Common Questions

1.   How does the calculator get the prices of the stock and option?

There is a FREE add-in to Microsoft Excel called "MSN Money Stock Quotes".  The instructions you will read when you purchase the product will link you to the right place, or you can just Google it.

2.  I don't have PayPal and I don't want to sign up for it either!

Don't worry, you can still pay with credit card, but it's just through PayPal (it is the easiest way for a small merchant like me to accept payments), just click the main payment button and select "I will Pay with..... Paypal", fill in the fields, and hit "Buy Now"

Then on the bottom-left, find the "Don't have a PayPal account?" and click on "Continue".

3.     Will it work with Microsoft Office 2007? - Yes  

4.     Will it work with MAC's - Yes  

5.   Does your calculator work with writing/selling a LEAP as the call option (vice the more typical short term call option)? 

Yes - I have never done so myself, but the calculator just uses standard ticker symbols which LEAPS have.  

6.     Does your calculator work with buying a LEAP call and then writing a short term call on the long term LEAP? - Yes - same explanation as above 

7.  What other countries does your calculator work with?

The calculator uses a free add-in to Excel called MSN Money Stock Quotes which pulls quotes from www.moneycentral.msn.com.  So the question is "what countries does the MSN Money website support".  Going to the MSN webpage here, you see that MSN Money can pull from many different exchanges throughout the word.  You have to be careful to enter the ticker symbol in the format that MSN Money wants it.  For example, the Italian car company Fiat has a ticker symbol of "F", so in excel you would place "IT:F".

Now for the options side, my honest answer is I don't know.  I've done research, and I know for example that the Australian company BHP has options, but MSN says no option data is available.  So if you are interested in purchasing this for foreign securities, just let me know ahead of time and I will troubleshoot it with you.

Lastly, I know for example the Australian option contracts are for 1000 shares vice 100 in the U.S.  So differences like this will effect some of the calculations, but this can be easily worked around.

8.     Right now I am looking for a screening tool that will search the market and find calls with high returns, particularly focusing on the option premium as a percent of the price of the stock.  The service I used to use for this screening (www.coveredcalls.com) has just changed over to a subscription based service.  Does your program perform this function, or anything like it?  

Yes and no - Firstly, the tool is NOT a screener like coveredcalls.com or OptionMonitor (I recommend this).  But it does help you further "screen" possible positions more from a risk perspective.  I am, and thus the tool is, very sensitive to the risk you set in your CCs.  For example, the calculator will estimate how much you will loose in your portfolio if this position is stopped out - which may be way to much such as 5%.  So in a sense it does "screen" candidates before you enter the trade.  It can also be used to ensure you get a good enough fill, or the slippage will eat away your profits.  

The tool is mostly for assisting you in making decisions once the trade is open.  But it can be used as a secondary "screen" to ensure you're not exposing yourself to too much risk or slippage.  But in the sense of your question, my program does not assist in screening.  

9.     When I launch the spreadsheet I get the warning message from Excel: "This workbook contains links to other data sources". I'm assuming I click on the Update button. Is this correct?  When I do this I then get the warning message: "This workbook contains one or more links that cannot be updated" I can either "change the source of the links, or attempt to update the values again" by clicking the Edit links button OR "open the workbook as is" by clicking the Continue button. I assume  

Hit "don't update" on the first box, then "enable automatic refresh" on the second box.

Other Resources

Big Charts

OptionsXpress

This is the brokerage I use.  The best part is the Virtual Trading platform so you can practice trading with fake money

Option Monitor

Although OptionsXpress has a covered calls screener, this one is better ($34.95/month)

Yahoo Finance

Recommended Books