Certain tickers are indeed suitable for Covered Call strategies, which can enhance the performance of your stock holdings. To evaluate the long-term benefits of Covered Calls, we have expanded our backtesting to include more tickers and plotted their cumulative returns and annualized Sharpe ratios in the chart below.

Each ticker has its own unique symbol on the chart. Solid symbols represent a strategy of holding the underlying stock while continuously selling covered calls, whereas hollow symbols represent a simple buy-and-hold strategy.

Holding Period: Oct 2022 – Oct 2026 (4 years total)

Out-of-the-Money (OTM) Strike: 9% premium

DTE = 2 weeks (strictly Friday expirations)

Backtesting over the four-year period reveals that most solid symbols cluster in the bottom-left quadrant, indicating lower Sharpe ratios and lower cumulative returns.

Ideally, we would want to identify a strategy that shifts the solid symbols toward the top-right corner, representing both high Sharpe ratios and high returns.

In fact, three tickers proved highly suitable for Covered Calls over the past four years:

- **TSMC ($Taiwan Semiconductor(TSM.US))**: Executing Covered Calls yielded higher cumulative returns and a significantly improved Sharpe ratio.

- **Apple ($Apple(AAPL.US))**: While Covered Calls did not generate higher cumulative returns than holding the stock alone, they did improve the Sharpe ratio.

- **Amazon ($Amazon(AMZN.US))**: Covered Calls slightly boosted the Sharpe ratio.

- **Meta ($Meta Platforms(META.US))**: Cumulative returns decreased, but the Sharpe ratio increased.

Out of the 12 tickers analyzed, data from the past four years highlights three specific stocks that benefit from Covered Call strategies. This approach requires no technical analysis or subjective judgment; it is a mechanical execution of selling two-week-to-expiration covered calls every other week. Simply following this routine can enhance the Sharpe ratio for select individual stocks.

Therefore, based on statistical data, it is inaccurate to claim that Covered Calls are entirely ineffective. However, the actual impact varies significantly depending on the individual stock.