One Strikes Tool
This tool allows you to save up to 75 stocks, divided into five different hand picked groups, to search for calls and puts, both naked and covered. Whereas other features on this site will search out stocks for you based on numbers you provide, the OneStrike tool is returning numbers to you from the list of favorite stocks you provide. Using a scroll down bar, you can easily change the type of option as well as option month that you are searching for. This tool can also easily recall your saved selections or save new selections.

SmartSearch Tool
This tool is used to find new investment opportunities. Our search engine is used to screen the database for stock and option combinations that meet your investment criteria. If your search results in more than 20 stock and option combinations, you can access the next page by using the buttons at the bottom of the search results table. Default search values are already entered in the search form for your first visit to this page. But each value can be changed to meet your specific investment style. Each criterion is underlined and linked to a definition of the term. Fractions, dollar signs, and percent signs should not be used in the Search Settings form. If you are unsure about what search value to use for any of the data, leave it blank rather than putting in a value of zero. The information below will provide some guidelines on how to perform better searches:

Option Expiration Date
This is the date the option expires. It occurs on the third Friday of the particular month the option is for.

Option Type
OptionSearcher.com will allow you to search for four types of options: Covered Calls, Covered Puts, Naked Calls and Naked Puts. Once you have used the scroll down bar to select the type of option you would like, click on the Search button and OptionSearcher will search the option type you requested.

Sorts
This is the order of the results from your search. You can choose most of the columns that are in the results table, however most people use % if Assigned (High to Low) or % if Not Assigned (High to Low). % if Assigned (High to Low) is the initial or default value for sort. This display will generally be dominated by Out of the money calls, because the assigned option will have a high return when both the option premium and the price gains are considered in the calculations. The % if Not Assigned option (click down arrow and choose % if Assigned) will be dominated by In the money calls. Tactically, if you anticipate that the market will be strong and the stock you are writing against will be rising then out of the money calls are written. During a decline or bear market, options in the money are generally written to provide more down side protection.

Just click the down arrow next to the sort box to see the alternatives for ordering the results. The column you choose can then be ordered from High to Low or from Low to High. As a example % return columns are generally sorted from High to Low, where the greatest returns are at the top. However, Average Recommendation by Brokers would be sorted from Low to High since the most favorable recommendations are the low numbered ones.

In the Money
You should use these numerical search settings if you would like to only search through the in-the-money options. You can search by the number of strikes and/or by the percentage that the strike price is in-the-money.

Out of the Money
You should use these numerical search settings if you would like to only search through the out-of-the-money options. You can search by the number of strikes and/or by the percentage that the strike price is out-of-the-money.

Both
You can use any combination of these boxes to get results that are near the money, further away from at the money, or bracketed around the near-money options.

Searching with the Filters

Spread
The difference between the current bid and current ask prices for a given security.

% Return Difference
This is the difference between the % if Assigned and the % if Not Assigned columns. The intended use for % return difference is to find stock/option combinations, that have a small difference between the if Assigned and if not Assigned values, so that you can be assured of a decent return in either case. Generally, the "greater than" column is left blank, and a number like 10% is used in the "less than" column. If you try a small number in the "less than" column, only stock/option combinations, which are near-the-money will be shown. As the "less than" number is increased (i.e. 10), stocks will appear, which are further from their strike price. If you set the "less than" to 0, only at-the-money stock/option combinations will be shown.

% If Not Assigned
We use this filter to assure a minimum return if the stock is not Assigned or Called at expiration. Therefore, the "less than" column is left blank and we choose a minimum return we would like to achieve in the "greater than" column. If the return required is too high, no stock/option combinations may be found. Higher return options will tend to also be the riskier options! 5% is a good starting number.

% If Assigned
We use this filter to assure a minimum return if the stock is Assigned or Called at expiration. Since there are extra commissions involved if the stock is Assigned, we generally set the "greater than" value slightly higher than the if not Assigned value above or about 6%. Higher return options will tend to also be the riskier options! 6% is a good starting number.

Option Volume
The option volume represents the number of option contracts traded that day. Both volume and open interest below are used to assess option activity. Depending on the number of options in the trades you are doing this could be used to find options which have a higher trading volume. Also, it is a good idea to use at least a zero in the "greater than" column since options that haven't traded today, may have old prices and data associated with them.

Open Interest
Open interest represents the number of open contracts on the market over the life of the contract. It is used with volume to determine if there is enough activity in the option you want to trade. We generally look for the open interest to be 5 times our trading volume. Therefore, if you expect to trade 3 options set the value to 15 to assure yourself that there is somebody else in this market.

Stock Price
Price is the asked price or closing price of the underlying stock. Asked price is used when available because it is the lowest price that a market order can be executed at. Stock price is used to select a price range for the stocks of interest. Some brokerage firms will not margin stocks if they are less than $5 per share. At the same time you may not have enough cash to buy 1000 shares of a $100 stock. This parameter can be used to set the acceptable stock price range between two values.

Option Bid Price
This is the BID PRICE or premium on the option shown in the results table. It is the cash flow that you will receive upon selling the call. The database can be filtered to present only those premiums over a certain amount. If the "Greater Than" value is set to 1, then only options with a premium greater than one dollar will be shown in the results table. The "Less than" box is generally left blank.

Naked Percent
This is the percent return if the option is sold and the stock is not owned or shorted. The math formula is Option Price / (Margin requirement - Option Price).

BS Ratio
This is the Black-Scholes ratio. It is calculated by taking the actual bid on the option and dividing it by the theoretical or fair value determined by the Black-Scholes formula. If the actual bid is 1.2 and the Black-Scholes value is 1.0 then the ratio is 1.2 / 1.0 = 1.2. Therefore this would indicate that the option was 20% over valued or 20% higher than the theoretical fair value. This parameter can be used to screen for over or undervalued options. When you are writing options, the potentially overvalued ones are of most interest and the undervalued ones of most interest if you are an option buyer.

Delta
Delta is the change in option price versus the change in stock price. It measures how much the option will move for each point that the stock moves. A delta of .25 means that the option will move 1/4 point for each point that the stock moves. Delta approaches zero for deep out of the money options and approaches one for the deep in the money options. Delta is .5 when the stock price is equal to the strike price.

% Option Volume
% Option Volume is the ratio of yesterdays contracts to the average number of contracts traded over the last 30 days. When contracts are measured they are the total number of contracts traded for all months and strike prices. If the average number of contract traded is 100 over the last month and yesterdays contract volume is 33 then % Option Volume = 33 / 100 = 33 or is 33% of the average contract volume. This parameter can be used to measure or observe unusual volume or option activity.

Implied Volatility
This is the volatility that is implied by the actual option price. Historical volatility is based on the price movement of the underlying stock, but implied volatility is back calculated from the actual option price. To calculate the implied volatility, the volatility value in the Black/Scholes pricing model is iterated until it produces an option value that equals the actual option bid price on the market. This calculation is only done once a day after the close of the market.

% To Double
This is an iterated calculation much like the implied volatility. Derived like the Delta, it is the % change needed in the underlying stock price to cause the option to double. The Black/Scholes model is used for this calculated operation.

% EPSG
% Earnings per Share Growth is the change in earnings growth from last year to the estimate for the next year divided by the earnings from last year, expressed as a percent. It is the expected earnings growth from year to year. If you are looking for growth in a stock, it is important to have a strong year to year change in earnings, you may want to use greater than 20%.

P/E
This is the Price to Earnings ratio using last years earnings. The higher the P/E value, the more you are paying for each dollar of earnings, you may want to use less than 50 to filter HI Tech stocks or companies with low earnings. Use a zero in the "greater than" column to filter out companies without earnings or a loss.

% Range
Percent of Range between the years high and low for the stock price. This is an indicator of where the price is relative to the high and low over the last 52 weeks. Therefore, 80% would mean that today's price for the stock is in the top 80% of its price range for the last year.

Average Broker Recommendation
This weeks average broker recommendation provided by ZACKS investment research. An average recommendation of 1 is a strong buy, 3 is a hold, and 5 is a strong sell. This filter uses the average value. A detailed look at the number of brokers recommending each rating level between 1 and 5 can be seen by clicking the company name.

% Volume
The % change in volume is the % change from yesterdays volume on the stock. It is the % volume from yesterdays activity and is a measure of whether the stock is more or less active from the day before.

# Shares Outstanding
The number of shares outstanding is a measure of the size of the company. Larger companies generally have more shares because of the many splits in their history. The larger companies generally have more than 40 Million shares outstanding. This parameter is measured in millions of shares. One hundred (100) means 100 million shares are outstanding.

% Yield
This is the annual dividend yield on the underlying stock. About 1/2 of the optionable stocks have a dividend. Using dividend as a screen is a way of limiting your search to only stocks which have a dividend. These are generally the larger companies. Setting the "Greater Than" field to .1 will eliminate any company not having a dividend.

Beta
Beta is a measure of the sensitivity of a security’s price to changes in the market. Any stock with a higher-than-market Beta is more volatile than the market (as compared to the S&P 500), while any stock with a lower Beta can be expected to rise and fall more slowly than the market. The beta of the market is 1. Therefore, a value of 1.2 for Beta would indicate that the stock was 20% more volatile that the S&P 500 average.

Volatility
This is a measure of the historical volatility of the stock. It is a statistical calculation that has been annualized. Historical volatility is one of the parameters that is used to calculate the theoretical value of the option using the Black-Scholes formula. As a general rule the higher the volatility the higher the option premium will be.

Customize BigCharts.com
Once you have clicked a stock symbol, a stock chart for that issue will appear. Use the left side frame of the BigCharts.com site to change your preferences for the chart settings. The time period on the chart, moving averages, dividend events, and other information can also be displayed and saved. Click each of the items indicated such as time frame, compare to, indicators, chart style to change the settings.

Choosing Stocks Options with High Returns
Using OptionSearcher Finders tools you select high-yield stock option buy/writes from over 140,000 combinations. This tool is interactive, allowing you to choose the best options every time. If the market is expected to rise, for example, you can limit the search for options that are "Out-of-the-Money" (Strike price above the base stock price). Conversely, if you expect a weak market, limit the search for options that are "In-the-Money" (base stock price above the strike price).

Using Broker Recommendations, %EPSG, P/E, and # shares to Indicate Strong and Rising Stocks.
Hold stocks that are strong and rising. Use our Finders tools to search stocks with favorable ratings and recommended as "strong buys". Another powerful search criteria is "earnings growth" (see %EPSG). When using %EPSG, start with "greater than 10%" to see how many companies meet this and your other search criteria. Price/Earnings (P/E) ratio is another indicator that can be searched to eliminate companies with no earnings or prices that are not proportional to the earnings that the company does have. Even in a high-priced market you can still find many issues with a P/E "greater than" 1 and "less than" 50. The number of shares search criteria can be set to find the very large companies by using "greater than" 30 million shares outstanding. All of these parameters can be varied to limit the results to a manageable number.