Covered call calculator

What the shares effectively cost, what a call adds, and what the cycle returns if they are called away.

How each figure is worked out

• Net basis is the cost basis less every premium the cycle has kept, per share. Assigned at $50 after a $1.20 put, the shares cost $48.80 net. It is the break-even for the whole cycle, and the lowest strike a call can be written at without locking in a loss if it is exercised.
• Premium is the call’s credit × 100 × the contracts written. Calls are written against round lots of 100; an odd lot above them is carried but not covered.
• Net basis after spreads this call’s premium over every share held, covered or not, because the credit lowers what all of them cost.
• If called away is strike + call credit − net basis, per share, times the covered shares. The net basis already carries the put and every earlier call, so this is the whole cycle’s result, not just this call’s.
• Annualized is the call’s credit over the cost basis, times 365 ÷ days — simple, not compounded, as the put calculator quotes it.

The call above your net basis, every day

A calculator prices one call you have already found. WheelTheta keeps the net basis for every cycle you record and, after each close, finds the call nearest its target delta that is struck at or above it — or says why none is. How it chooses is on the methodology page.

WheelTheta runs this arithmetic on several hundred names every weekday and publishes a top ten from them — the daily screen.

Research and education, not investment advice. Selling options can lose more than the premium received. See the disclaimer.