Boring is Better

everyone in this sub is chasing high IV, big premiums, NVDA, PLTR, MSTR. and yeah the premium looks amazing right up until the stock cuts in half and you're stuck holding something you never actually wanted to own. i've been selling covered calls for 25 years. not 25 months. 25 years. i've traded through dot com, 2008, covid, everything in between. i'm not some sophisticated quant with fancy models. i just know what has worked for me consistently over hundreds of trades across multiple market cycles. my bread and butter has always been boring bank and utility stocks. that's it. here's the part nobody talks about look for banks and utilities that also issue preferred stock. sounds random but hear me out. companies that issue preferreds are heavily regulated, financially conservative businesses by design. that regulatory discipline shows up directly in their common stock behavior. range bound, predictable, boring. exactly what you want when you're selling calls month after month. i've traded WFC more times than i can count over the years. stock barely moves in a normal month, solid dividend, issues preferred stock. selling a monthly call 1-2 strikes out of the money has consistently generated 2 to 2.5% per month. annualized that's 15%+ on top of the dividend. and for most of the past 25 years WFC was not going on any moonshot runs. call expires worthless. keep the premium. do it again next month. that's basically it everyone gets excited about the big dollar premium on a volatile stock. a $5 premium on something like NVDA looks way more exciting than $1.50 on a boring bank. but factor in the consistency, the dividend income on top, the near zero assignment stress and the fact that you're not glued to the ticker every hour and the boring trade wins almost every time over a full year. i'm not saying this works for everyone. but over 25 years of monthly cycles it's worked for me. curious if anyone else has found their own version of this or has other boring names they like.