> these positions are "covered", meaning that someone can sell a put option while owning as many stocks as they sell in options A covered call is where you sel

> these positions are "covered", meaning that someone can sell a put option while owning as many stocks as they sell in options A covered call is where you sell options backed by long shares. A covered put is backed by short shares. A common way of selling puts without shorting the underlying stock is just having enough cash on hand to buy the underlying asset if the option is exercised. And yeah, some small investors do claim to make decent income primarily writing options. The basic idea is that if you can eke out like 0.5% a week on average, you can get around 25% annual returns. I've been looking into trying to automate some basic strategies, but it's rather daunting just getting started in automated trading. Figuring out how to just get the data you need for implementing a strategy is a pretty big hurdle, for instance.