Cash-Secured
Puts
Every other tool here pays you when you're right. This one pays you when you're right, when you're flat, and even when you're slightly wrong.
You get paid today to promise to buy a stock cheaper later. The screener finds the strikes where that promise pays 1%+ a week on the cash you set aside, with probability of profit, breakeven cushion and earnings risk already worked out.
THE 60-SECOND VERSION
You're a landlord, not a gambler.
Selling a cash-secured put means: I'll take 100 shares of this at $13 if it drops there, and you pay me $38 right now for the privilege of holding me to it. Two things can happen, and you're fine with both. That's the entire strategy.
It expires worthless
The stock stays above your strike. The put dies. You keep 100% of the premium and your cash is free again on Monday. Then you do it again.
You get assigned
You now own 100 shares at the strike, minus every dollar of premium you collected getting here. That's your real cost basis, and it's below where the stock was when you started. Now you sell covered calls against it.
The one rule that makes this safe or fatal: only sell puts on stocks you'd genuinely be happy to own for a year. Outcome B is not hypothetical, it happens regularly, and usually on the name that just dropped 15%. If you sold the put purely for the yield, you now own 100 shares of something you don't want, in a downtrend, with your cash locked up.
THE ALPHA
The boring money is the real money.
Nobody screenshots a $76 credit. But 1% a week, compounded, on capital you were holding anyway, beats almost every directional strategy a retail account actually executes.
A put sold around 20-30 delta finishes out-of-the-money most of the time, by construction. You're structurally on the favorable side of a coin flip, which isn't true when you buy options.
Stock up: you keep the premium. Stock flat: you keep the premium. Stock down a little: you keep the premium. Only a real drop below your breakeven hurts.
One decision a week, made in about ten minutes. This is one of the few strategies on the platform that still works if you have a day job.
ANNOTATED · THE REAL SCREEN
Breakeven before ROC. Always.
Beginners sort by ROC/Wk and take the top row. The top row is the top row because the market thinks that stock is in trouble. Read the cushion first.
| Ticker | Price | Strike | Premium | ROC/Wk 2 | Ann. | P(Profit) 3 | Breakeven 1 | Delta | DTE | IV | Grade 4 | Earnings |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| RIVN | $13.82 | $13.00 | $0.38 | 1.46% | 76% | 76% | $12.62−8.7% cushion | −0.21 | 14 | 61% | A | ✓ Clear |
| F | $11.06 | $10.50 | $0.22 | 1.05% | 55% | 83% | $10.28−7.1% cushion | −0.21 | 14 | 38% | A | ✓ Clear |
| SOFI | $14.20 | $13.00 | $0.31 | 1.19% | 62% | 77% | $12.69−10.6% cushion | −0.24 | 14 | 72% | B | ✓ Clear |
| MARA | $18.40 | $18.00 | $1.34 | 3.72% | 194% | 61% | $16.66−9.5% cushion | −0.42 | 14 | 128% | C | ✓ Clear |
Illustrative rows built from the real column set and scoring formula. Not live quotes, not recommendations.
Read the last row again: MARA pays 3.72% a week, over two and a half times RIVN's 1.46%. But 128% IV isn't extra yield, it's the scoring formula's binary-event cliff: premium quality gets cut in half instead of maxing out, and weak technicals plus a thin chain drag the rest down. Even with a 61% probability of profit and a −0.42 delta, that combination still only grades out as a C. Highest yield on the screen is almost never the trade.
Breakeven: the only number that can hurt you
Strike minus premium. It's the price you'd effectively own shares at. RIVN at $12.62 means the stock has to fall 8.7% before you're actually behind. That cushion is your real margin of safety.
LOOK FOR → 7%+ cushion, and a level you'd buy anyway
ROC/Wk: the yield, normalized
Premium divided by capital set aside, per week. It's what makes a 7-day and a 45-day trade comparable. 1%+ weekly is the platform's target, and the scoring formula stops rewarding yield past 2.5% a week.
LOOK FOR → 1.0-2.0%. Be suspicious above 2.5%
P(Profit) & Delta: the odds, twice
P(Profit) is the modeled chance you finish above breakeven at expiry. Delta is a rough proxy for the chance of assignment. A −0.21 delta means about a 21% chance of owning the shares, which for the wheel is a feature, but it should be a number you chose.
LOOK FOR → P(Profit) 70%+, delta −0.15 to −0.25
Grade & Earnings: the sanity check
Grade folds premium quality, ROC efficiency, technical setup and liquidity, plus a small support-floor bonus, into one letter. The Earnings column is the veto: a report inside your expiry can gap the stock sharply overnight and hand you shares nobody wants.
LOOK FOR → Grade A or B, earnings beyond expiry
Where the score actually comes from
A weighted EdgeScore, out of 100 before bonuses.
On top of these four, a Support Floor bonus of up to +10 points rewards put open interest concentrated at or just below your strike, the same gamma-support idea Gamma Scan surfaces on its own.
Then the score becomes a grade
The exact thresholds the screener uses to letter-grade every row.
The letter can move by up to two grade bands from delta positioning, put-wall support and IV richness after the strike is already picked. It never changes which strike the screener selected, only the grade you see.
WORKED EXAMPLE · ILLUSTRATIVE
Eight weeks, $2,800, one name.
This is the honest version, including the cycle where you get assigned, because in eight weeks you usually do. Real ticker, illustrative fills, two contracts throughout.
Sell 2x RIVN $13 put, 14 DTE, $0.38
Grade A row. $2,600 set aside. Collect +$76. RIVN drifts to $14.10 and the put expires worthless. Cash is free again Friday afternoon, ready to redeploy Monday.
Sell 2x RIVN $13.50 put, 14 DTE, $0.44
The stock is higher, so the strike moves up with it. The screener re-ranks and $13.50 is now the Grade A line. Collect +$88. Expires worthless again. This is the boring part, and the boring part is the business.
Sell 2x RIVN $14 put, $0.52, and this one lands
A sector selloff sends RIVN to $12.90 at expiry. Collect +$104, then take assignment: you now own 200 shares at $14. Paper loss of $220 at the mark.
Now you sell calls against the shares
Sell 2x RIVN $14 covered calls, 14 DTE, $0.40, collect +$80. Above your basis, so if they're called away you exit at a profit plus all the premium collected along the way. Below it and you keep collecting. That's the wheel, and the Wheel Tracker does the bookkeeping.
RIVN closes $9.40 instead. Your $12.66 basis is now roughly $650 underwater on 200 shares, and the calls you can sell above your basis pay pennies because IV collapsed with the price. You're a long-term holder of something you sized as an income trade. This is why the "would I own it for a year" question isn't a platitude, it's the whole risk model.
Illustrative. $348 of premium collected across four cycles is what carries the account through a stock that drifted about 7% lower over the same eight weeks. That gap is the strategy, and it works right up until the drop is much bigger than 7%.
THE FILTER
Green flags, red flags.
✓Sell it when…
✕Skip it when…
HOW PEOPLE LOSE MONEY HERE
Four mistakes, in order of cost.
Chasing the fattest premium on the screen
3.72% a week looks like free money, and it's priced by people who know exactly what's coming: IV so high the scoring formula treats it as a binary-event cliff, not a bonus. Even that yield only grades out as a C once the formula prices in the risk.
Panic-rolling every put that goes red
Rolling down and out to avoid assignment feels like risk management. Done reflexively it just adds duration and delta to a losing position, over and over, until the "income trade" is your largest holding.
Holding to expiry for the last 5 cents
A put you sold for $0.38 that's now worth $0.05 has given you 87% of its value. Holding four more days for the rest means carrying full assignment risk for a nickel.
Forgetting the max loss is enormous
You collect $38 and take on $1,300 of downside on that one contract. Seventy small wins and one -40% gap can leave you net negative for the year. The strategy's win rate is high; its loss size is not small.
PAIRS WITH
The screener finds the strike. These run the business.
A wheel is a bookkeeping exercise as much as a trading one. Cost basis across four cycles isn't something to track in your head.
Start with one contract on something boring.
Not four. One. On a Grade A name you'd own anyway, 14 days out, delta around −0.20. Collect the premium and see exactly how it feels when the stock dips. Then scale.
Every number, strike, fill and P&L on this page is illustrative and built from the real structure of the screener. Nothing here is a recommendation, a live quote, or a promise of a result. Selling cash-secured puts carries the full downside risk of owning the underlying shares, up to the total value of the capital secured.