I sometimes bike along the C&O Canal towpath and marvel at the string of old telegraph poles lining the hillside. I imagine how exciting it must have been 150 years ago to suddenly be able to send messages to distant friends and relatives electronically instead of by post.

These days, The Western Union Company (NYSE: WU) is in the business of wiring money instead of words, which I suspect is even more satisfying to the recipient than a postcard. It’s also quite lucrative for Western Union, which earned consolidated revenues of $1.4 billion during the second quarter of this year, a 2% YOY (year-over-year) increase.

However, WU has been stuck in a trading range for the past year due in part to concerns over the impact cryptocurrencies may have on its business. The assumption is that the anonymous nature of cryptocurrencies makes them more difficult to track across national boundaries and are therefore more attractive to tax evaders than are the traceable money transfers facilitated by Western Union.

There are two problems with that theory: first, nearly 80% of Western-Union’s revenue is generated by C2C (consumer-to-consumer) transactions that are relatively modest in size; second, the inherent risk of the cryptocurrency market has become apparent as evidenced by Bitcoin’s 67% decline over the past eight months. After all, what good is avoiding a relatively small tax bite if you incur a much bigger loss of principal?

For that reason, I think WU has become oversold and is going to break back above $20 later this year as it gains market share from erstwhile cryptocurrency users. Western Union earns an IDEAL score of 9 (on a scale of 0 – 10) thanks to its high dividend yield of 4%, strong cash flow, and forward P/E ratio of 9.8 (compared to a multiple of 17.6 for the S&P 500 Index).

I’m not expecting a huge move out of WU, but we only need for it to close above $19 three months from now for this to be a very profitable trade. And if it doesn’t? In that case, we’ll start collecting those high dividend payments until we write a covered call against it. Either way, we win.

Regardless of how many contracts you sell, it’s absolutely critical that you follow the instructions below, particularly when it comes to setting the limit order.

How to Make the Trade:

• Trade: Sell to open the November 16, 2018, $19 put option on The Western Union Company (NYSE: WU).
• Symbol: WU181116P00019000
• Limit Order Price: a credit of $0.80 or more.

Tell your broker: “I want to sell a put on Western Union stock. Specifically, I want to ‘sell to open’ one November $19 Put for a credit of $0.80 per share or more.”

Note: Sell one put for every 100 shares of Western Union you would be pleased to buy at $19 per share. Investors should set aside $1,900 per contract sold to buy the stock in case the option expires in the money.

Further Instructions Regarding the Trade:

• • If the option price changes, you can adjust our recommended limit based on the midpoint of the bid/ask spread, which you should be able to see when entering the trade. Just make sure the potential credit is at least equal to the Limit Order Price specified above.
  • Place your limit order on a “good ’til canceled” (GTC) basis and be patient.