Fundamental analysis, technical analysis, common sense principles and calculations are all critical considerations when selling stock options the Blue Collar way. Since this is my first article written on our newly enhanced web site (hope you like it!) I thought it appropriate to use a real-life example to review the basic tenets of our BCI […]

Covered Call Writing: Factors That Affect The Value Of Our Option Premiums
So you sold an options contract for $380 and generated a 3.5% 1-month return. Did you ever wonder how the market determined the value of that options contract to be $380? The simple equation that most of us know and understand is the following: Option premium = Intrinsic Value + Time Value To review, let […]

Covered Call Writing: Mid-Contract Unwind Exit Strategy
Mid-Contract Unwind: The major concern for covered call writers is the stock price dropping in value. The option premium collected is money in the bank. Most of our exit strategies are designed to mitigate these losses and turn losses into gains. However, as Blue Collar Investors we should also be prepared to act if the opposite […]

LEAPS and Covered Call Writing
Wait a minute! What if I buy a call option instead of the stock and then sell a call option on that option? I’ll be spending less money than outright purchase of the equity and still generate cash from the sale of the call option! This idea has come to many of you and as […]

The Out-Of-The-Money Strike- Pros and Cons
Whenever a study is performed on covered call writing a stock is selected and the nearest out-of-the-money (O-T-M) strike is sold. This is repeated over and over and then the results are compared to the overall market performance. The usual conclusion is that covered call writing slightly outperforms the overall market but with much less […]

Protective Puts- The Collar Strategy
As safe a strategy that covered call writing is, there is some risk…the risk is in the stock, not in selling the option. That is why some investors who utilize this strategy buy protective puts to alleviate some of the risk. Definition of a protective put: A put option purchased for a stock that is already owned […]

Using Covered Call Options to Increase the Value of Your Stock
If you had a $1000.00 more today than you did yesterday, is your net worth +$1000.00 or does it depend where that cash came from (this is not one of my trick questions). What if you earned it at your job? Investment income? Found it on the street? Gift from grandma? Got lucky at the […]

The Option Buyer or the Option Seller: Which should you be?
You walk into your local stationery store and pull out a $20 bill. “Give me 20 state lottery tickets, please.” You can’t help but dream of all the riches that $20 investment will provide to you. After all, the grand prize is up to $25 million dollars. You even go so far as to compute […]