1.   He can buy a put, which would let him sell the shares at a fixed price at a later date.

2.   A slightly more sophisticated protection method is to write a covered call and use the premium to pay for the cost of buying puts.

3.   Buying puts is a strategy based on fear, so we conclude that there is still a healthy amount of fear in the market.

4.   By buying puts, Schachter can hedge his portfolio if the technology stocks he holds in the fund fall suddenly.

5.   If most of your profits are in a few stocks, you might want to consider buying puts on them.

6.   If they expect bad news, they buy puts.

7.   In addition to being expensive, the money spent on buying puts weakens an investors performance when a market rallies.