Hopefully this is okay for me to ask this in here as I don't think it merits its own thread.
I am a relative newbie when it comes to stock ownership. I have only been doing it for two years with both Tesla and SCTY early on in their IPO's. I don't really leverage a crazy amount of money in these accounts, but lets just say I have been very pleased with the outcome.
To my question, I have been investigating covered calls. I understand the idea of buying a call and agreeing to a "strike price" but I am not entirely sure when people mention stuff like "buy Mar14 calls" is this the date that you have to make good on the call? Meaning the person you agreed to buy it from, you have until that date to basically say "Ok I want my shares now, I'm all in lets do this transaction". So for instance you can agree to buy a stock at its strike price of 10 dollars but it goes up 12 dollars and you make a profit (minus the commission spent to get the call option). So I guess I am unsure how the date thing works. Can you just make good on the contract whenever you want or do you have to wait until that date before you can "seal the deal" so to speak.
Any info would be helpful. I have searched numerous sites and maybe I am just not "getting it".
EDIT: What brought this to mind is I am thinking of selling all my SCTY stock and doing covered calls for less risk of losing all that money I gained. Does that makes sense as a strategy? For reference I bought it at 11 dollars roughly.
