Born to Sell

Whether you're new to covered calls or a seasoned call writing veteran, Born to Sell is a covered call writing subscription service worth considering.

Full disclosure: I receive a commission when anyone signs up through this website for a free trial or a premium membership with Born to Sell.

Also, if you'd like some quick introduction or refresher on covered calls and the whole call writing background, be sure to check out Great Option Trading Strategies' covered calls page.

Why Born to Sell?

As I'm writing this, Born to Sell is a relatively new entrant in the call writing arena. But it's also an impressive entrant as well.

So why am I impressed by the service? A number of reasons, actually.

Real Time Covered Call Screener

In my opinion, Born to Sell has the best screener for writing covered calls that's out there.

It's super fast, extremely easy to use, updated in real time, and most importantly, it gives you instant access to search and filter as many as 150,000 potential covered call trades.

If you're serious about call writing as a viable income strategy, you're going to need some way to identify the best trades. Otherwise, trade selection is just going to be hit or miss.

And that means less profitable trades and more losing trades.

Some of the features:

• Immediate access to a ton of information, but without the clutter or noise. The interface is a case study in intuitive design.
• Screen easily by industry (great for capitalizing on macro trends), expiration period, and moneyness (in the money, at the money, out of the money, etc.)
• Screens include the ex-dividend date and next earnings release date for each stock - crucial info when considering a trade or managing one.
• Top 10 feature shows (anonymously) the 10 most popular covered calls among Born to Sell members - for generating ideas and comparing notes.
• Customized option chain that includes those dividend and earnings dates - a nice, user-friendly addition.
• Income Goal feature - an intriguing tool that allows you to target a certain monthly income amount. You input that target amount, how much capital you have to invest, the number of positions you want to manage and then this tool retrieves a list of potential candidates for you to consider.

Trade Management

OK, what do you do once you set up a covered call? Just sit back and wait for expiration? A lot can happen between now and expiration.

And that means you have a lot of choices to make along the way. Do you close a position early? Should you roll the call?

You can make better decisions and make them easily and more quickly when you can compare right in front of you, in real time, and without having to run a bunch of calculations yourself, all your options (no pun intended).

Born to Sell's Dashboard screen, in particular, not only gives you the current status of your positions (remaining time value, potential upside, intrinsic value, etc.) but it gives it to you in a graphic format that's radically simple. If you're a visual learner, or visual processor, you should at least take a look at it.

Best Covered Call Tutorial I've Seen

The site features a comprehenseive but easy to follow tutorial on all things covered calls. And this is available for members and nonmembers alike.

It's a free resource, and useful for anyone new to covered calls or looking for a refresher. Covered call writing is a fairly straightforward strategy, but with the tutorial it's even easier to understand.

And it pains me a little to say it, but I wish that I always wrote that succinctly and cogently.

Pricing

At $59.99/month, Born to Sell is $20 a month less than CallWriter (full disclosure: I used to promote CW on this site), and, in my opinion, is a much stronger service, both in terms of the screener (vs. CallWriter's real-time lists) as well as overall ease of use.

You can also get additional discounts by choosing quarterly or annual subscriptions and you can upgrade, downgrade, or cancel at any time.

There's a two week free trial - just select one of the subscription plans (monthly, quarterly, or annually), and the first two weeks are free. If you don't want to be charged anything, just cancel within those first two weeks.

Finally, Born to Sell also features a blog, provides a free newsletter to subscribers, and offers customizable email alerts you can set up.

Hype Alert?

Sometimes it's a fine line between promoting products or services that you really do believe in and coming across as a flat out whore.

If your hype alarm is going off as you read this (as mine almost did when I wrote it), I've got an easy proposition for you.

Check out the site for yourself by clicking on any of the Born to Sell links on this page. Spend a few minutes on the site and decide for yourself how intuitive and easy it is. Check out the free tutorial. Play around with the public demo version of the screener. Click on the Features tab and make your own informed decision.

And if you feel like I'm in any way being disingenuous (or whorish) but you're still kind of curious about Born to Sell, and you don't want me to receive a potential commission, just copy and paste www.borntosell.com into your web browser to visit the site on your own.