That's very much opposite of true. At the 'statistical' broad brush level, the P/L of a covered call and an equivalent cash covered put are all but the same.
Of course, those who are familiar with my approach know I'd rather have a CC than a cash covered put...but that's based in nuance, not a first order comparison.
I wouldn't go that far on selling options (for credit) and I'd expand then statement such that if one is good at reading charts one should very much be buying options. But really, it boils up to a combination of The Right Analysis and applying that to The Right Position. Position types (shares, sold options, multi-leg options, shorts vs longs, etc.) are all tools on the same tool belt; they all serve a purpose.
Despite the popularity of this thread, selling options is (or at least should be) generally low on the priority list for anyone involved in the market due to its low return, high capital requirement, and high Risk:Reward...but of course there's certainly a time and place for selling and so it shouldn't be completely removed from one's tool belt.
What's really is important for folks to understand how a position (Any position) returns profit, the corollary risk of that position, and how that position might fit an individual's bigger picture market strategy. For options, the two major upsides over shares are 1) Leverage and 2) Volatility. (Those two are also equivalent downsides FTR). Leverage allows a trader to make (or lose) multiple times on the options vs shares--that one is pretty straightforward. Volatility enables a trader to earn profit at a more favorable rate (with lower risk) than an ~equivalent share position. This one can go both ways--for a bought option, a decreasing volatility environment will work against profit relative to shares and an increasing volatility environment will work for profit.
The bummer for selling options is that leverage is much less...leveragable, if not eliminated vs shares (which I think is your overall point) so one basically ~halves the benefit of options over shares.
So circling back to a trader's analysis skillset, if one is good at reading price charts, one should be directional trading, either via shares or [primarily] buying options. If one is also competent at understanding volatility, one should be layering that logic into their position as well. As a random real world implementation of this logic, maybe a strategy is to only buy options at low volatility, only sell options at high volatility, and only trade shares at mid-volatility.
