← Back to Playbook
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 |
| VRTX | 81% | +$333.00 | 1.3 | 43 | 21 |
| META | 83% | +$330.00 | 1.5 | 63 | 14 |
| SMH | 84% | +$215.00 | 3.0 | 31 | 30 |
| PH | 83% | +$175.00 | 1.4 | 63 | 14 |
| BKNG | 83% | +$167.00 | 4.2 | 30 | 30 |
| ETN | 84% | +$144.00 | 3.8 | 31 | 30 |
| NBIS | 80% | +$141.00 | 3.6 | 33 | 14 |
| NVDA | 85% | +$140.00 | 3.2 | 43 | 21 |
| CAT | 89% | +$123.00 | 9.1 | 31 | 30 |
| NOW | 89% | +$120.00 | 7.3 | 31 | 30 |
| CEG | 87% | +$105.00 | 3.0 | 41 | 21 |
Backtested results are not a guarantee of future performance.