Covered calls on SPY
SPDR S&P 500 ETF Trust was trading at $767.90 when this page was last refreshed on September 30, 2026. 29 out-of-the-money SPY calls sat in the 0.15 to 0.25 delta band that covered call writers work in, paying $119 to $195 a contract. 28 of them came back scored, and the app would have ranked those and shown you the top few.
Numbers on this page come from a snapshot taken on September 30, 2026. They are not live quotes and are not refreshed when you load the page.
| Expiry | Strike | Bid / ask | Premium | Annualized | Keep odds | Break-even | OI |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| October 5 5d | $776.00 | $1.18 / $1.20 | $119 | 11.3% | 80% | $777.19 | 434 |
| October 6 6d | $777.00 | $1.28 / $1.29 | $129 | 10.2% | 80% | $778.29 | 328 |
| October 7 7d | $778.00 | $1.38 / $1.40 | $139 | 9.4% | 80% | $779.39 | 428 |
| October 8 8d | $778.00 | $1.70 / $1.72 | $171 | 10.2% | 79% | $779.71 | 303 |
| October 9 9d | $779.00 | $1.85 / $1.87 | $186 | 9.8% | 79% | $780.86 | 1,803 |
| October 12 12d | $780.00 | $1.93 / $1.96 | $195 | 7.7% | 79% | $781.95 | 286 |
One row per expiration: the out-of-the-money strike closest to the middle of the delta band, which is the strike you would actually be looking at on that expiry. Break-even on a covered call is your own cost basis minus the premium, not the strike minus the premium, so the column above is the strike-side break-even and yours depends on what you paid for the shares.
What the premium is priced off
At-the-money implied vol is 12%. That is cheap, and cheap IV is the market telling you it does not expect much to happen, which is precisely when selling premium pays worst.
Can you actually get filled
Median bid-ask spread across these strikes is 1.4% of the mid. That is tight enough that the spread is not a real cost, which is rarer than it sounds. Open interest runs about 428 contracts at the median strike. Enough to trade, not enough to be careless with size.
Dates that matter in this window
SPY is a fund, so there is no earnings date to sell into. That removes the single largest gap risk a premium seller faces, and it is most of the reason funds are easier to write against than the names inside them. The stock pays about 0.7% a year, and no ex-dividend date was confirmed inside this window.
What the annualized column hides
The best annualized number in this ladder is 11.3%, on the $776.00 strike expiring October 5. It is $119 of actual cash. It annualizes well because it is a 5-day contract, and annualizing a two-week trade assumes you find twenty-six more like it, at the same premium, with the same risk. You will not.
If it gets called away
Take the $780.00 strike expiring October 12. You collect $195 up front. If SPY finishes above $780.00 your 100 shares are sold there, and the 1.6% move from $767.90 up to the strike is yours as well. Everything above it is not. The model puts the odds of keeping the premium at about 79%, so assignment on this one is a real possibility rather than a footnote.
The number nobody checks is the cost basis. If you paid more than $780.00 for these shares, that strike locks in a loss on the stock, and $195 of premium does not repair it. A covered call is only a good trade at a strike you would genuinely accept selling at.
Questions people actually ask
What is a good strike for a covered call on SPY?
The strikes above are the ones in the 0.15 to 0.25 delta band, which is where premium sellers targeting roughly an 80% chance of keeping the premium tend to sit. On the September 30, 2026 snapshot that meant $776.00 out to $780.00, depending on how far out you go. The right one for you is the lowest strike you would still be happy selling your shares at.
How much can you make selling covered calls on SPY?
The best annualized figure in the ladder above was 11.3%, and the cash it represents was $119 for one contract. Annualized numbers assume you repeat the trade all year at the same premium, which nobody does. Treat them as a way to compare expiries, not as a forecast.
Does OptionsKing recommend selling calls on SPY?
No. This page is a dated snapshot of the chain, not a recommendation, and the app has no opinion to offer beyond an ordering. It scores every in-band strike and shows you the best few by rank, with no minimum score anywhere, so at the last refresh 28 of the 29 in-band strikes were scored and the top few would have reached you whatever those scores were. See how the scoring works and the full disclaimer.
Nothing above is a recommendation. It is what the SPY chain looked like on September 30, 2026, filtered to the strikes a premium seller would look at first, and the prices have moved since you loaded this page.