Scanner Pmcc

PMCC Scanner

Finds optimal Poor Man's Covered Call setups by scoring symbols on option chain quality.

What is PMCC?

Buy deep ITM LEAPS call (delta ~0.80) + Sell short-term OTM call (delta ~0.20) against it. Cheaper alternative to covered calls.

Instructions

> Note: If uv is not installed or pyproject.toml is not found, replace uv run python with python in all commands below.

uv run python scripts/scan.py SYMBOLS [options]

Arguments

• SYMBOLS - Comma-separated tickers or path to JSON file from bullish scanner
• --min-leaps-days - Minimum LEAPS expiration in days (default: 270 = 9 months)
• --leaps-delta - Target LEAPS delta (default: 0.80)
• --short-delta - Target short call delta (default: 0.20)
• --output - Save results to JSON file (use this; Claude generates the report from the JSON)
• --report - Save auto-generated markdown to file (programmatic fallback only — prefer Claude-generated reports)

Scoring System (max possible: 14, range: -8 to 14)

| Category | Condition | Points |

|----------|-----------|--------|

| Delta Accuracy | LEAPS within ±0.05 | +2 |

| | LEAPS within ±0.10 | +1 |

| | Short within ±0.05 | +1 |

| | Short within ±0.10 | +0.5 |

| Liquidity | LEAPS vol+OI > 100 | +1 |

| | LEAPS vol+OI > 20 | +0.5 |

| | Short vol+OI > 500 | +1 |

| | Short vol+OI > 100 | +0.5 |

| Spread | LEAPS spread < 5% | +1 |

| | LEAPS spread < 10% | +0.5 |

| | Short spread < 10% | +1 |

| | Short spread < 20% | +0.5 |

| IV Level | 25-50% (ideal) | +2 |

| | 20-60% | +1 |

| Yield | Annual > 50% | +2 |

| | Annual > 30% | +1 |

| | Annual > 15% | +0.5 |

| Trend | Price > SMA50 | +1 / -1 |

| | RSI > 50 | +0.5 / -0.5 |

| | MACD > signal | +0.5 / -0.5 |

| Earnings | Next earnings > 45 days | +1.0 |

| | Earnings within 45 days | -1.0 |

| | Earnings within short expiry | -2.0 |

| Weekly Options | No weekly options listed | -1 |

| Strike Density | < 3 strikes spot→short | -2 |

| | < 5 strikes spot→short | -1 |

| Short Premium | Short mid < $0.10 | -1 |

| | Short mid < $0.50 | -0.5 |

Weekly-options, strike-density, and short-premium are penalty-only (0 at best), so

max_possible_score stays 14 while the theoretical minimum is -8 (base 0,

trend -2, earnings -2, weekly -1, strike -2, short premium -1).

Output

Returns JSON with:

• criteria - Scan parameters used
• results - Array sorted by score:
• symbol, price, iv_pct, pmcc_score, max_possible_score (always 14)
• industry - GICS industry (falls back to sector), or null
• description - one-sentence company description, or null
• has_weeklies - whether the symbol lists weekly options (bool)
• short_window - short-expiry window actually used: "7-21" or "5-30 (fallback)"
• dividend_yield - continuous dividend yield (fraction) used in the BS/IV math
• leaps - expiry, strike, delta, iv (calculated from bid/ask), last_price, bid/ask, spread%, volume, OI
• short - expiry, strike, delta, iv (calculated from bid/ask), last_price, bid/ask, spread%, volume, OI
• earnings_date - next earnings date (YYYY-MM-DD) or null
• metrics - net_debit, short_yield% (period yield over the short window), annual_yield%, capital_required
• score_breakdown - every scoring component as a <name>_delta (float) + <name> (explanation string) pair:
• Base: leaps_delta, short_delta, leaps_liquidity, short_liquidity, leaps_spread, short_spread, iv, yield
• Trend: trend_delta, trend (per-indicator dict)
• Earnings: earnings_delta, earnings
• Weekly options: weekly_options_delta, weekly_options
• Strike density: strike_density_delta, strike_density
• Short premium: short_premium_delta, short_premium
• All _delta values sum to pmcc_score
• errors - Symbols that failed (no options, insufficient data)

Report Generation

When the user asks for a report, a written analysis, or a saved document:

• Run the scanner with --output to capture JSON data:

   uv run python scripts/scan.py SYMBOLS --output sandbox/PMCC_Scan_YYYY-MM-DD_HHmm.json

• Read the JSON output.

• Generate the markdown report yourself using the template defined in templates/markdown-template.md. Do not use the --report flag — that produces mechanical string output. Claude-generated reports include real analysis, contextual warnings, and trader-relevant narrative.

• Save the generated markdown to sandbox/PMCC_Scan_YYYY-MM-DD_HHmm.md (match the JSON timestamp).

• Display the full report to the user.

Examples

# Scan specific symbols
uv run python scripts/scan.py AAPL,MSFT,GOOGL,NVDA

# Scan and save JSON for report generation
uv run python scripts/scan.py AAPL,MSFT,GOOGL --output sandbox/PMCC_Scan_2026-01-15_1430.json

# Use output from bullish scanner
uv run python scripts/scan.py bullish_results.json

# Custom delta targets
uv run python scripts/scan.py AAPL,MSFT --leaps-delta 0.70 --short-delta 0.15

# Longer LEAPS (1 year minimum)
uv run python scripts/scan.py AAPL,MSFT --min-leaps-days 365

IV Calculation

IV is always computed from market price data via Black-Scholes, never taken from Yahoo Finance's impliedVolatility column:

• During trading hours: IV derived from bid/ask mid price
• Off-hours (bid=ask=0): IV derived from last price, using the option's last trade timestamp as the pricing moment (not current wall-clock time)

This applies to both compute_atm_iv (used for scanner baseline IV) and per-option delta calculations.

Dividends: the Black-Scholes inversion uses the underlying's continuous dividend

yield (Merton model). Ignoring it biases recovered IV downward for calls on dividend

payers — badly for high yielders (e.g. a 7%-yield name would read ~12% IV instead of

~24%). The yield is normalized from yfinance's inconsistent fields (dividendRate/price,

then trailingAnnualDividendYield, then dividendYield) and reported as dividend_yield

(a fraction) in each result. The same yield feeds the strike-selection deltas and the

max-profit repricing.

Key Constraints

• Short strike must be above LEAPS strike
• Options with bid = 0 and no last price are skipped
• Moderate IV (25-50%) scores highest

Interpretation

• Score > 12: Excellent candidate (strong structure + bullish trend + clear earnings runway)
• Score 10-12: Good candidate
• Score 6-10: Acceptable with caveats
• Score < 6: Poor structure, bearish trend, or earnings risk
• max_possible_score is always 14 — use pmcc_score / max_possible_score to gauge how close a candidate is to perfect
• Off-hours scores are not comparable to market-hours scores. When bid/ask aren't both > 0 (outside trading hours), spread_pct is forced to 100%, which zeroes out both spread scores (−2 vs a live scan). A candidate can look up to 2 points worse simply because it was scanned off-hours. Compare candidates only within the same scan.

Dependencies

• numpy
• pandas
• scipy
• yfinance

Timezone

All timestamps and time-based calculations must use the America/New_York timezone. All JSON output must include generated_at (NY time string) and data_delay fields.