Best Covered Call ETFs: Supercharge your Income…

Covered call ETFs provide investors with an advanced income strategy without all the work and hassle of trading options on your own.

The strategy, applied to your favorite bank stocks, can increase your income by a couple of percentage points if you do it right. But why not just go with the ZWB ETF, or BMO Covered Call Canadian Banks ETF?

What Are Covered Calls?

A covered call is simply a clarification of a call option where the seller of the call option holds the underlying shares. If the buyer of the contract were to exercise it, the seller has the shares and can simply sell them.

When an investor sells call options for a premium, the investor pockets the premium if the options are not excerciced when the contract expires.

The latter is how investors generate some extra income. The trick is in choosing the right price and time window. It’s an advanced investing skill.

The Best Covered Call ETFs

There aren’t many covered call ETFs and only a couple of providers currently offer them. In my opinion, that’s bound to change if it gains in popularity.

With ETFs, I like to look at a few criteria to make a selection. Since the strategy is for income, the yield is important in this case but it has to be a balance with the rate of return, or ROR for short.

In the case of ETFs, we need to look at the forward yield based on one of the recent payments as distributions are not consistent. You therefore need to take the yield as a range as it could be up or down from distribution to distribution.

The idea with a covered call ETF is to get the highest income while not taking any risks on the underlying assets. That implies that we do care about the underlying assets.

For example, the Canadian banks could be the safest while a gold focus could be the riskiest.

While the TXF (CI Technology Covered Call ETF) has done really well and has paid a good yield, there is always a risk with technology. The NXF (CI Energy Giants Covered Call ETF) has done poorly in terms of value and is therefore discounted.

I find FHI (CI Health Care Giant Cover Call ETF) to be the best opportunity followed by ZWH (BMO US High Dividend Covered Call ETF). Both ETFs are focused on US stocks. To have a Canadian covered call ETF in the list, the best one is ZWB (BMO Covered Call Canadian Banks ETF) for consistency and safety.

FHI – CI Health Care Giant Cover Call ETF

The ETF holds the top healthcare stocks from the US which have usually less volatility than other sectors and many pay a decent yield to add to the income from the options premium.

The ETF holds the top 20 healthcare stocks that you will all recognize and are an integral part of the North American healthcare system. They are primarily the mega cap stocks from a market capitalization.

ZWH – BMO US High Dividend Covered Call ETF

This ETF is doubling down on income by focusing on high yield stocks and using covered calls to increase the income.

The ETF holds approximately 40 stocks from the US but they are not high yield as what you would expect from the ETF name. They are well known mega cap dividend stocks with a mix of strong dividend growers along with consistent dividend growers.

ZWB – BMO Covered Call Canadian Banks ETF

This is your safe play if you are very risk averse but your income drops by 30% …

It’s pretty simple, the ETF holds the major banks and writes covered calls. This is what many DIY investors would do on their own.

Why Invest in Covered Call ETFs

You invest in covered call ETFs because you want to increase your income.

In fact, the best ETFs outlined may already be holdings you have in your portfolio. In which case, you risk and downside is already understood and limited.

In fact, as a Canadian, we aren’t much exposed to the healthcare sector and the best covered call ETF satistfies just that.

How To Buy Covered Call ETFs

To buy a covered call ETF, you need a discount broker as ETFs trade like stocks on a stock exchange for ETFs. You specify the number of shares you want to buy from the selected ETF and whether you want to pay the market price or you enter the price you want to pay.

As it happens, there are many trading platforms that offer access to free ETFs and you should use a discount broker with free ETFs if you can. Questrade is one of those discount brokers with free ETFs.