PMCC Scanner

Finds optimal Poor Man's Covered Call setups by scoring symbols on option chain quality.

What is PMCC?

Buy deep ITM LEAPS call (delta ~0.80) + Sell short-term OTM call (delta ~0.20) against it. Cheaper alternative to covered calls.

Instructions

Note: If uv is not installed or pyproject.toml is not found, replace uv run python with python in all commands below.

uv run python scripts/scan.py SYMBOLS [options]

Arguments

• 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

Scoring System (max ~11 points)

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

Output

Returns JSON with:

• criteria

• Scan parameters used

• results

• Array sorted by score:

• symbol , price , iv_pct , pmcc_score

• leaps

• expiry, strike, delta, bid/ask, spread%, volume, OI

• short

• expiry, strike, delta, bid/ask, spread%, volume, OI

• metrics

• net_debit, short_yield%, annual_yield%, capital_required

• errors

• Symbols that failed (no options, insufficient data)

Examples

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

Key Constraints

• Short strike must be above LEAPS strike

• Options with bid = 0 (illiquid) are skipped

• Moderate IV (25-50%) scores highest

Interpretation

• Score > 9: Excellent candidate

• Score 7-9: Good candidate

• Score 5-7: Acceptable with caveats

• Score < 5: Poor liquidity or structure

Dependencies

• numpy

• pandas

• scipy

• yfinance