Covered calls on FCX

Freeport-McMoRan was trading at $69.63 when this page was last refreshed on September 16, 2026. 20 out-of-the-money FCX calls sat in the 0.15 to 0.25 delta band that covered call writers work in, paying $47 to $154 a contract. Not one of them came back with a score, which usually means the liquidity screen ate the chain.

Numbers on this page come from a snapshot taken on September 16, 2026. They are not live quotes and are not refreshed when you load the page.

One row per expiration: the out-of-the-money strike closest to the middle of the delta band, which is the strike you would actually be looking at on that expiry. Break-even on a covered call is your own cost basis minus the premium, not the strike minus the premium, so the column above is the strike-side break-even and yours depends on what you paid for the shares.

What the premium is priced off

45% at the money is well above a market-average tape. You get paid more here. You get paid more here because it moves more.

Can you actually get filled

Median bid-ask spread is 62.3% of the mid, and the worst strike here is 71.8%. At those widths the quoted premium is close to fiction. Work the order, or write a different expiry. Open interest runs about 166 contracts at the median strike. Enough to trade, not enough to be careless with size. One expiry in this ladder has almost no open interest at all (October 9), and a strike nobody else holds is a strike you will be negotiating your way out of alone.

Dates that matter in this window

Earnings land inside the 45-day window. That is the one date that reliably breaks a premium-selling trade: the stock gaps, the strike you picked on a probability model turns out to have been picked on the wrong distribution, and the vol you sold collapses to reward the buyer instead of you. The engine deducts heavily for it. The stock pays about 0.9% a year, and no ex-dividend date was confirmed inside this window.

What the annualized column hides

The best annualized number in this ladder is 34.2%, on the $76.00 strike expiring October 2. It is $105 of actual cash. Over 16 days that is 1.5% in the hand, which is the number to compare against anything else you could do with the same capital.

If it gets called away

Take the $77.50 strike expiring October 16. You collect $119 up front. If FCX finishes above $77.50 your 100 shares are sold there, and the 11.3% move from $69.63 up to the strike is yours as well. Everything above it is not. The model puts the odds of keeping the premium at about 77%, so assignment on this one is a real possibility rather than a footnote.

The number nobody checks is the cost basis. If you paid more than $77.50 for these shares, that strike locks in a loss on the stock, and $119 of premium does not repair it. A covered call is only a good trade at a strike you would genuinely accept selling at.

Questions people actually ask

Nothing above is a recommendation. It is what the FCX chain looked like on September 16, 2026, filtered to the strikes a premium seller would look at first, and the prices have moved since you loaded this page.

Elsewhere on FCX

• Cash-secured puts on FCX
• The wheel on FCX
• Every ticker we track

Understand the strategy

• Covered calls: the complete series
• One full covered call, end to end
• Picking a strike by delta
• What the IV above is actually telling you
• Reading the delta column three ways
• What happens if one of these is assigned
• The filters that produced a table like this one
• What the keep odds column is really claiming
• A full year of these, audited against holding
• What the tax bill looks like on a year of this
• Options basics: the foundations, in full
• How to read a chain like the table above

Run your own numbers

• Covered call calculator static return, if-called return and the cushion.
• Annualized return calculator compare a 14-day trade against a 45-day one.
• Assignment probability calculator the odds behind a strike.
• Roll analyzer for when the stock runs through you.