Turn the shares you already own into a steady stream of income - and learn to keep doing it for years without giving away your best gains.
Selling covered calls is one of the most reliable income strategies available to an ordinary investor. Professionals and institutions have used it for decades, and an entire family of funds is built on nothing else. Done with discipline, it can pay you month after month on stocks you intend to hold anyway, lower the effective cost of your positions over time, and bring a welcome selling discipline to a portfolio. It works. Called Away will teach you to do it properly.
What it won't do is sell you the fantasy. Most books in this aisle promise "risk-free rental income" and stop there - and that half-truth is exactly what trips up new writers. A covered call is a genuine income engine and a real trade-off: you collect a premium today in exchange for capping your upside if the stock takes off. Master both halves and the strategy becomes a paycheck you can run for decades. Ignore the second half and a single runaway stock can quietly undo a year of gains. This is the book that teaches you both - so the income is durable, not a streak that ends in regret.
It's a clear, jargon-light guide for the investor who already owns shares and wants to put them to work. You'll learn how the trade actually behaves, which of your holdings make great candidates and which to leave alone, and how to collect premium intelligently - keeping the income while protecting the gains that matter.
Inside, you'll learn how to:
- Generate steady premium income from stocks you already own - the income-first approach, step by step
- Pick the right candidates: the mature, range-bound, dividend-paying shares where covered calls shine
- Choose strikes and expirations that balance income now against the headroom you want to keep
- Read a premium as a real return on capital - and know when it's rich enough to be worth writing
- Run a simple entry checklist so every trade is one you'd make on your calmest day
- Manage an open position, roll up and out for more credit, and handle being called away as a planned, profitable exit
- Use the wheel to keep collecting premium coming and going - selling puts to buy back in, calls to get paid on the way out
- Size the strategy so you participate in the occasional big year instead of watching from the sidelines
- Handle the tax side of being called away, and keep the discipline that makes the income last
You'll see the strategy work in plain numbers - the quiet, repeatable income it throws off on the right stocks - and you'll learn to recognize the handful of situations where writing a call costs more than it pays, so you can simply step aside.
No guru promises. No "rental income" fairy tales. Just a real income strategy, taught honestly - the mechanics, the math, and the judgment to write calls knowing exactly what you're doing.
Called Away is the second book in the Options Strategy Series, from the author of
Assigned: Selling Puts for Income. Together they cover the two halves of the wheel: getting paid to buy stock you want, and getting paid to sell stock you hold.
