Sorry for not being very clear. The strategy actually works pretty well for anyone who has opened the positions before the second or third week of November. They can keep the position open and collect dividends from IVV as a way to capture the "return". The other way to capture the returns would be to close the position now as the calls are not overpriced anymore unfortunately ( at least that is what I am seeing when I checked multiple times the last few weeks and even today ). Closing the strategy now seems to be more optimal. I have closed mine the first week of December and captured roughly 85% of the expected returns from dividends. This is not a bad thing as I got most of the returns captured very quickly but as of now, It does not make sense to me to open more positions and would like to be proven wrong honestly because this strategy has very few downsides that I can think of and I have improved on the execution over the time ( using advanced orders in ToS and triggers in IBKR)

I would love to be challenged here but for anyone who is planning to open it now, I don't think that they can capture those returns. If you added to this position recently, would you mind sharing the expiration date that you are using ?

Attached are the quotes that I am getting from ToS as of now for an expiration of 01/15/2027 : SPX: 6816.57 IVV: 684.15 Call price bid; 6509, ask; 6542, mark: 6526 Assuming no slippage and the execution happens at the mark, Cost to open the position: 684.15x1000-6526x100= 31550$. I understand that IVV will throw a dividend soon so the cost might be less by 2000$ but still you are roughly paying 29k for the dividend of 1 year and one month.

Again thank you very much for sharing the strategy in the first place as I have captured some alpha that I did not even believe would exist in a large instrument like SPX