I have gone through several iterations of CC tracking sheets and found that the simpler the better. What I do is exactly what you see on the Conservative Account tab. It does require some copy/paste to add formulas and new trades. If you haven't, you should join the Yahoo! group justcoveredcalls. Once in you will find several different tracking spread sheets in their Files section. If you are still interested in what I use I can send a copy to your email – just let me know.

◄ Jeff ►

Could I get you to share what software you use to trackmanage your active trades and completed trades? I subscribed to the CallWriter service and the Excel spreadsheet they supply is lame (I'm being polite) No formulas, all manual entry and manual calculations.
I see people selling spread sheets for covered calls and was curious if you wrote your own or use a commercial product.

Many thanks for all your writing!

P:)

You can use Spread Hacker on the Scan tab in TOS, but it's not what I use. Spread Hacker comes up with some really weird stuff and I haven't figured out how to filter out the chaff yet – but I am working on it. So here's what I do:

I have my watch list of 50 or so candidates that I check almost every day. I like calendars that have a positive skew to the front month, but it's not critical – although I don't like anything worse than a -2% skew.

Around the week before expiration, I make my calendar shopping list. First I bring up my watch list in a Watch List Gadget, then I open the Trade tab and collapse all the option chains. I then link the watch list to the tab (say 1 Red), then I arrow down through the watch list checking the IV on the far right for the months I want to do my calendar in and writing the symbols down. Yeah, I know, it's not the prettiest – but I usually only do it once or maybe twice a month and it takes about 10 minutes. What's nice about using the Gadget Watch List is if there are earnings coming up, you get the little blue book icon next to the symbol.

Although I rarely hold through earnings, you can hold UP TO earnings, like I am doing with PCLN. If you have enough time to let theta work for you, then it can be a very good trade.

► Jeff

I am very interested in the double calendar spread trades which you have shared recently on the site. May I ask how you come up with potential candidates or if there is a scanner algorithm to detect volatility skew avail on thinkorswim?

many thanks,

Anh