Are you been one of those people who has a ton of Microsoft stock in your portfolio? I know there are a lot of you out there who are in this position, just sitting and waiting for the day when that MSFT will really pay off. But it has been more than 5 years and the stock you're sitting on is still just at $30. That's a long time to sit and watch your portfolio lose ground to the indexes because you're being dragged down by this sleeping giant. Now I'm not saying that it is a bad investment, it just isn't making anyone rich these days. It pays a small dividend and you never know when it might create the next big thing, but right now it is no growth company, but a mega-cap core holding. We can't even play our usual options strategies because there is so little premium in the puts and calls that are more than a few percent out of the money. The best credit spread trade (our normal type of position) I see our there right now is the January 25/22.50 bull-put credit spread. That will make an 8.7% return as long as MSFT doesn't fall by more than 16% in 6 months. It’s a decent return, but it certainly isn’t going to quadruple any time soon. The key to quick profits is cycling capital more quickly than only twice a year. For a stock this stagnant, I like to buy calendar spreads. It is almost like placing a covered call, but instead of buying stock we buy a long term call option and sell short term calls against it. For MSFT, we can buy a January 20 call for 10.15. At the same time we can sell an July 30 call for 47 cents. Our bought option has only 37 cents of premium in it, while our sold call is all premium, since MSFT is below 30 currently. By Friday of next week, the sold 30 call will have lost ...