This tool is designed for backtesting covered calls on a portfolio of US Large Cap stocks. It allows you to simulate how different option selling strategies would have performed historically.
Debatable - when people say options are "overpriced", they are usually referring to the volatility risk premium (VRP). Implied volatility in options tends to be higher than the volatility that is actually realized in the underlying over time.
However, option prices are not built using the real-world expected return of equities, which includes the equity risk premium (ERP). Instead, options are priced under a risk-neutral framework where the expected growth rate of the underlying is effectively the risk-free rate minus dividends. This means the ERP is not embedded into option pricing.
The debate on whether selling covered calls should be expected to provide excess returns over just holding the underlying is whether the VRP when selling calls is large enough to compensate for the "upside drift" in the underlying from the ERP. If that isn't the case, you should expect to actually have slightly lower returns from selling covered calls compared to just holding the underlying, but with better risk adjusted returns.
The most useful feature is the Roll Trigger Delta input. This is intended to test the "roll forever" retail style of managing short calls that have gone In-The-Money (ITM). Think of this as a rough illustration of how realistic it is to expect to be able to roll an ITM short call forever until it expires worthless.
The simulation follows specific logic for different trade phases:
A new trade is opened in these scenarios:
New trades use the Target DTE to pick an expiration and the Short Call Delta to select the strike.
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