Short calls are an extremely viable strategy for us to take advantage of. They typically have a high probability of profit and good capital efficiency. We do need to be careful about the unlimited upside risk, especially those of us with small accounts! I typically avoid selling naked calls in products with high risk (acquisition risk), volatility products, and companies stocks that are newly public. I am also careful about naked calls in commodities (like gold or oil), which tend to carry "melt-up" risk.
Most brokerages will not allow you to trade naked short calls in a retirement account. Most will also prohibit them in small sized accounts under $25k or so. Tastyworks, on the other hand, imposes no such restrictions.
Short calls tend to be an easy step into the options world for traditional investors. They can be used in conjunction with a long share position to improve and probability of profit. This particular approach eliminates upside risk and is allowed by most account types and brokerage firms. We will discuss how this is done in the Covered Call risk profile.