Scan stocks for Poor Man's Covered Call (PMCC) suitability. Analyzes LEAPS and short call options for delta, liquidity, spread, IV, yield, trend direction, and earnings proximity. Use when user asks about PMCC candidates, diagonal spreads, or LEAPS strategies.
Finds optimal Poor Man's Covered Call setups by scoring symbols on option chain quality.
Buy deep ITM LEAPS call (delta ~0.80) + Sell short-term OTM call (delta ~0.20) against it. Cheaper alternative to covered calls.
Note: If
uvis not installed orpyproject.tomlis not found, replaceuv run pythonwithpythonin all commands below.
uv run python scripts/scan.py SYMBOLS [options]
SYMBOLS - Comma-separated tickers or path to JSON file from bullish scanner--min-leaps-days - Minimum LEAPS expiration in days (default: 270 = 9 months)--leaps-delta - Target LEAPS delta (default: 0.80)--short-delta - Target short call delta (default: 0.20)--output - Save results to JSON file| Category | Condition | Points |
|---|---|---|
| Delta Accuracy | LEAPS within ±0.05 | +2 |
| LEAPS within ±0.10 | +1 | |
| Short within ±0.05 | +1 | |
| Short within ±0.10 | +0.5 | |
| Liquidity | LEAPS vol+OI > 100 | +1 |
| LEAPS vol+OI > 20 | +0.5 | |
| Short vol+OI > 500 | +1 | |
| Short vol+OI > 100 | +0.5 | |
| Spread | LEAPS spread < 5% | +1 |
| LEAPS spread < 10% | +0.5 | |
| Short spread < 10% | +1 | |
| Short spread < 20% | +0.5 | |
| IV Level | 25-50% (ideal) | +2 |
| 20-60% | +1 | |
| Yield | Annual > 50% | +2 |
| Annual > 30% | +1 | |
| Trend | Price > SMA50 | +1 / -1 |
| RSI > 50 | +0.5 / -0.5 | |
| MACD > signal | +0.5 / -0.5 | |
| Earnings | Next earnings > 45 days | +1.0 |
| Earnings within 45 days | -1.0 | |
| Earnings within short expiry | -2.0 |
Returns JSON with:
criteria - Scan parameters usedresults - Array sorted by score:
symbol, price, iv_pct, pmcc_score, max_possible_score (always 14)leaps - expiry, strike, delta, bid/ask, spread%, volume, OIshort - expiry, strike, delta, bid/ask, spread%, volume, OImetrics - net_debit, short_yield%, annual_yield%, capital_requiredscore_breakdown - every scoring component as a <name>_delta (float) + <name> (explanation string) pair:
leaps_delta, short_delta, leaps_liquidity, short_liquidity, leaps_spread, short_spread, iv, yieldtrend_delta, trend (per-indicator dict)earnings_delta, earnings_delta values sum to pmcc_scoreerrors - Symbols that failed (no options, insufficient data)# Scan specific symbols
uv run python scripts/scan.py AAPL,MSFT,GOOGL,NVDA
# Use output from bullish scanner
uv run python scripts/scan.py bullish_results.json
# Custom delta targets
uv run python scripts/scan.py AAPL,MSFT --leaps-delta 0.70 --short-delta 0.15
# Longer LEAPS (1 year minimum)
uv run python scripts/scan.py AAPL,MSFT --min-leaps-days 365
# Save results
uv run python scripts/scan.py AAPL,MSFT,GOOGL --output pmcc_results.json
max_possible_score is always 14 — use pmcc_score / max_possible_score to gauge how close a candidate is to perfectnumpypandasscipyyfinance