Covered Call Screener

How to use a covered call screener

A covered call screener has one job: surface the highest-yielding short-call setups across the market so you don't have to load 50 chains by hand. The hard part is ranking. Annualized yield alone always promotes the riskiest contracts to the top (because deep-OTM short-dated calls with razor-thin premium become 200% annualized after a single basis-point move). A useful screener has to balance yield against the probability the contract finishes where you want it to — which is exactly what the Score column here does (annualized yield × probability of expiring OTM, where probability is approximated as 1 − |delta|).

What the columns mean

• OTM % — how far above the current underlying the strike sits. Higher = more cushion before the call goes in the money.
• Δ (delta) — the contract's sensitivity to the underlying. A delta of 0.25 means roughly a 75% chance the call expires worthless (you keep the premium and the shares).
• Call Premium — the bid-ask midpoint. Per share, multiply by 100 to get the cash you receive per contract.
• Annualized — the percent yield extrapolated to a full year. Formula: (premium ÷ strike) × (365 ÷ DTE). It puts a 7-day trade and a 45-day trade on the same scale.
• Score — the default ranking column. Annualized × (1 − |delta|). Sorts high-yield-high-probability setups above lottery tickets.
• “Earn” badge — the contract's expiration covers an earnings announcement. Many sellers skip these.

Picking from the list

Most covered-call sellers target strikes with delta between 0.20 and 0.35, which is roughly 65–80% probability the call expires worthless. The screener already filters out anything outside 0.10–0.45 to remove both extremes. From there:

• Want pure income, willing to hold the stock? Sort by Annualized and pick the top-ranked setup on a name you don't mind owning longer-term.
• Want to maximize keep-rate? Sort by OTM % descending — wider OTM means a bigger cushion before assignment.
• Want to minimize volatility risk? Toggle “Exclude earnings-week” — earnings can cause double-digit overnight moves that blow through any reasonable strike.

What this screener doesn't do

This is a market-wide scan. It doesn't know your cost basis, your tax lots, or which underlyings you already hold 100 shares of. For that, you need the full CoverEdge app: every option fill is auto-synced from your brokerage, every premium and assignment lands in an immutable ledger, and the same screener engine overlays on your real portfolio with portfolio-aware roll analysis. Start a free 14-day trial below — no credit card required.