So the thing I dreaded before I started this has now happened. Every single high risk AI stock that I was running puts on has crashed significantly below the put price. I got my 4th assignment - DRAM at 59. The DRAM was my own doing and not from the AI list. To prevent more assignment, I'm rolling as much as I can today to prevent more assignments.

The drawdown is extreme. Since this was a retirement spending simulation, I guess, this would be a budget week because the premiums what I'm using to simulate income is much lower than the target 1%.

I havent even bothered with the screening this week because everything is a roll. If I had more dry powder, would be selling more puts on everything. Last week's post for more details on strategy etc. - https://www.reddit.com/r/thetagang/s/uAlztIsjKG

Trades:

Trades include a 1:2 AXT roll I did on Tuesday to avoid AXT assignment.

Total Returns

History

got $410 credit for 135p exp in 28 days
.26 delta
will prob close at 50%+
and willing to get assigned 🤷‍♂️

Even though almost all these stonks are heavily down and screens are red but deep down I’m be like FUCK YEAH Boiess…!

Sold puts a month ago on following companies (30 dte to 370 dte)

NVDA:- $170
AVGO:- $280
AMZN:- $205
FSLR:- $150
ORCL:- $110
CELH:- $25

APP:- $260 (30 dte left so most likely this will be assigned)

NCLD:- $22 (getting raped even after hours, but position size is small so won’t affect much)

IREN:- $29 (just sold today as already own 200 shares so wanted to increase some more exposure)

RKLB:- $55 (also getting raped after hours, only 2 contracts though)

Sofi:- $16 (this will be assigned by end of this week)

GDXJ:- $105 (Gold etf, would love to start a position in gold as want to diversify a bit)

Now just imagine I bought these Stonks straight out a month ago, my portfolio would have down probably -40%.

Twenty years ago:

The Naz was roughly 2,357 on Friday, October 13, 2006, the last trading day before the date 20 years back.

The Nasdaq Composite closed around 5,214 on October 14, 2016, which was the closest trading day ten years ago.

Five years ago, on October 15, 2021, it closed around 15,022, so it nearly tripled in that stretch.

Today, 26713.

When there is an ever increasing supply of something and that something loses value over time… and there is an incredibly liquid market to access the frontier of innovation, value and wealth creation that is largely open to all, where are people going to put their ever more abundant electronic assets.

If you just bought to index and did nothing, your 20K is worth somewhere around 230k twenty years later.

If you were clever or lucky you did much better.
Chance favors the prepared mind.

Twenty years ago, gas was $2.20 a gallon. Now, at the potential worst part of this war, the average is $4.33. It has doubled vs 11X for the Naz.

Just chill. You are going to be fine if you don’t lose your shit.

Question for the wheeling veterans. I know rolling is not usually part of wheeling, but on days like this, which deliver broad market news that doesn't get much worse (rising inflation) do you panic roll for small credit, or do nothing and embrace your inevitable itm positions with peace and resignation?

Anything green beats red. I close CSPs at +20-25% profit. Have walked away from many a tank job by doing so. I saw a Nick Saban interview and he said he hates losing more than he loves winning. Billy Beane purportedly said it in Moneyball. I think a lot, maybe most people think that way. In Options trading, which do you do -a-hate losing or -b-love winning?

I use about 2.5-4 million in notional (margin on a fully invested account).

i've been trying to get into the habit of closing early (for a profit) and not so greedy to squeeze the last penny.

so for the past 2 weeks for every open trade i place, i put a GTC order immediately closing for 0.05. my broker doesn't charge commission for closing for <= 0.05, which is good.

last week i opened a short put 157.5 SPCX expiring this week, followed by a GTC. yesterday while on vacation, the position closed without me even knowing. today SPCX dropped to 156, but i already took profit and risk-off.

i think “closing early and not waiting for the last minute” should be a hard rule for me starting from now on.

Keep it friendly and civil; this is not WSB and automod will censor your posts at will for unsavory and unfriendly remarks. Try to keep shit posting and bragging to a minimum.

Apologies for the combined post. I was on a holiday trip and wasn’t able to post the daily updates. Trades I took as an option seller (10/08-10/13):

Closed Positions

• INOD → $65 Put (opened on 09/28), premium 1.90 → closed at 0. Net premium profit = 1.90 (100.00% of premium captured, 2.92% of capital).
• WDC → $430 Put (opened on 09/08), premium 18.00 → closed at 0. Net premium profit = 18.00 (100.00% of premium captured, 4.19% of capital).
• STRL → $530 Call (opened on 09/21), premium 31.00 → closed at 5.20. Net premium profit = 25.80 (83.23% of premium captured, 4.87% of capital).

New Positions

• WDC → $430 Call expiry 10/30 (3 weeks DTE), premium 10.50 → 1050/43000 = ~2.4%. I was assigned WDC at $430 and opened a Covered Call at the same price I was assigned.
• INOD → $65 Call expiry 11/06 (4 weeks DTE), premium 4.20 → 420/6500 = ~6.5%. I was assigned INOD at $65 and opened a Covered Call at the same price I was assigned.
• STRL → $530 Call expiry 11/20 (6 weeks DTE), premium 36.00 → 3600/53000 = ~6.8%. I continue wheeling STRL, opening another Covered call at $530 which is also my assignment price.
• FORM → $115 Put expiry 11/20 (6 weeks DTE), premium 6.00 → 600/11500 = ~5.2%. Opened a CSP in FORM which has a support at $115.

I keep sharing my trades in my account and the Excel file to my full list of positions is linked in my profile description in case anyone wants to see the whole portfolio. Happy to hear thoughts on my positions. What are you guys wheeling or watching right now?

PS: Not financial advice. Do your own research.

Most of the new people are probably buying options for their directional bets so that should increase demand and price for what we are selling. Does that sound accurate

I remember seeing a lot of people running the wheel on high-premium names like:

WYFI, CIFR, WULF, IREN, CORZ, CLSK, CRWV, GLXY, HUT, NBIS, etc

Genuinely curious how those trades have worked out for everyone this year.

Sure, the premiums were juicy, but a lot of these companies had questionable fundamentals and carried significant downside risk.

I recently checked back in on a few of these names, and wow, some have taken an absolute beating.

I stayed away from all those names and just wheeled mostly boring names. Currently up 20.20% YTD with a 9% max drawdown, averaging around $77K deployed per week and spending maybe 0-3 hours a week on it.

Nothing exciting, but I'm pretty happy with how it's worked out.

I was expect that it would have dropped given the 2.5% increase in the stock today.

UPDATE: so apparently the estimated earnings date reported on most major earnings predictions platforms was after October 23, but yesterday Meta said it will now be before October 23. That’s the way to pull the rug out from under options traders.

Keep it friendly and civil; this is not WSB and automod will censor your posts at will for unsavory and unfriendly remarks. Try to keep shit posting and bragging to a minimum.

Last time, I wasn't very clear on the entire story. But long story short, mid may I lost around 20kish with holding BULL shares and lost 3k on Silver options (realized losses), then I started to wheel RDDT, SOXL, and other high premium stocks, by selling ATM or near the money options for high premiums. It worked out and I'm able to climb out of the 20k hole, and fast forward to now, I'm currently up to date. From what you can see, it is slightly not accurate, since the capital deployed is 70k total, but it says I'm up 16% YTD. That is technically accurate, because I was up last year and I realized the loss this year, but overall I'm only up $1,771.95 overall on my capital deployed. I was able to recover 20k+ from selling options for about 4-5 months (mainly RDDT and SOXL). I mainly do it by selling ATM puts or 1 strike above for calls for maximum premium, so I rarely make profit on shares. But going forward, I'm going to start tracking each week and we'll see how profitable my strategy is going to be. The reason I'm starting now is because I feel like I'm back to where I started a few years ago, and right now, I'm at a breakeven amount, so now I will start tracking each week and we'll see what happens in a year or so. I'm targeting $1,000 per week, and will leverage margin when I get assigned shares. I will most likely pick volatile names for high premiums and plan to only sell weekly options. I also tend to let my options expire worthless or let it get assigned. I usually buy it back for 5-10% on Friday if it goes my way. Let me know if you have questions.

Here are the stats for this week:

Total Capital Deposited - $70,000.00

Current Total Amount - $71,771.95

This Week's Options:

STO $152.5p @ $2.75 average

STO $150p @ $2.25 average

Total Premium = $1,000

This is for learning purposes, it is to track wheeling & portfolio optimization. This retirement account was blown through testing various trading strategies and poor position sizing.

Baseline: 50/50 QLD/$USD. With QLD as my core position, it roughly acts as 100% account exposure to QQQ. The other half of the portfolio will be used for wheeling income and dry powder for Nasdaq dips.
Order of significance for wheeling:
Assume assignment, size small & diverse
Annual yield% to be greater than 3x risk-free rate and sell on high IVR for better edge
Close early for tail risk, stagger dates and roll on discretion.
Assets correlate to 1 in a crash, stay liquid & patient

I’ve been eyeing metals and the health sector, some good volatility there... I wrote a PFE put contract at ~.25 delta, it’s the best I can do with my account size and risk.

approx.
52.03% $USD/Wheel
47.97% QLD (~96% QQQ)

Keep it friendly and civil; this is not WSB and automod will censor your posts at will for unsavory and unfriendly remarks. Try to keep shit posting and bragging to a minimum.

I closed Wednesday's 10/9 AVGO $365 CSP the same day for $92.33 net, then opened the 10/9 $357.50 CSP on Thursday. It expired worthless Friday for another $37.97.

I made no rolls this week. I bought back the final CSCO 10/9 $108 CSP for $0.04, closing the six-leg roll chain at +$428.95 overall. I also sold 10/16 covered calls on DG and WMT for $42.96 and $15.95 net. IBKR paid $58.21 in cash interest, bringing new option premium and interest to $247.42.

Portfolio Snapshot

My Philosophy

My ideal candidate is pretty vanilla: a preferably boring, financially sound, highly liquid company in a durable uptrend, with a liquid options chain and just enough volatility to pay me fairly at a 0.20-0.30 delta strike I would genuinely accept as a purchase price. This means you won't catch me trading the high-beta names you would typically see on /r/wallstreetbets. Juicy premiums come with high risk and large drawdowns. That's not what I'm doing with this portfolio.

I spend about 0-3 hours total per week on trading, on average. This wheel portfolio is only a small slice of my overall market capital. I also buy and hold mega-cap stocks/ETFs and run other strategies, including swing trading leveraged ETFs. The YTD figures and snapshot here cover the wheel portfolio only, not those other investments.

This Week's Totals

This Week's Opening Trades

The first AVGO put opened and closed Wednesday. The second expired worthless Friday. The DG and WMT covered calls remain open, so their rows show entry credits after fees rather than realized closing P/L.

Download Full YTD Trade Log (CSV)

Current Holdings

Results are from my trading journal and include recorded trading fees, before personal taxes. Past performance does not guarantee future results. Short puts and assigned shares carry substantial downside risk.

Keep it friendly and civil; this is not WSB and automod will censor your posts at will for unsavory and unfriendly remarks. Try to keep shit posting and bragging to a minimum.

I closed 4 short options early again this week at 0.05 (2 in another account not shown). Still trying to get into the habit of taking profit and risk off early.

This time I actually put in GTC order right after opening, feels good 👍 😌

It's been a hell of a year for RDDT options. The gains are a mix of mostly selling options (both puts and covered calls), and some swing trades via long calls.

The IV has come down considerably vs earlier in the year, but it's been a great stock to sell options on!

It's been helped since RDDT's fundamentals keep improving, which has given me conviction to sell as many options as I have been.

Note that some of the lots that show large numbers of contracts could have been spread out and not done all at once.

Here's an example of a good one for next year that I've loaded up a good amount on; the Jan 2028 $135 puts. I sold 110 @ $32.96 each for total premiums of $362,526. They're already $56,000 in my favor. Screenshot: https://imgur.com/a/xOOkte9

And here's my current RDDT positions since I think it's set to have a great upcoming year: https://imgur.com/a/4jlQTBe

Note that I still haven't sold a single share of RDDT; ever. All the realized income thus far has been from options.

Open to discuss