders may continue to purchase, exchange, or redeem shares of the Fund online, by telephone, or by mail.
The Fund may modify these transaction policies at any time and without prior notice to shareholders. You may call Vanguard for more detailed information about the Fund's transaction policies. Participants in employer-sponsored plans may call Vanguard Participant Services at 800-523-1188. Investors in nonretirement accounts and IRAs may call Vanguard's Investor Information Department at 800-662-7447.

Agree. Very nice set of papers from @sma3.
I've been going through the NEJM paper and have some clarifying questions about the oxygen support figures. From a high level perspective, this detail doesn't matter, but I do try to understand various figures.
With respect to invasive/non-invasive mechanical/non-mechanical ventilation, the NEJM study seems to characterize ventilators as invasive mechanical, and ECMOs ("similar to the heart-lung by-pass machine used in open-heart surgery") as invasive non-mechanical ventilation.
So of the total 34 patients receiving invasive ventilation, it appears that 30 were on ventilators and 4 on ECMOs. That's out of the 53 that completed the study.
The text talks about "a decrease of at least 2 points from baseline on a modified ordinal scale (as recommended by the WHO R&D Blueprint Group) ... The six-point scale consists of the following categories: 1, not hospitalized; 2, hospitalized, not requiring supplemental oxygen; 3, hospitalized, requiring supplemental oxygen; 4, hospitalized, requiring nasal high-flow oxygen therapy, noninvasive mechanical ventilation, or both; 5, hospitalized, requiring invasive mechanical ventilation, ECMO, or both; and 6, death."
Looking at Figure 1, first column (invasive oxygen support at baseline), I see "only" 16 patients (48%) dropping at least two points. So I'm puzzled by this line in the post above: "They were able to reduce their oxygen requirements by 2 steps ( from ventilator to nasal oxygen for example) in 56 % of patients which implies that they are getting much better."
The paper also describes a finer granularity of oxygen support, including "low-flow oxygen, nasal high-flow oxygen, [and] noninvasive positive pressure ventilation [NIPPV]", Perhaps sma3 is using another scale where high-flow oxygen and NIPPV are counted as separate levels. If so, it would help to see what that scale looks like.
None of this changes the generally positive results reported in the paper. I'm just trying to understand the definitions and numbers.

...but it is still expensive.
https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1370177/000139834420008148/fp0053131_497.htm
RIVERNORTH FUNDS
RiverNorth Core Opportunity Fund
Institutional Share Class
(Ticker Symbol RNCIX)
April 17, 2020
SUPPLEMENT TO PROSPECTUS DATED
January 28, 2020
The RiverNorth Core Opportunity Fund Institutional Share Class to Reduce Initial Minimum Investment Amount.
On April 6, 2020 the Board of Trustees (the "Board") of RiverNorth Funds approved a change to the initial minimum investment amount for the Institutional Share Class for the RiverNorth Core Opportunity Fund (the “Fund”). Effective on April 24, 2020, the minimum initial investment amount for the Fund’s Institutional Share Class (ticker RNCIX) will reduce from $5,000,000 to $100,000.
RIVERNORTH FUNDS
c/o ALPS Fund Services, Inc.
1290 Broadway, Suite 1100
Denver, Colorado 80203
1-888-848-7569
Please retain this supplement with your Prospectus for future reference.

+1 @Old_Skeet. Thanks for the chart. I see "Lean Hogs" are still running a little thin :)

I assume that the studies will have enough patients in them so eventually we will have lots of data on effectiveness on patients in hospital. I do not know what egibility criteria they are using to add a patient to the study; presumably on assisted ventilation ( ie at least BiPap) or significant oxygenation or other measures of severity but if they are smart they have included patietns in early stages to see if it prevents deterioration
Keep in mind thought that even if it is extremely effective and say reduces mortality or deterioration by 50% it will not stop transmission or new cases. People will still be worried about getting sick and the still increased ( if lower) risk of death.
Thus a wildly successful drug may lessen the panic and fear, but may not do as much to reopen things as people will still be worried about getting sick
I very much doubt Hydroxychloroquine will do much, but we will know more shortly.
Several small better studies than the one Trump touts have shown little to some smaller benefits
https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.04.10.20060699v1
https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.03.22.20040758v3
But we need to know all of data definitions and how studies were done. For example in latter study what does "improved pneumonia" mead? Did the doctors who read the patients xrays know the patient was taking hydroxychloroquine?
These are standard protocols that must be followed if we are to have confidence these drugs will be effective.
Without this is as if Trump had decided that Boeing had "done enough" to fix the Max 737, certified it to fly by presidential edict and told the FAA to stop the investigation.
Who would get on such an aircraft?

I have a background in clinical epidemiology and research design and have followed all this carefully.
Better data is published from the compassionate use study in the NEJM
https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMoa2007016
It seems the folks were appropriate for compassionate use... that is they were doing very poorly 34 were on ventilators and 3 on heart lung bypass machines
The available studies from China and Italy and Seattle have different criteria for hospital admission so I looked just at the patients on ventilators from their studies. . They also mix in "non invasive mechanical ventilation" which is hard to tell what that means without digging thru the supplements, presumably BiPap.
Of the patients on ventilators in Redesivir study the mortality thus far is 18% ( 6 of 34) but only 24% ( 8 of 34) are out of the hospital so 58% are still hospitalized. So highest mortality if all remaining in hospital died would be 76%
They were able to reduce their oxygen requirements by 2 steps ( from ventilator to nasal oxygen for example) in 56 % of patients which implies that they are getting much better
There are very few studies I have seen to compare.
Seattle ventilator patients https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jama/fullarticle/2763485
had 67% mortality with 24% still "critically ill" ( so possibly up to 91% dead) but these patients had more comorbidities ( 85% vs 68% with one coexisting condition, and 10% organ transplants, 42% heart failure, and 10% on dialysis. I doubt patients this sick were considered for compassionate use.
Wuhan https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6736(20)30566-3/fulltext
had 31/32 patients who needed ventilators die and 24/26 patients who needed non invasive mechanical ventilation die. This is a general population and maybe more comparable to Remdisivir
To compare Redesivir and Wuhan numbers, let us assume the only survivors are those currently discharged ( and none of them go on to die), and anyone left in hospital at time of publication dies, AND THAT WUHAN AND USA PATIENTS AND HOSPITAL ARE SIMILAR
Comparing 8/34 survivors (Redesivir) vs 3/58 (Wuhan) or 24% survival vs 5%.
The chi-square statistic is 11.139. The p-value is .000845. Significant at p < .05.
But this is a very very marginal way to determine health policy!!! This is why we need controlled trial in the same institution. We need to know if the patients are similar, and even if they are, the controls should be chosen at the same time as the treatment group , chosen in a randomized fashion and in the same country and health system. I doubt any of us would want to rely on a drug that was proven to work only in Wuhan China. The opposite should be true.
Hopefully we will not get to the point where like Hydroxychloroquine,no o ne will want to participate in such a study, fearing they will not get a life saving drug. Consequently this type of study should be the only way this drug is available.

Hi. newgirl,
I’m certainly no market chart reading expert so my interpretation of this chart series is rather simple. These charts demonstrate the difference in USA investing and world investing. They say to me that US returns are superior with less risk because of the subdued nature of the return volatility. I suppose they can be combined to attenuate volatility but I’m underwhelmed by their rather high correlation coefficient. The higher USA returns are impressive!
Please see the following: https://www.msci.com/www/blog-posts/why-are-small-caps-different-/0736742719
I hope this helps. To improperly quote the following: A man sees what he wants to see and disregards the rest. From the Boxer by Paul Simon.
Good luck!!!

@msf +1, I agree. I wonder if this development might actually hurt the recovery: by encouraging a too-early easing of social distancing and by making it seem less urgent for Congress to pass more stimulus.
I don't know, too many variables for me, which is why whenever I try market timing (like right now, when I'm sitting on a bunch of dry powder that I wished I'd used a couple weeks ago) I strike out.

@msf If you look at the original article, this was from a phase 3 trial. But yes, it's only one small part of that trial, so Gilead is correctly saying it's promising but too soon to be sure.
Poking around a bit further, it seems that even if it works, they could produce a million doses by the end of the year.
That wouldn't be enough to end this pandemic, though it would save a lot of lives.
Seems to me the market is betting that something is on the way, whether this drug or something else or a comob, so the end is in sight.