Editor's note: You won't find many folks with as much life experience as Dr. David Eifrig...

Regular Digest readers know "Doc" spent a decade working at some of the biggest banks on Wall Street before switching careers to become a board-eligible eye surgeon. He also got his pilot's license... makes his own wine... and has participated in marathons and triathlons.

A little more than a decade ago, Doc joined Stansberry Research. He wanted to help as many folks as possible learn all of his best tips for investing and living well.

In this weekend's Masters Series, we're sharing some of Doc's valuable insights from the comprehensive "how to" guide for his newest advisory, Advanced Options. Today, he explains how he worked as a "magician" in his early years... and how you can use the same "props" to bend the market to your will...

How to Become a Stock Market 'Magician'

By Dr. David Eifrig, editor, Advanced Options

In my 20s, I became a magician.

I didn't perform at children's parties or the Vegas Strip. Instead, I'd strut into the offices of CEOs and CFOs in New York and Boston and show them how to achieve investment results they'd never dreamed of.

Would they like to lock in prices for the materials their businesses needed? We could do that for them.

Were they worried about how rising interest rates or falling stock prices could affect their business? We could remove the risk.

Did they want to find ways to get stock market returns without buying any stocks or putting up less capital? We could deliver just that.

We did it with options. We could tailor a trade or a hedge to any market outlook. And we were paid crazy amounts of money to do it.

At the time, I thought we were playing the short game. Surely, once people found out how easy options were, the jig would be up. Our options techniques were too easy to keep secret. Soon, everyone would know about them.

Twenty-five years later... that never happened.

People still don't take the time to learn how to build wealth with options. Big corporations still go to Goldman Sachs and JPMorgan Chase and pay millions of dollars to have someone else put these strategies to work.

But the things that options can do truly are magical.

Whether you're a day trader or a retirement investor, you generally sit back and take what the market gives you. Yes, you try to think ahead and make some predictions. But once you buy that stock or mutual fund, you earn what they earn. Like a captain on a rudderless ship, you sail at the mercy of the wind.

In my decade on Wall Street, I learned that options let you bend the market to your will.

With options, you can take the same old stock market that everyone else is betting on and turn it into a consistent income machine. Or you can turn it into a casino where you place wild bets that could pay 100-to-1 returns.

You can design bets that profit when the market doesn't go anywhere, or that only pay off on the market's biggest days.

With options, you can design investments that conform to your desires for risk and return... not just take those that the market gives you.

And here's the biggest thing... it's easy.

Everyone tells you that investing is hard... that options are confusing... and that you'd better leave this to the pros.

I just don't believe that to be true. You have to take some time to learn a few new things – something many people give up doing in their 20s. And you'll have to use a little math – but not much more than basic addition and subtraction.

You'll also have to wrap your head around a few concepts – like volatility and time decay – that don't come naturally at first.

But boy, the returns for spending a little time to figure these things out will pay off for years.

I'm not exaggerating... I still put the same ideas I learned in my first six months of training at Goldman Sachs to use every day – and I have for the last two decades.

You only need to get a handle on a few fundamentals. You can apply them over and over again. It's like learning how to read. You spent some time as a child putting together a few basic concepts, and it has enriched your life to an immeasurable degree. Learning about options will do the same for you, in this case, in a way that is directly financially rewarding.

Whenever you have a stock idea, you can boost your returns by two times, five times, or even 10 times. When someone at a cocktail party brags about a 100% gain, you can note that you make multiple doubles every month (or do what I do... and keep it to yourself).

Since my days as a young professional, options have fueled my career. After my decade on Wall Street, I went to medical school. That's a story for another day... But during that entire time, I traded options for extra income.

Eventually, I realized that while I could help one person at a time as a doctor, I could help hundreds or thousands of folks by writing and sharing my advice more widely. And given the stress that money problems can cause, by helping people with their finances I could make a difference in their lives and health.

That's when I joined Stansberry Research and started publishing the Retirement Millionaire, Retirement Trader, and Income Intelligence advisory services. I also now author a course called Advanced Options.

Fortunately for me, I learned how to use options the right way. And that's what I help subscribers do.

Most people trade options the wrong way. They think of options as a way to make a leveraged bet on a stock. And that's true. If you think a stock is going up, you can bet $100 (rather than invest $10,000) and if you are right you can make 1,000% rather than 10%.

That sounds exciting... but it rarely goes so well. If you get it wrong, you lose all of your money. And very often, you can get it right and still lose.

That's because as an option speculator, you don't just have a bet on the direction of a stock... You have a bet on changes in volatility... and you have a bet against the passage of time.

Anyone who has celebrated a birthday in the past couple years can tell you that a bet against the passage of time doesn't tend to work out.

Even though most newbies trade options the wrong way, that doesn't mean options don't work. They do.

For one, in my Retirement Trader service, we bet against volatility. And we bet that time will indeed continue to pass. (We haven't been wrong on that one yet.) That's how we can boast a 95% win rate. We do that by selling options, rather than buying them.

That's not the only way to win though.

There's another way to make options work for us. And it doesn't involve buying speculative calls or puts.

When we've got a good stock idea, we can bet on it moving in such a way that we make big gains with a better win rate than straight-up stock purchases. In another type of trade, we make money simply from the passage of time.

We've recently written a comprehensive guide to show you these two trading strategies...

The first is a powerful way to bet on rising stocks. It can boost your returns much higher than a traditional stock purchase, while limiting the amount of capital you put at risk. It even outperforms traditional option trades in most cases.

The second turns the passage of time into a way to earn triple-digit gains with a high win rate. You can use it on stocks that you think will go up, but you can also use it on stocks you expect won't move at all.

I believe everyone should learn how to use these two strategies to increase their wealth...

That's why I recently invited a group of Stansberry Research subscribers to our Baltimore headquarters for a training session. We filmed the entire experience as I explained how these strategies can help you make big gains in any market – up, down, or even flat.

Now, you can look over their shoulders to learn how to use these powerful techniques yourself. For a limited time, you can view a replay of the training session right here.

Here's to our health, wealth, and a great retirement,

Dr. David Eifrig

Editor's note: Last Wednesday night, thousands of folks tuned in for Doc's first-ever trading "Master Class." If you were busy and couldn't attend, you're in luck... You can still see for yourself why we believe his techniques could change the way you invest forever. But don't delay... The replay will only be available for the next few days. Watch it right here.