The Right Way to Trade Covered Calls For Income

[@KpxUrz5745]

It has been a very tough market over the past year and a half. But here's what I do. Have a good portion of stocks that pay nice dividends (5 to 7%), for income. And sell covered calls on as many stocks as possible, regardless if they pay a dividend or not, for more income. In this case this combination brings in about $7000 per month. That goes a long way to help in a sliding market. The plan is to keep going this way with dividend and option income, and finally when the market improves to get even better results.

[@sko1beer]

hi do i need a margin account to sell covered calls thanks?

[@josh7314]

@@sko1beer nope you just need 100 shares of the stock

[@sko1beer]

@@josh7314 thanks

[@luxurylife7464]

Amen to that!

[@steveh7407]

So Seth - I have a very small account ($1k). I recently started selling weekly covered calls with the rules you succinctly describe in your videos. I am noticing that thru the premiums collected each week, those premiums collected are actually lowering the cost of the initial. stock purchases. If all goes to plan, in another 6 weeks, the premiums collected will completely cover the initial cost of the stock purchases and the stocks will be essentially free. Thank you so much for your videos - they are the best on KZbin!

[@thinhtrinhtuan6705]

in video, he sell 130$ share call option for just 2$ for a duration one month. How d hell you able to cover your shares cost by just 6 weeks? Any magic pills?

[@tvlobo202]

​@@thinhtrinhtuan6705maybe selling weekly and IV raises week after week and therefore premium too

[@Peltonimo]

@@thinhtrinhtuan6705I think OP meant they’ve been doing it for some time now and they will hit that goal within the next 6 weeks?

[@blaqpaks1808]

You can sell the initial calls a little lower than your final target of 150 to try to gain a little more premium as you wait for the eventual target. If you get caught in the money, you can almost always roll up and out.

[@smbcapital]

yes this will work as well!

[@WendingWayfarer]

@@smbcapital If you really expected it to go to 150 and you want to profit as much as possible from premium from that, the pro move would be to sell what shares you have, buy as many ATM or ITM calls as you can, and write calls against them. I suspect you'd do better with weeklies. But ofc all this depends on correctly predicting the future, so maybe a word about how to hedge a play like a covered call campaign would be good.

[@indonesiaforlife]

That’s what I do when my short goes itm. I rolled out and up. It’s like buying gains. like pay $30 on $100 gain so u make $70. I think Some ppl get emotional when their 100 shares take a dip. But in that scenario I can just keep collecting the premium but if possible just don’t go underwater. I’d just go further out on expirations as long as my strike is above my cost basis

[@KosiRevaya]

​@@WendingWayfarer can you explain the break down of that? Are you buying calls and also selling them? Are you talking about debit spreads?

[@WendingWayfarer]

@@KosiRevaya I am talking about diagonals or pmccs. It's basically a leveraged covered call. Of course, if it drops below you're long strikes, you're screwed. But that's leverage for you I suppose.

[@tripledstickers]

Damn. The example on how you made less over time but killed it at the end was bad ass, great video.

[@BradHelsing]

This is obviously flawed since it was already known the top would be $150. No one in real time knows where a run will top out. Personally, I would have stopped at $140 and found something else. Near all time highs, buying in will get you stuck for who knows how long. I've done it plenty of times myself.

[@Alphahydro]

​@BradHelsing not necessarily. You can always reference resistance lines.

[@nghianguyen8369]

Wheel strategy is a good way to make money. I combined the pmcc and wheel all the time. You sell put to get a cheaper price and then sell the cover calls with a higher price every month until it hits the strike price.

[@stormaaja]

So simple yet powerful strategy! Huge thanks for sharing it!

[@williamklein6749]

Isn't a better way to roll the option out and up rather than getting assigned multiple times?

[@KT-zx9jr]

Good clip Seth but recall that often the stock is flat to trending slightly up and hence calls are sold atm and over a 12-month period the cash on cash return is quite high. Stocks primed for huge bounces are not good candidates for writing calls....

[@mr.porkchops5563]

Great info for when the stock price moves up....what about downwd movent, namely past your breakeven ?

[@smbcapital]

I think the idea here is you want to own the stock in the long term and are using the covered calls to generate income while you wait for the stock to appreciate towards your target price

[@EvanEvansE3]

@@smbcapital Exactly. Thank you

[@MichaelSmith-vy2gp]

In this case, an option, pardon the pun, could be sell the stock at your stop and monitor your covered call. If the stock doesn't recover for it to be exercised, great, the option expires worthless, if stock price approaches the strike or the price turns bullish, buy the covered call contracts back to prevent it being exercised. In this case the premium to buy back could possibly be less than the original premium received due to price decay. Btw, this is a hypothetical and I've never used this strategy but just a suggested possibility. Hope this helps.

[@mr.porkchops5563]

@@MichaelSmith-vy2gp u can't do that; brokers won't let u have a naked short call with unlim risk to upside

[@guga781]

@@smbcapital In last example at 13:09 we could see with covered calls from $130.11 to $151.45 per share price you profited $22,220. Lets say if you would just hold the stocks without doing anything (buy 1000 shares from 130.11 and hold them to 151.45) you could get $21,340 of profit. So I am wondering is this additional 880$ of profit with covered calls worth it? In my country you have to pay around 40% tax on short capital gains, so this would be around $500 of net profit. Options seems risky business because you are forced to trade 100 shares every time for minimal gains and you are exposed to downside like now when market is crashing.

[@terrywilliams2349]

Covered Call Writing is one of my favorite trading strategies!!

[@smbcapital]

prefect for the investor to earn some additional income

[@tamhalo0102]

This is so ideal. What if the stock doesn't go up as you wish?

[@lon9540]

you keep the premium so you still make money. And yes the value of the underlying stock goes down , unless you sell there is no loss.

[@Alphahydro]

Story of my life. Thanks for the insight. I guess the moral of the story is to not get fixated on deltas and dollar amounts and risk losing your long leg prematurely.

[@jamesduffy318]

I am just curious as to why SBM did not consider weekly options when they are available and also rolling out an ITM option for additional time and possibly a higher strike price when additional credit is available. Sometimes a roll will not work, but they usually do and you collect more premium in the process.

[@Wanderlust073]

I had the same question but just assumed they went with monthly calls to keep things simple.

[@jamesduffy318]

@@Wanderlust073 I do not believe that weekly options are any more difficult than monthly options other than the possibility that you have to trade more often. In fact, most of my covered calls are done with weeklys unless the premium is too small. Then, I would go with the monthly. Also, if you are an active trader, you can usually negotiate very modest commissions. So, more frequent trading is not that much more expensive.

[@Wanderlust073]

@@jamesduffy318 i trade cc’s every week as well, sometimes moving out and back in the same week. I meant simple as in a simple example for a video - ‘monthly income’.

[@teresab208]

@@jamesduffy318 Yes I do weekly and prefer them

[@oftenwrongphong]

I'm pretty chicken, so tend to sell a bit above the resistance = less income. However, I did experience two more scenario--rare, but did happen: 1) Stock blows way past conservative strike price in the first 3 week (still profited, just lost out on the rally). This happened to me on Peloton after a good earnings report. 2) Stock crashes 30....40....60%... so premium is only offered at strike prices that are below original cost.

[@musicsavage4456]

Yep I can relate to that. I have several stocks which I bought for the purposes of selling covered calls on and got burned. $NIO, $SKLZ, $PLTR... As far as NIO and PLTR I will wait untill these stocks get back to my purchase price (which I believe they both will0 and hopefully resume this strategy then.

[@optioningthabears861]

what about buying one month out 80 delta options and selling the highest delta weekly premiums your option will allow. This plan is almost hoping to get assigned and repeating at current price it has easy 20% ROI. It even works with closer expiration like a week later than the covered calls date. This has high exposure but with lower capital and higher ROI if your stock doesnt get assigned sell the option and repeat next week on monday. great on bullish stocks walmart doesnt have 28% weekly gains but this does.

[@denniskearney5266]

Can you do both. Covered call and cash secured put on the same stock. If you have 100 share s of a stock and have the capital for another 100 do a covered and a put for the same expiration dates ?

[@sunlite9759]

Great instructional video in an Ideal up market but there is always the threat that the stock could drop further below the strike price + premium. Back to tech analysis.

[@brianwebster1401]

I have been a fan of covered calls for some time now. I view equities as an asset. Is it realistic to expect 5-10% monthly return? If so, how do I refine my research to accomplish this goal?

[@EDWARD13421]

And if the stock hits the toboggan slide ? Owning 1000 shares I would sell 5 ITM calls and 5 OTM calls, analyzing the trade as a whole looking for a 1.5 % profit each month( give or take) plus the dividend. This could equate to 20-23% return in cash account and much more in margin account.

[@911scimitar]

Is it better to run covered calls on one stock or a basket?

[@Bravo21]

Apologies if this seems a stupid question; I'm new here. Can this strategy work in any trend, or should you only start this type of campaign when the stock is starting an upward trend? If it goes down do you just hold and continue to sell the call options at the lower rate until the price returns?

[@sunlite9759]

Innocently bought puts in a futures company that looked like it would go to the moon . One bad quarter and it tanked and delisted. Had long calls also. Net profit was sweat.

[@teresab208]

Yeah I'm learning. I was caught up on premium but I keep hearing that's not the way to go

[@Unicorn-Black]

How common that scenario, if the stocks slowly go down this approach does not work, same if stay around the same value.

[@paulrath7764]

In your first example, a simple buy-and-hold, selling the price at $151 would have yielded higher profits without the covered call selling. You also would have enjoyed any dividends paid as holder of record

[@rharnevious]

Nice! Liked hearing the "covered call campaign" lolz #poetandyoudidntknowit

[@hazelwood55]

Does anybody use out of the money calls or butterflies in conjunction with the covered call so that if the price goes past their call, they can rebuy stock at a lower price than the market.

[@rowdygilbert260]

Just signed up, can't wait to see what you have to offer.

[@smbcapital]

great to have you!

[@pytime8621]

How beneficial was the course?

[@tysonclarke012]

Why would you sell an option to buy a stock you want to keep? Covered calls are for INCOME.

[@derlijunior6402]

Great video

[@learningyt4725]

Hey can you explain why $22,220 is 28% better from the previous campaign? What’s the previous campaign? Thank you.

[@johndibert5509]

The one you made 17k on

[@JNHEscapes]

If you have to ask this you are in the WRONG place.

[@marcschwarzschild2656]

Why haven't you automated the management of your options strategies? Why do you have traders looking at screens and hitting keys?

[@virajdance]

May I ask what tools you are using for automated trade mgmt and with which brokerage accounts? (ex. Ninjatrader with Interactive Brokers) Thanks

[@samray7222]

If i sell a covered call and it Expires, do i lose or keep the Premiums for this option? where i have my account now, i lose my premiums.

[@williamdieffenbach3264]

No

[@davidleonard4925]

You always get to keep the premium unless you decide to buy back the contract.

[@Chris-jo3nb]

Your videos are helpful, giving real world examples, thanks! However - after watching several of them I think there are downsides that sometimes don't get mentioned. For example, instead of the covered call approach you outlined, you could have simply held the shares and made 151-130 = 21K, and spent no time having to manage it. Of course if the stock actually declined instead, at least you made about 2K while holding. I'd like to understand how to assess it under all such conditions - it seems that to get an edge on *any* strategy over just holding a stock , you need some kind of consistency in estimating price direction. Does this sound about right ? Or is there a statistically validated approach that will, over the long term, beat just holding ?

[@adrianapollyon5087]

Can you predict the future?

[@Jbig1430]

Uou have to view covered calls as a tool to reduce your cost basis on the trade. Lets say you buy 100 shares at a cost basis of $5.00 if you sell a $1.00 covered called once a month after 5 months your cost basis will be $0.00 on that position. Thus anything after that is pure profits so if you wanted you can at that time sell covered calls closer to the stock price.

[@kaushikpatel2975]

What you do if stock fall (heading south) instead of it is going up?

[@mrcmid9132]

This strategy sucks for that exact reason when the price goes down.

[@JNHEscapes]

@@mrcmid9132 I run this strategy all the time and I suck the premium out on a regular basis regardless of what happens. It works beautifully. For example: one of my long term holds is the voo. I sell the 15ish delta 30 days out on the voo constantly and if it goes down so what i'm never selling it. But the short call premium is gravy and therefore I extract and spend it on hookers and cocaine. You can make serious money selling covered calls on things you already hold or know you're going to hold forever. I'm profitable over 100k ytd in 2023 just selling calls. I do it monthly with KO as well. Low volatility and easy money. On individual stocks I simply execute a covered stock purchase buying shares and selling atm calls simultaneously every 30 days. If I get stuck with the shares and they're down so what...the premium was profit. I only deal with dividend paying stocks, best of breed and ONLY stocks I would keep forever if necessary. It's not a loss until you sell it...and good companies always come back. 2022 prime example...I'm fully recovered.

[@marks2193]

Great strategy as long as stock doesn’t move against you….if the stock drops in value more than the premium received then there’s no profit…I assume if this was the case you would buy back the calls and sell the stock before you went flat or negative? Of course there are other “reparation” strategies in the scenario above, interested to hear your thoughts.

[@Wanderlust073]

What’s better? Stock drops and you collected a premium. Stock drops you didn’t collect a premium. Seems pretty obvious.

[@marks2193]

@@Wanderlust073 point is you don’t necessarily generate the returns depicted…you can in fact take a flat/lose money with this strategy (like anything else)

[@smbcapital]

the strategy is geared more towards stocks that you are invested in. You don't care if the stocks value drops in the short term. This is a way to generate investment income while you wait for the stock to appreciate in the long run

[@marks2193]

@@smbcapital excellent thx for your response, sometimes I have that short term trading cap on too tight :-)

[@JNHEscapes]

I run this strategy all the time and I suck the premium out on a regular basis regardless of what happens. It works beautifully. For example: one of my long term holds is the voo. I sell the 15ish delta 30 days out on the voo constantly and if it goes down so what i'm never selling it. But the short call premium is gravy and therefore I extract and spend it on hookers and cocaine. You can make serious money selling covered calls on things you already hold or know you're going to hold forever. I'm profitable over 100k ytd in 2023 just selling calls. I do it monthly with KO as well. Low volatility and easy money. On individual stocks I simply execute a covered stock purchase buying shares and selling atm calls simultaneously every 30 days. If I get stuck with the shares and they're down so what...the premium was profit. I only deal with dividend paying stocks, best of breed and ONLY stocks I would keep forever if necessary. It's not a loss until you sell it...and good companies always come back. 2022 prime example...I'm fully recovered.

[@yasirali709]

Nice work

[@EchadLevShtim]

Why not just intentionally worthless for the Premiums on a Div stock and just watch the exe date intervals to keep divs going.

[@couchpotato684]

Thanks.

[@smbcapital]

Welcome!

[@mpview8515]

There is no right way to sell covered calls. You never know how the price goes. You need to do technical analysis, and you cannot just want to keep all the premiums regardless of how the price action changes. Sell covered call means you don't have the ability to trade stock, and you always get less benefit or sometime badly hurt holding those covered calls, you could escape but you just want to keep that little tiny premiums and lost much more money on the downside

[@tysonclarke012]

You know your premium up front and you know the risk up front. You can just buy your way out of the stock at your BE by buying back the sold CC. Very low risk.

[@sunlite9759]

There is no free lunch.... Unless you have a crystal ball (that works) it is all tied up in RISK. If one is so sure the stock will rise, stay with it or risk it running away from you. Use a different one to sell calls.

[@avenuee2738]

Thanks but too confusing - small numbers and simple to start is better

[@JNHEscapes]

If his explanation is too confusing you do not need to play in the options world. Buy broad index funds or etf's and leave it alone.

[@proche.io-broadcasttonearb40]

If stock drop at the first month of campaign, you lose more. If it doesn't come back soon, you will be selling even cheaper calls for many months.

[@mrcmid9132]

This strategy sucks when the price goes down

[@mike73ng]

It seems to me this is only valid in hindsight. Why not sell cash secured puts, buy them back as the stock rises and then sell some more. If the shares are ever put to you then go back to selling CCs. What at you?

[@michaell3134]

why not get back into the trade with a cash secured put?

[@LMF-ct4lt]

I have that same question.

[@JNHEscapes]

because you're taking advantage of the elevated call premiums for one (if the stock is moving higher regularly). Also, this video is on selling covered calls for income not selling cash secured puts for income. I do both nearly every day and sometimes I even run both on the same underlying at the same time. There are many reasons why, but it can get complicated. For example, I have a portfolio of several million. I have a margin account. If my cash balance is only 5k because I am fully invested then I cannot afford to buy 150k in walmart to sell covered calls when the premium is only 2k. Not worth the interest on margin. However, since I have such a large portfolio and a margin account my brokerage will allow me to sell cash secured puts against walmart and it not count against my cash balance. They will credit the premium, but not hold the 150k as collateral as they would in a normal cash account or one with a smaller balance. Well, they do, but it's complicated just know they allow it and it doesn't actually put me into margin - so it doesn't cost me anything. Therefore, selling cash secured puts makes sense if I'm low on cash. On the other hand, I get the dividend as well if I'm holding actual shares during a dividend cycle so if I have the cash I will sell calls against shares like in this video. Also, puts and calls can have different values and implied volatility based on certain criteria or variables that may be occurring in the world or with the underlying so that should be taken into consideration also. In other words, you might choose one over the other for many reasons that have nothing to do with the underlying. Trading options is not easy and I've been doing it for nearly 15 years. There is so much I still learn something every day. If you ever ask a question or think something is dumb or useless with options it's only because you cannot see or do not know the bigger picture. There is ALWAYS a reason and a strategy behind every move. My first options trade I ever made was selling a cash secured put and I thought they were so damn cool and easy that it had to be illegal. For years I literally thought any minute somebody would put an end to the entire platform. It's insane how much money you can truly make selling cs puts and selling covered calls. I honestly feel sorry for anybody who actually works for a living. I can take 150k right now, today, and buy 2500 shares of Coca-Cola and sell the sept 8 weekly exp of the 61 strike (below the current stock price) for $1.12 and clear $2575 in 27 days - for absolutely nothing and on a stock that is a slow mover and that I would hold forever no matter what. If it goes down who cares. I keep the $2575 and sell calls again next month! You just can't beat it...

[@cbro777]

11:45

[@d3ath1ygaming55]

This doesn't answer the actual goal of 2k per month. If the stock never moves or worse goes down you are a major failure for the goal.....

[@marks2193]

My point exactly 👍

[@MichaelSmith-vy2gp]

Easy, buy more of the underlying stock to enable more contracts to be sold.

[@JNHEscapes]

wrong. you still made the 2k premium. if you don't sell the stock and it recovers you're fine. this is why choosing the underlying is important. I only deal with dividend paying stocks (so if you're stuck holding it you're getting paid, best of breed and stocks I would hold forever no matter what. As long as you're buying good companies they will recover and it is not a loss until you sell it. You can also continue to sell calls against the shares the entire time you're waiting for it to recover.

[@luxurylife7464]

Why not just use another stock and continue your campaign elsewhere? If you profit on Walmart, and the stock goes up, find a cheaper stock and continue. Just my opinion.

[@JNHEscapes]

cheap has nothing to do with the strategy. you can run this on anything. typically if a stock is going up regularly you want to take advantage of the gamma and momentum.

[@luxurylife7464]

@@JNHEscapes that’s a good point 👍🏻👍🏻

[@larrytobin3609]

You speak about selling out of money calls monthly which gives you limited to no downside protection video is useless