Meta Stock Down 30%: Time To Lock In A 9.8% Yield While You Wait?

Generate immediate income that you keep regardless, plus the opportunity to buy the stock for less if it falls far enough.

After a rough stretch that has left it trading about 30% below its 52-week high, Meta Platforms (META) presents a fascinating picture for investors. The company’s operational engine is humming, yet the stock has lagged the broader market. This disconnect creates an opportunity to get paid for your patience, collecting an immediate income yield for agreeing to buy the shares at a steep discount to today’s price, should they ever fall that far.

9.8% annualized yield at a 30% margin of safety, by selling put options.

• Sell a put option on META expiring 9/17/2027, with a strike price of $380.
• Collect roughly $1,980 in premium per contract (each contract covers 100 shares).
• That works out to about 4.8% annualized on the $38,000 of cash you set aside to secure the trade.
• Park that cash in a Treasury or safe bond yielding roughly 5.0%, and your total yield climbs to about 9.8%.
• And if META closes below $380, you buy it at $380, an effective entry near $360.2 a share after the premium, about a 34% discount to today’s $543.67.

Win Or Wait, You Still Pocket The Premium

If META stays above $380 through 9/17/2027, the put expires worthless, and you simply keep the full $1,980 premium. That works out to about 4.8% annualized on the $38,000 you set aside over 395 days (5.2% total return), while that same collateral keeps earning the 5.0% yield on top, for the 9.8% total above. You never buy the stock and keep the income, free to do it again.

If META closes below $380, you are assigned and buy 100 shares at $380. The $1,980 premium you already pocketed lowers your effective cost to about $360.2 a share, roughly a 34% discount to today’s price, though if the stock has fallen further by then, you would be holding a paper loss.

So what happens if META really does close below $380, and you are the one buying? Then everything rests on a single question.

Would You Want To Own META On Sale?

So, would you be comfortable owning this business if you got the call? The case for wanting to own Meta, even on a downswing, is that its core business is an absolute fortress. The Family of Apps segment saw revenue climb 28% year-over-year to $60.4 billion in the most recent quarter, with a staggering 3.6 billion people using at least one of its apps daily. This is not a company struggling for growth or relevance. Management reports that its AI investments are already delivering huge returns, driving an 8.3% increase in ad clicks and a 15.7% uplift in conversions on Facebook. On a dollar basis, the company claims its ads business is posting faster year-over-year revenue growth than any other competitor.

That firehose of cash, however, is being pointed at a colossal, multi-year spending program that gives investors pause. The company plans to pour between $130 billion and $145 billion into capital expenditures in 2026 alone, a war chest aimed at building a dominant position in artificial intelligence. But with management clear that “Infrastructure planning remains highly dynamic” and offering no specific outlook for 2027, this gargantuan infrastructure buildout is a bill without a payback date. The market could easily lose its nerve over the sheer scale of the spending long before new products generate meaningful profit, and that is the scenario that could lead to you owning the shares.

Ultimately, the trade pays you to take a side with a significant margin of safety. If the market keeps its faith in the long-term AI vision, the stock likely stays above your price, and you simply pocket the income. If the market blinks at the spending, you become an owner of that immensely profitable core business at a price you were comfortable with from the start. For now, investors should watch one thing above all else: the first hard revenue numbers from these massive AI investments.

Wondering whether another stock offers a better yield, or what this same trade would pay on a name you already like? You can screen the latest cash-secured put yields across the market for yourself. And if it is exposure to communication services as a whole you want rather than this one name, a communication services ETF like XLC covers that single sector. Going broader than any one sector, to a quality-first mix across the whole market, is where the portfolio below comes in.

One Trade, Or A Whole Engine

A put like this can pay you a healthy yield and hand you a quality stock cheaper than today if it dips. What it cannot do is diversify away the risk of leaning on a single company. The premium is attractive precisely because something can go wrong, and on one name, sometimes it does.

The Trefis High Quality (HQ) Portfolio spreads that risk across about 30 quality businesses, each weighed on the full sweep of its fundamentals rather than a single trade, sized and rebalanced with discipline. It has a track record of outpacing a benchmark that combines the three major indices – the S&P 500, S&P Mid-Cap, and Russell 2000. Use the put for income and a cheaper entry; let the portfolio carry the long game.