Covered calls on MRK
Merck and Co. was trading at $144.07 when this page was last refreshed on September 16, 2026. 12 out-of-the-money MRK calls sat in the 0.15 to 0.25 delta band that covered call writers work in, paying $66 to $176 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.
| Expiry | Strike | Bid / ask | Premium | Annualized | Keep odds | Break-even | OI |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| September 25 9d | $150.00 | $0.59 / $0.73 | $66 | 18.6% | 78% | $150.66 | 204 |
| October 2 16d | $152.50 | $0.53 / $0.89 | $71 | 11.2% | 83% | $153.21 | 59 |
| October 9 23d | $152.50 | $1.12 / $1.43 | $128 | 14.0% | 77% | $153.78 | 261 |
| October 16 30d | $155.00 | $1.16 / $1.33 | $125 | 10.5% | 80% | $156.25 | 3,384 |
| October 23 37d | $157.50 | $0.74 / $1.61 | $118 | 8.1% | 82% | $158.68 | 32 |
| October 30 44d | $160.00 | $1.27 / $2.24 | $176 | 10.1% | 79% | $161.76 | 3 |
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
At-the-money implied vol sits at 27%, which is ordinary for a name this size. Nothing in the pricing is unusual, so the trade lives or dies on strike selection rather than on the vol.
Can you actually get filled
Median bid-ask spread is 50.7% of the mid, and the worst strike here is 74.0%. At those widths the quoted premium is close to fiction. Work the order, or write a different expiry. Open interest runs about 204 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 30), 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 2.4% 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 18.6%, on the $150.00 strike expiring September 25. It is $66 of actual cash. It annualizes well because it is a 9-day contract, and annualizing a two-week trade assumes you find twenty-six more like it, at the same premium, with the same risk. You will not.
If it gets called away
Take the $155.00 strike expiring October 16. You collect $125 up front. If MRK finishes above $155.00 your 100 shares are sold there, and the 7.6% move from $144.07 up to the strike is yours as well. Everything above it is not. The model puts the odds of keeping the premium at about 80%, 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 $155.00 for these shares, that strike locks in a loss on the stock, and $125 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
What is a good strike for a covered call on MRK?
The strikes above are the ones in the 0.15 to 0.25 delta band, which is where premium sellers targeting roughly an 80% chance of keeping the premium tend to sit. On the September 16, 2026 snapshot that meant $150.00 out to $160.00, depending on how far out you go. The right one for you is the lowest strike you would still be happy selling your shares at.
How much can you make selling covered calls on MRK?
The best annualized figure in the ladder above was 18.6%, and the cash it represents was $66 for one contract. Annualized numbers assume you repeat the trade all year at the same premium, which nobody does. Treat them as a way to compare expiries, not as a forecast.
Does OptionsKing recommend selling calls on MRK?
No. This page is a dated snapshot of the chain, not a recommendation, and the app has no opinion to offer beyond an ordering. It scores every in-band strike and shows you the best few by rank, with no minimum score anywhere, so a refresh that scored nothing on this ticker would have handed you an empty list for want of candidates, not for want of quality. See how the scoring works and the full disclaimer.
Nothing above is a recommendation. It is what the MRK 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.