The covered call trade has always been known as an income strategy as you receive premium for selling calls against your stock. This is the most popular rationale for implementing this type of tradings. However, there are many more dimensions that can be coupled with covered call trading to further enhance the potential for profits. Here is a list of 7 methods to more profits writing covered call trades.
- Selling the classic covered call against stock you own. You make money with the time decay of the short call. usually you sell the near month or next month out so you can continue to compound your money.
- You can use LEAPs as stock replacement to leverage a covered call trade which will increase potential profit returns. Click here for a recent article on this topic.
- You can sell out-of-the-money (OTM) calls as your short call. Here you get the call premium and potential for a capital gain as the OTM call offers some upside profits for the stock price to increase.
- You can make more money on a short call when volatility collaspse early in the trade and you close the trade. We have all been in covered call trades when after a few days the call option loses value and you find yourself in a very profitable trade. You can close this short call to lock in profits.
- You can trade the short call as the stock price changes. For example, if the stock price decreases, you can close the short option early for a profit. Then, the call can be written again when the stock prices snaps back to higher levels. This is similar to channeling stocks by trading the short call against stock price changes.
- You can roll up or roll out the short calls to a higher strike price or to a later expiration month. This allows you to squeeze extra profits out of a stock price rise.
- You can add option legs to a short call to create spread positions such as a bull or bear call spread. This is good to take profits from a rising covered call trade or a falling stock price.
- You can add a long protective put to the covered call position as it will increase in value as the stock price decreases. This is usually utilized as protection against stock declines but can create more income when a stock price declines while you are holding a covered call position.
It is not necessary to use all of these methods when trading covered calls. It will be advantageous to the income trader to use more than one method to make money income from selling premiums. In addition, some of these methods can be used to enhance and/or protect your monthly income.
Adding these methods does require more monitoring or your covered call positions. The advantage is that it adds more potential for profits compared to the classic covered call trade. It really comes down to how active you want to be in your income trading each month.
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