How has that done versus just buying and holding it?

It appears to have done a bit better than B&H. At the end of 2023 the stock went from $35 to $480, so with B&H $35K would compound to $480K.

The growth of the options strategy would depend upon the percentage size of the individual purchases. I haven't used the Kelly criterion to calculate the optimal percentage size, but if you used 10% of your cash for a position then the first year each purchase would be $3.5K worth of calls.

At the end of 2017 the $35K would have grown to $52K. In 2018 if you kept with the 10% rule then each call purchase would be for $5.2K. In 2019 that would increase slightly to $5.7K each time, growing the account to $82K by the end of the year. Each year saw growth, and for 2023 the position size would be $31.1K. Total at the end of 2023 would have been $540K, beating out the $480 with B&H.

I'll look into the optimal Kelly criterion size.

DB2