Investor’s stock portfolio can greatly benefit from simple uses of stock options. With much of your savings invested, it’s smart to use options to both protect your portfolio as well as earn extra income from your portfolio assets.

Commonly touted as a gateway strategy, covered calls provide an alluring introduction into the options realm for equities traders looking to not only improve returns, but also attain a modicum of downside protection. To those otherwise unfamiliar with the structure of a covered call, it merely consists of purchasing 100 shares of stock and selling a call option.

While it would have been unthinkable years ago to consider making big profits year in and year out on a stock that doesn’t move much - because the only source of income, dividends, tended to be in the low single digits in percentage terms - these days options afford us the opportunity to sit tight and profit while holding stock positions.

With the July options expiration coming to an end this Friday, I decided it's time to look ahead for to the August options expiration. I will be analyzing 15 popular technology stocks and seeing which stock offers the best mix of both return (assuming the stock will be called out at the August expiration) and downside "ProTECHtion", I will then decide which stock is the "best bang for your buck".