Jon,

I was playing all morning with the idea of writing calls on CIEN. Then I found out today's the last day to trade before earnings before the bell tomorrow. So I sold 5 calls stk $24.50 for .80. Altho a news story says that CIEN is expected to announce a rise in revenues, the stock has been dropping steadily, as though someone knows something negative that we don't. And to earn a $400 max gain, when a stock (such as INFN) can drop 15% on an earnings call deemed bad by analysts, and then can drop *another* 10% on a single downgrade - well, betting that CIEN will have a good CC and I'll get a whopping $400 for my efforts (I bought it at $24.23), says something about my investing strategy - as the Bard put it, "A tale told by an idiot." Maybe I 'get lucky'. Hope so.

(BTW,  I tried this strategy with INFN - I bought 500 shares around $11.77 and then wrote calls on them. I also bought 500 shares of CIEN to matach the calls I wrote, so my 1k shares are intact.)