 Hello and welcome to my new course on covered calls. So many of you may be stock traders and you might be holding stocks in your portfolio. You may or may not know about covered calls but if you don't then this course is going to open a completely different dimension for you because when you own stocks most people think that they cannot make any income with it unless they buy it and sell it and keep getting into the trading mode. That's not the case and covered calls are some of the most powerful strategies for stock owners. If you have stocks in your portfolio you can generate income from these stocks on a monthly basis. So think about it, especially if you are holding stocks for the long term and if you have a portfolio you may be surprised to find that covered calls can be some of the most powerful and yet the most simplest strategies. It's also very safe and profitable. So this is a very interesting course for stock traders. Now if you don't trade stocks, if you only trade options I'm going to throw in a bonus at the end of the course which will allow you to trade covered calls like your own stock. So we'll get into all of that later in the course but first I just want to give a quick background on myself. My name is Hari Swaminathan. I run a company called OptionTiger.com. I've been an options trader for about 8 to 10 years but I also have extensive experience with all the other asset classes like stocks, ETFs, bonds including options and futures. I have a bachelor's degree in engineering from India and an MBA from Columbia Business School in New York City. A little bit about myself. This is my Udemy channel. You can find me under Udemy.com slash user slash Hari Swaminathan close to about 30,000 students from 168 countries and an average review of 4.47 out of 5 and this is as of May 31st 2017. Okay, so let's look at covered calls. I want to give a brief overview of what exactly a cover call is. Covered calls are what you would call a classic income strategy if you own stocks. So what exactly do we mean by an income strategy? An income strategy is generally refers to some kind of a mechanism where you get some kind of a return either every 2 weeks or every month or every 45 days or 60 days but on a frequent basis maybe every quarter perhaps you get some income. So think of it like a CD or a certificate of deposit or a bond one of those kinds of instruments where you want to create income and that comes into your account whereas the actual instrument itself that you hold whether it's a bond or a CD or whatever it is that is still there and when the maturity of that particular instrument comes about then you get that money back. However, what we are talking about is not a fixed income or a bond kind of an instrument I just want to give you an example of what an income strategy would look like. Now you can apply covered calls even if you don't know a whole lot about options I would recommend a little bit because we are going to be using options so if you are a total stock trader I would highly recommend that you learn a little bit about options perhaps just at the beginner's level because that's all you need if you are not interested in options but if you want to do covered calls and you will see how powerful this strategy is so it's in your interest to learn a little bit about options and just a beginner's course would be fine. This strategy is ideal for people who want to own stocks for the longer term and there are millions of people that own stocks for the longer term. However, just by holding it you are not getting any income. Yes, if the stock price goes up then you are going to benefit from it if it goes down however you are going to lose money but what do you do in the meanwhile so in the meanwhile you can use covered calls as a very effective strategy to create income so whether it is per month per week, per 3 months per quarter whatever it is you can create income strategies using covered calls as the name suggests we are going to use call options for covered calls so what we do is we are going to sell a call option that is either in the money, at the money or out of the money and this choice of expiry series and this choice of the option strike price becomes very important and that is actually a decision that you would make on your end because it all depends on your return objectives for this particular stock or for your particular situation because how much time you have to dedicate to look at the markets is what will dictate what kind of an option you would sell what strike price you would sell and so on and so forth. Now, if all of this is completely new to you don't worry because these things are going to be explained in the following lectures in complete detail that is what this course is all about we are going to go deep into the aspects of covered calls in this course we are also going to be doing live trades so you are going to see three live trades on this inside this course and we will talk about that on the next slide when I discuss the agenda for the course these trades are going to go through adjustments they are going to go through rolls and even roller coasters so it is very exciting that these trades were put on at a time when there was quite a bit of volatility coming in and so there is a lot of excitement and rolling and roller coasters in this course but I can tell you this is one of the most exciting courses because it is a very safe strategy it is a very profitable strategy and especially if you are a stock owner then covered calls is something that you must learn because you can create income from your stocks that you already own and this can add a significant performance to your stock returns because just think about it if on a monthly basis or every two months or three months you are getting some income from your stocks but even if it is a small amount over the period of 12 months or 24 months this can add up and so you can do this it is a repeatable strategy you can do this every so and so period of time and that period of time depends upon you and so we will be getting into that as to what would be the right kind of a time frame that you should be looking at given your situation all of that will be covered in this course now let's now look at the course agenda and what we are going to cover here first we will be looking at the covered call strategy itself in the next video you are going to see a complete detail on what a covered call is and we will also be discussing the options component in that because especially if you may just be a stock trader and you don't know anything about options you want to know a little bit and what that little bit is will be covered there basically I can tell you what you need to know is something about call options because that's what we are going to use in covered calls there is something called put options but we don't use that in covered calls so all you need to know is a little bit about call options and that you can learn from any of the a starter beginner kind of a course I myself have one on Udemy itself so then we will try to look at how income and growth go together because if you have a stock then you might have growth because the stock will be doing well the price will be going up the company is doing well and you will get growth from there however while you are sitting on the stock there is no real income unless you may be getting a dividend which is great but a covered call can add to the dividend as well so even if you are getting dividend as an income the covered call actually improves upon that and significantly adds to that performance also you are going to see three live trades in this course like I said Apple will be an at the money covered call Netflix will be an in the money covered call and Tesla will be an out of the money covered call so basically what we are doing with a covered call is we are going to be selling a call option so the question is what strike price would we sell let's say Apple is trading at $150 then do you want to sell an at the money option do you want to sell an out of the money do you want to sell an in the money because you have to remember one thing about covered calls is that if the stock price hits your the strike price of your call option that you sold you might be assigned for that so which means you have to be able to give up your shares now it's not a big deal for many people if you want to be very careful and you do not want to give up your shares then there is a way to do that you will see that in the Tesla trade however even if you have to give up the shares you are going to be giving it up at a very favorable condition so this is what you are looking for you are looking for some good profits you are looking for a nice move and based upon where you took the covered call even if you have to give up the shares you are going to be incredibly profitable when you give up those shares finally because you are selling a call option and perhaps you may be selling an in the money call option itself so you do want to be aware of the kind of volatility situations that might come up and in fact in this particular case you will see that we have exited at the appropriate time on these trades because of a certain global news event that was due to come out anyway and so because of this you want to be aware of what is going on and so there is a very key lesson that is learned in these trades in all of these trades in this course so welcome to the course again in the next video we are going to cover the basics of the cover call and then we are going to jump into the live trades that are part of this course so all three of the trades last about a couple of weeks or so and all of them needed some kind of adjustments and all of that is included including some roller coaster events that I am talking about so welcome to the course again I look forward to seeing you inside thank you