Let’s say,
I have 250 shares of Reliance in my Zerodha DEMAT account. Now, I want to sell Reliance 2000 CE. In this case, Is it possible for me to sell 1 Reliance 2000 CE Lot with 0 margin?
Since, I am not in any risk, broker is not in any risk. Why would the margin be required? If the stock goes down, I get free premium while keeping the shares, If it goes up, I still get my premium but need to give those shares to option buyer.
Is this how it works? Just curious.
No. You will need margins to short the Option as you don’t get margin benefit for holding stocks in your demat account.
You can pledge the shares and use the margins received for writing options. Though, for overnight F&O positions, you will have to maintain minimum 50% margins in cash or equivalent and remaining 50% can come from collateral margin. You can learn more here.
Not possible, SPAN + Exposure margins will be blocked as mandated by exchange.
When you do covered call, how will broker or exchange know that you will not sell those shares before expiry ? And if you sell them, then broker is at risk. Hence the margin will be blocked.
Pledge rules are already explained by @ShubhS9 . However if you pledge the shares and bring more margin, You need to unpledge them before expiry, the moment you unpledge you need to bring more margin which was otherwise provided by Pledging.
So if you are doing covered call, ensure you have spare cash (40% of contract value ), in this case 5 L in holding + 2 L spare cash margin.