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Cash-Secured Put / The Wheel
BEGINNER income Uncapped riskGet paid to wait to buy a stock you like.
When to use it
Bullish-to-neutral on a quality ticker, elevated IV rank. Sell a 30–45 DTE put around 0.30 delta; exit at ~50% max profit. If assigned, you own the shares and sell covered calls (the Wheel).
Max profit
The premium collected.
Max loss
Strike − premium, if the stock goes to zero (you own it).
Payoff at expiry
illustrative shape — not to scale
■ profit zone
■ loss zone
X axis = stock price at expiry →
How it's built
Strikes shown low→high. Sell = collect premium · Buy = pay premium for protection or upside.
Hermes-evaluated setups
High-conviction per-ticker applications — setups with a confidence-adjusted win rate ≥ 80% over ≥20 backtested trades (95% lower bound — honest for the sample size, never a raw 100%). Avg P/L is the mean profit/loss per one-contract position.
| Ticker | Win Rate | Avg P/L / contract | Sharpe | Trades | DTE |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| NDX | 81% | +$2,381.00 | 1.1 | 41 | 21 |
| GEV | 83% | +$434.00 | 4.2 | 30 | 14 |
| ASML | 88% | +$383.00 | 6.4 | 43 | 21 |
| COST | 85% | +$304.00 | 2.3 | 43 | 21 |
| ISRG | 81% | +$303.00 | 2.4 | 43 | 21 |
| MSFT | 85% | +$253.00 | 1.6 | 43 | 21 |
| LNG | 81% | +$231.00 | 3.9 | 43 | 21 |
| NOW | 84% | +$212.00 | 2.0 | 31 | 30 |
| NOC | 81% | +$212.00 | 1.7 | 43 | 21 |
| MSCI | 87% | +$179.00 | 1.6 | 63 | 14 |
| INTU | 87% | +$174.00 | 2.5 | 63 | 14 |
| META | 81% | +$157.00 | 0.8 | 63 | 14 |
| CASY | 89% | +$146.00 | 4.3 | 31 | 30 |
| VXX | 81% | +$136.00 | 2.0 | 43 | 21 |
Backtested results are not a guarantee of future performance.