One thing OptionsAlpha drives home, and I've certainly experienced, is being on the selling side of high IV is the long term money maker. With earnings not too far away, and IV really high, selling puts/calls looks like the better plan.
I'd like to add some context to this, at least the way that I see it. I agree with OA as long as we're talking exclusively about options - selling high IV options is the reliable long term money maker, over buying options.
But I also believe, more strategically, that although it is capital intensive, buy and hold is the serious long term money maker.
So I see these two approaches as complementary, but after 8 years of buy and hold and 1 month of the wheel, I've got a LOT of trades to get right on the wheel to come anywhere close to the results I've gotten from buy and hold.
I have an example from my own life. I sold some puts back in 2012 on TSLA - $29 put for $1.70. Thankfully, it finished ITM and I acquired shares at 27.30. I still have those shares, and those shares today represent something like 20% of my portfolio. For added luck, without planning it one way or the other, I sold those puts in a Roth IRA, so I won't even be paying taxes on the ~30x they've appreciated.
My point here is that I see the wheel as complementary to a long term buy and hold investment in TSLA. Part of that complementary idea is that I follow Tesla (mostly) and TSLA very closely (roughly all my eggs in this basket and I watch it very closely). If I didn't have long term buy and hold shares, I would either be concentrating on acquiring those, or I'd at least be concentrating on using the profits from this to start acquiring some long term buy and hold shares.
Because I follow Tesla and TSLA closely, that gives me additional knowledge that isn't widely available, when I'm figuring out which strikes to sell, and when to just stop selling options entirely. I personally wouldn't apply this option strategy to anything else - because I don't know anything else well enough to know that I'm ready to buy even when it drops by 1/2.
I've also begun selling calls against those long term buy and hold shares. That's one reason I go much further out on the call side, even though it results in lower premiums. I also do a 'strategy check' if you will with each sale. Not just 'does this trade satisfy my tactical approach' (which I've begun developing in more detail in recent posts), but also a tail risk evaluation that comes from the strategy check. Will I be ok with a huge move up or down that results not just in ITM, but going beyond in a big way?
As an example, if TSLA trades back down to $400, I would probably find weekly calls around $600 or maybe $700 that sell for my target covered call range. Those calls will fail my strategy check though - if the stock runs up to $950 as it did a half year ago and I lost the shares at $600, then I would have a hard time looking at myself in the mirror. Ergo - don't sell those calls. I might still sell the $1000 strike calls, knowing perfectly well that there's very little money in doing so. And I might just stop selling calls at all until the share price recovers.
(On the downside, I'm more likely to get more and more aggressive in my put sales, daring the share price to drop low enough for me to get assigned. Go ahead - assign me shares at $200! I dare you! Heck - I double dog dare you! I don't expect the market to be so accommodating)