The holiday season often inspires people to assemble lists of gifts they hope to receive. For investors, however, the holiday season brings a different sort of list. Investors can build a Christmas stock shopping list by selecting stocks with resilient growth, constructive price trends, and reasonable valuations. Options then give the investors a good way to bet on these stocks, while mitigating risk. I'll review those trades lower in the article. A systematic and practical approach rarely tugs the heartstrings when identifying suitable gifts (try getting someone a new mop for the holidays if you doubt me). For this exercise, I screened mega cap stocks based on just three high-level factors, after which the list was refined to a relatively small number of companies. I did toss out a couple

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