I think we are confused.. I'm talking to keep in mind costs to borrow out this margin ( margin interest I believe is the actual terminology ) .. what I'm saying is this is as important as how much margin you are carrying, as it's in direct line to how much you borrow out is how much you will get charged..
I say this as I see people gripe ( myself included ) how much we can borrow out, but some of these people are getting charged double then using say IB.. which to be honest is less at the end of the month even if you can pull in a few more contracts, it's eaten away by the borrowing costs... there's a great app to calculate this.. It's called, interest calculator..
once again, an option is to use spreads, they reduce margin requirement quite a bit I've found, and you can actually pull in more premium then naked calls.I would like to hear others though as we are all in the same boat.. we want more premium ... who doesn't
I have thought of another option, and haven't calculated it fully is by doing two sets of spreads, then with the "other set" , buy options with the premium you bring in, I believe this would offset that second set you really shouldn't do to keep margin in check if we are talking credit spreads on puts.. but should balance it out a lot cleaner and thus you retain wash sale cost basis for next purchase on the lost buy sale you did to protect the margin better??? any thoughts guys on that