3 Steps to Finding
the Best Site for Covered Calls

How do you go about finding the best site for covered calls? If you're serious about writing covered calls, either as part of an option income strategy or as a Leveraged Investing method to boost returns and lower the cost basis on your long term holdings, this is a question that's going to be very important.

Although I have my own opinion about which site is the best site for covered calls, I recognize that there's no such thing as one size fits all. Instead, I think it's more important to lay out some criteria and guidelines and encourage you to make your own evaluations.

So then, here are 3 important factors you should consider when assessing covered call sites:

Covered Call Education

To me, the best site for covered calls should have a comprehensive covered call education section.

Because selling covered calls can be a conservative option strategy and pretty easy to understand, it naturally appeals to beginning option traders. But that doesn't mean that the strategy is self-explanatory or that there aren't a lot of factors to consider.

As straightforward as the strategy is, if you're going to be successful using covered call options for income, there is still a lot you're going to need to know.

Good online call writing educational material should cover two areas:

How covered calls work (i.e. the nuts and bolts of the trade)
The factors involved in profitable call writing

It's also a huge plus if all this material is presented with clarity and in easy to read writing.

Covered Call Resources and Tools

Understanding covered calls is only step one, of course. It's like anything else - theoretical knowledge only takes you so far, and you won't begin to see results until you begin to practically apply that knowledge.

That's where the tools and resources come in. Pick your favorite analogy. If you're going to be successful at anything, you're going to need some form of resources, tools, equipment, etc. Knowledge and a willingness to act are the prerequisites, but they're not the total package.

Just as you wouldn't expect to go into battle naked, employing any option trading strategy without utilizing some kind of tool or resource is most likely going to limit your success.

Examples could include a high quality covered call screener, resources related to short to intermediate term technical analysis, and even a credible covered call writing subscription service.

Pricing - Covered Call Subscription Services

The next question is whether the best site for covered calls should be free?

As someone who operates a commercial website, I'm a bit biased, of course. I think any serious site about writing covered calls (or any topic, for that matter) should provide a ton of free educational material along with their premium products or services.

Why? Two reasons:

You shouldn't have to pay for every single shred of information you encounter when researching a topic.
The amount and quality of the free educational material provided by a site reveals a lot about the person or people running the site. You can tell fairly quickly how knowledgable, passionate, and committed a website operator is to a given topic by examining how much meaningful substance there is on the site.

But, I would argue, there is also a place for premium products and services. It's unrealistic to expect all information and resources to be free. Think about your own areas of expertise - did you achieve those levels simply by holing up at the public library before or after work?

When I consider my own experiences, the lessons and tools I consider most valuable almost always came with some kind price tag.

The issue for me then comes down to pricing and whether the value justifies the cost (that's the value investor in me). That doesn't mean you always go with the lowest price tool or service. But it also doesn't mean you always go with the most expensive either.

And in my opinion, you should never pay several thousand dollars for any kind of option seminar or black box "system" because the reality is what you're really paying for is some kind of razzle-dazzle delivery (and not the benefits) of the information or product along with some bullshit illusion of exclusivity.

Think about it - if I could convince lots of people to pay me several thousand dollars each for a piece of software or a weekend at a hotel (and sex not being involved either), do you think I'd even be bothering with trading options myself? Obviously, I would've found something a lot more lucrative - high level marketing.