[trader220]

The daily price decay on any contract can easily be calculated and you can use the implied volatility and time to expiration to plot the chart so there is no mystery. Although you mitigate some of the decay risk by holding for short period of time as you say you like, it becomes a double edged sword when you don’t get the up move you need. In addition as the stock moves higher the implied volatility moves lower so now you have both time and implied volatility working against you on any upwards move.

Very very very few people are able to time the markets so well as to be consistently a net winner in that game, and its been tried for decades. If the trade is event driven, you have another issue. Since the date when the “event” is going to occur is known by the market, if it’s a significant event implied volatility will already have a premium in it, priced enough to mitigate any profits unless the event causes a much greater than forecasted move to the upside. In many more cases than not even if the stock rallies after the event, out of the money calls will fall in value, not move in value or move much less than the one would expect. When you trade stocks that have a high dollar cost (stocks in the 100 or 200 or higher per share value) then the premiums in the options are proportionally higher which in real dollar terms exaggerates the risk for the individual investor when those calls decay for time or go down because the stock goes down or does not move up enough.
In terms of call selling, the new era for market volatility started about 10 years ago and what was once considered a low volatility level (roughly 20 in the SandP 500 VIX) is now considered very high volatility and VIX values in the low to middle teens are the norm. With the VIX in the area it has been for a decade the premium in out of the money calls is hardly worth the risk assumed by selling it. Most institutions abandoned premium selling strategies nearly a decade ago when the risk reward headed south with the VIX. Its called “picking up dimes in front of a steamroller”

I am not saying those strategies cant work or don’t work. I am saying that they have been tried for years and typically in the end they don’t net a whole lot. You tend to make a lot of small gains which get wiped out on one or two bad ones. History is very clear on that.