>shares of Intel, and am interested in selling calls. How do I do it with >a discount broker?
Call your broker and ask them to send you the paperwork to be approved for options trading. There will be some forms asking you about your income, your trading experience, and making you sign some forms that you understand the risks of options trading and that you can lose your shirt and all that.
If you just want to sell covered calls, then you will get approved pretty much automatically; other stuff (like buying calls or, -gasp-, writing naked calls) might take a bit more experience to get ok'd. Anyway. Yes, it's possible to do with a discount broker -- you just sell the option as if you owned it in the first place, and then you buy it back (or let it be executed) at some point.
And yes, I've made money on it, even though I was only doing it with 100 shares -- my broker's commission on options is about $30, so yeah, it's not difficult to make money. Not HUGE money usually, but it's still money. My strategy with options is to make small respectable profits many times over, instead of trying for "the killer deal." A thousand dollars here, a thousand dollars there, starts adding up after a while, you know... :-)
Good luck and let us know how it goes. |
