And damn few people have written 100,000 put contracts.

At least not amateurs like me, perhaps! *

As an investment strategy, it works particularly well for people who have a fondness for really cheap stuff (sometimes cigar butts), like me sometimes. So long asthe price stays low and the market still hates them, you can make a fine rate of return writing puts at levels representing a big margin of safety for a really long time.

Compared to merely buying the same slate of stocks you tend to do a little worse than B&H when a stock really does well in a stretch, but tend to do better than holding the stock when it's rising a bit, flattish, declining a bit, or crashing. So the variation of returns over seasons or years is somewhat dampened.

Jim

* Actually I did it professionally for a while too, but that's a different count of contracts.