The cost of a call and the cost of a put are almost directly related. If you have a $40 stock, a $40 call and a $40 put will be almost exactly the same price most of the time. If there is a difference, the possibility of an arbitrage usually exists meaning that there is a 0 risk strategy (minus commissions) to get something for nothing. This is true whether it’s a collar or another strategy. I don’t completely understand the full process that allows for that to happen, but a complex series of trades usually makes it possible. So if the price of a call and put are going to be the same that means generally the higher priced calls are due to greater risk. Some reasons may be historical volatility, as that plays a roll, but the implied volatility, that is, how much people expect or are betting on the stock to move, becomes important.
One covered call strategy is simply to seek the maximum yielding calls to sell. If you decide on this strategy, you probably want to check the recent put volume on this month’s contracts, and you also may want to make sure the company is solvent. It should have positive cash flow more current assets then current liabilities, and ideally increasing cash flow.
Often times biotech stocks will have negative cash flow because they have to spend money researching and eventually they hope to hit a major discovery. These stocks are very difficult to price as a discovery would make the company worth a lot, an approval of F.D.A. will also catapult the stock much higher. You also should look for some recent strength in the stock, and there should be no bearish chart patterns, that means no chart patterns as well as no sudden high volume sell offs recently and generally a stock that has had a sudden sharp drop is also a warning sign.
If you feel comfortable with selling these higher priced options, you want the sudden move that’s expected to be upward if at all. You are in a way betting that a move will not happen. Once you identify a target, I recommend selling slightly deeper in the money calls as this will cover you more in a decline. You will be collecting the theta, which is the cost of an options potential for gains that the option buyer must pay.
However, if you seek the highest yielding covered calls you can sell, head over to optionsbuddy.com. http://optionsbudy.com is a great way to identify the highest yielding stocks. They also have a rating system, which I have not read about, but my guess is that may be based on historical volatility vs. implied volatility where implied volatility is what the investors expect (and what factors into the options price), not what has happen recently; and perhaps it is also based on the yield compared to the risk, the difference between the bid and ask price, the liquidity, and the market cap and other factors. Google for example, would need a lot more people to sell then a micro cap stock for the stock to crash. A stock with high float has a lot of traded shares already, so if suddenly people were to start selling it may not have as huge of an impact on the price.
Maclin Vestor teaches about financial information and advice. You can even learn about finance, money management, and figuring out finance at his System Trading | Stocks Trading Systems blog.