It seems to me that holding the stock but buying put options is not speculative; it's merely buying insurance. Why do you regard it as speculative?
Or were you referring to selling put options?
Or were you referring to selling put options?
Selling put options is a bet that the put options will expire worthless, which is a bet that stocks will continue to go up/not fall.
I honestly believe the insurance analogy for options is misleading. The value of an option is quite literally the difference in value between selling the stock at market price and at the option strike. As a stockholder you don't save yourself as much from buying put options regularly as you would from say getting a surgery covered with health insurance.
Figure out from fundamental what you think is a decent value for the stocks in question, then write puts for that strike price.
I mostly play long cycles in the equity market instead of trading. When I do trade equities, I play one or two stocks that I know their behavior intimately. My very active trading is mostly in futures and currencies.
Having said all that, I'm an indexer at heart, and working for Bloomberg I'm not even allowed to trade the more interesting stuff.