If you're trying to diversify a little, you could consider trading options on non-equity ETFs while keeping the preferred investments too. Most small options traders like to stay on the short risk premium side, so if that strategy goes bad you'd not have all proverbial eggs in one basket
If you are happy with your current strategy, instead you might try a variance of Taleb's barbell strategy: keep 90% of your funds in your current strategy but take 10% to invest in options to juice the return (aim for >> 6.5%). Options are derivatives and leverage vehicles so if you "guess" right, the rewards can be convex, go up nonlinearly. Regards,
Zero risk? I'll let the numbers do the talking. Here are the closing high and closing low for some preferred stocks from 2008. I included all of the Lehman and Royal Bank of Scotland issues to see how bad it hit the fan. I was net short a number of LEH issues the day they went under. Best day of my life in the market :->) BAC-D 23.90 13.45 BML-G 19.75 5.50 DDT 21.24 4.80 GS-A 23.00 7.95 INZ 25.04 7.73 ISP 23.75 7.67 LEH-F 24.00 0.00 LEH-G 21.49 0.00 LEH-K 23.53 0.00 LEH-L 23.94 0.00 LEH-M 23.20 0.00 LEH-N 23.76 0.00 MER-D 24.72 10.30 MER-F 24.91 10.52 MSJ 20.40 6.91 MSK 19.65 6.79 MSZ 19.90 6.95 MWG 19.77 6.65 MWO 18.43 5.98 MWR 19.39 7.01 RBS-F 25.74 5.10 RBS-H 25.30 5.00 RBS-L 22.27 4.37 RBS-M 24.12 4.51 RBS-N 24.01 4.20 RBS-P 23.85 4.50 RBS-Q 24.95 4.34 RBS-R 23.52 4.16 RBS-S 24.66 4.36 RBS-T 24.66 4.36 VNO-I 23.00 10.80