symbol for covered calls

I know that I should use "short sale" when I buy a covered call and "cover short sale" when I close it. However, I am not sure what symbol to use. I have been using the same symbol as the stock, for example ABC. Is that correct or should I be using the actual symbol for the call, such as ABCAK? Does it make a difference--if it does should I go back and change the symbol for those that I have done in the past?

Thank you.

Would strongly recommend that you use the actual symbol for each option. Each option is separate and unique. One advantage - you will get more useful reporting from QW for tax purposes at year-end.

I would not use the underlying security symbol. QW [and you] would get very confused in the event you should decide to hold shares of the underlying security.

As to going back and changing; that's your call and probably somewhat depends on how many there are. I would be inclined to do this if it were my records - I spend considerable effort making my records match what the FI reports - especially when it comes to tax related records.

Thank you for your help. As I went back to change the symbols I realized that the stock names were incorrect. I had been using the original stock name and, as previously noted, the original symbol. Rather than Sandisk Corp (SWF), should I have called it Call Sandisk Corp (SWFAK) and treated the transaction as a new stock? In that case, I have to delete the transactions that I have and re-enter them.

This is probably elementary, but although we have been investing for years, we have only recently started to sell covered calls. I appreciate your help.

I decided not to wait for an answer to my question about the stock and covered call names, but changed the names in the transactions to the correct (I hope) call name. However, that brings me to another question. When I look at the online site of one of our brokerage firms, I find two slightly different symbols for our calls. For example, for one of the covered calls, it is QSPYAW in the activity section and SPYAW in the holdings section. Which symbol should I use in Quicken so that the prices for all our calls are automatically updated when I update our stock prices?

Once again, thank you for your help.

The answer to your question lies in the fact that you will not be able to get auto-updates for options - QW's service does not offer this feature. You can get current prices from another source and manually update as you see fit.

Been a while since I did any option trading so can't comment on which symbol should be used - other than you need to use the same symbol through-out so that QW is able to correlate buys/sells.