Writing covered call options is a great way to boost your yield on stocks you already own, and involves a lot less risk than most investors think.
A call option gives the owner the right to buy a stock at a certain price (the strike price). When you sell call options on stocks you own, you’re selling some other investor (your counterparty) the right to buy that stock from you in the future, if the price hits your strike price.
For example, let’s say I own Coca-Cola (KO), which is currently trading around 71.75. If I sell a KO call option that expires in December and has a strike price of 75, one of two things could happen:
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Option 1: KO stays below 75 until the call expires in December. I get to keep my KO stock and the amount I sold the call for (which is called premium).
Option 2: KO rises above 75 before my call expires. The person who bought the call from me exercises the call, buying the stock from me for $75 per share. I get the money from the sale and the call premium, but I don’t own the stock anymore.
How to Write Covered Calls
To write a covered call option, choose a stock you already own and for which there is an options market. Decide how many calls you would like to write (writing means selling). Each call gives the owner the right to buy 100 shares of that stock, so if you own 200 shares of Coca-Cola (KO), you can write two calls.
Since the option will only get exercised if the stock rises, the best stocks to use (assuming you want to keep them) are stocks that you don’t think will go up right away. Stocks in sideways trends are good candidates.
Next, pick a strike price and when you would like the calls to expire. If you sell calls expiring soon, there’s less risk that your stock will rise above the strike price and get called away. But if you sell longer-dated calls (calls that don’t expire for a few months), you’ll get paid more.
Same with the strike price: if you sell calls at a strike price closer to the current price, you’ll get paid more, but there’s also a greater chance that your stock will hit that price and get called away. It’s a risk vs. reward tradeoff.
Now, find out what someone will pay for those calls. As of this writing, the market is paying $1.10 for December 75 KO calls. That means you can sell someone the right to buy your KO stock at 75 until mid-December, and they’ll pay you $1.10 per share for that right.
If that seems too risky—if you think it’s likely that KO will hit 75 by December—you can sell shorter-dated calls or calls with a higher strike price. But you won’t get paid as much.
The market will pay 25 cents for October (10/18) 75 calls, which might be acceptable to you. Or you can raise your strike price too, but your premium dwindles even more—for October 77.5 calls, you’ll only get 5 cents. The market thinks it’s unlikely that KO will move to 77.50 by mid-October, so taking on that risk doesn’t earn you much.
How to Profit from Selling Covered Call Options
Let’s say we write the December 75 KO call for a premium of $1.10. For each contract, we collect $110 when we sell the call. So now we have 100 shares of KO, $110 in cash, and the obligation to sell our shares for $75 each if they get there before December expiration. Here’s what could happen next:
Scenario 1: Desired Outcome
If KO stays below 75 until the calls expire in December, the calls expire worthless. We get to keep our stock plus the $110 we made by selling the call. Nice!
Scenario 2: But Stocks Can Go Down
As long as KO stays below 75 for the next three months, our call will expire worthless and we’ll get to keep the $110 premium. But what if the stock doesn’t stay just below 75, it goes down? We’ll have to absorb the losses from the stock’s decline, and it will gradually eat into our profit. If KO falls below 70.65 (current price minus the premium received), our call premium will be erased, and we’ll essentially have broken even.
And if KO continues to fall, we’ll get further into the hole—and may want to consider selling the stock and closing our call position.
Scenario 3: No Stock, But Money!
Lastly, if KO rises above 75 on December expiration, the owner of the call will exercise his right to buy our shares for $75 each. We’ll have to sell our stock for $75 per share. If KO has gone up a lot, we’ll miss out on some upside—rats. But we’ll earn $435: our call premium, plus the $3.25 per share appreciation in KO. Selling covered call options for income is particularly popular among investors because you can generate high yields in a short amount of time. If our KO covered call expires just below where shares would be called away, we earn $1.10 per $71.75 share, effectively generating a 1.5% yield in three months. Our maximum profit is capped at $435, but we’re not taking on any additional risk by selling the calls (other than the risk of KO going down that we were already exposed to, and in fact, we’ve mitigated some of that).
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*This post is periodically updated to reflect market conditions.
