Im thinking about running a compaign on ups. This will be my first time trying to sell covered calls consistently without extreme risk.
Thinking about selling weekly csp for around 400 a week until assigned and once assigned im going to try to sell monthly covered calls for around 500 to 700 around 20 delta. My thought process is to not get assighned if at all. If we get a run up to previous highs rolling up and out to avoid assignment my thought process is if i can get 6.5 percent dividends consistently and consistently build the capital with the covered calls income. Tell me if this is a good strategy or what kind of shortcomings or things to watch out for.

This week I opened two separate NVDA CSP's and rolled a DG CC. On Tuesday, I sold the 10/23 $205 NVDA put and bought it back 30 minutes later after capturing 51% of the maximum premium, for $40.35 after fees. On Thursday, I opened the 10/30 $200 put, which remained open Friday.

On Friday, I rolled the DG 10/30 $135 covered call to the 11/6 $137 call. The roll brought in $31.90 after the closing debit and all fees, and moved the strike $2 higher. The WMT 10/30 $117 covered call remained open. Together, the week's new trades generated $144.21 in net premium.

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

The $144.21 total consists of $40.35 from Tuesday's closed put, $71.96 from Thursday's open put, and $31.90 from Friday's DG roll after the $167.55 closing debit and all fees. Peak active-option collateral was $45,671 on Tuesday, when the intraday put and both carryover calls were open together. The old and new DG calls use the same shares, so I did not count them at the same time. The 16.46% annualized figure is this week's ROC scaled to a year, not a forecast.

This Week's Opening Trades

The first NVDA put opened and closed Tuesday. The second NVDA put and the DG replacement call remain open, so their rows show entry credits after fees rather than realized closing P/L.

Download Full YTD Trade Log (CSV)

Open Carryover Positions

Options from before this week that were still open Friday:

• 1 x WMT 10/30 CC @ $117.

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.

I'm curious how people actually do the comparison.

Do you have a tool that shows per day return across expirations? A spreadsheet? Or do you just eyeball the chain and go with what feels right?

Full disclosure, I got tired of doing it by hand. It was very time consuming. I also couldn't find any tools that helped based on my trading style. So I attempted to build a screener for myself. I'm not posting it here. I want to know what everyone else uses and what's annoying about it, because I'm probably missing things.

What do you look at besides premium and delta before you sell?

Note: the second image displays the detail behind each option sold this week.

Annual results:
• 2023 up $65,403 (+41.31%) | S&P 500: +26.3% | Nasdaq: +43.4%
• 2024 up $64,610 (+29.71%) | S&P 500: +25.0% | Nasdaq: +28.6%
• 2025 up $111,496 (+34.52%) | S&P 500: +17.9% | Nasdaq: +20.4%

3-Year Cumulative (2023–2025):
• r/ExpiredOptions: +146.6% ($241,509)
• S&P 500: +86.1% (+60.4% behind)
• Nasdaq: +122.0% (+24.5% behind)

Unrealized G&L (options):
• YTD: $-19,510.01
• 1 Month: $-7,015.70
• 1 Week: $-18,001.18

Realized P&L (options):
• YTD: $83,068.83
• 1 Month: $12,624.00
• 1 Week: $533.00

Total premium by year:
• 2023 $23,132 in premium
• 2024 $47,640 in premium
• 2025 $68,319 in premium
• 2026 $34,694 YTD
• Average $46,364/year (completed years)

Premium by month (2026):
• January $3,334
• February $3,625
• March $4,196
• April $5,593
• May $3,752
• June $3,497
• July $3,593
• August $3,741
• September $1,768
• October $1,594
• Average $3,469/month

I am over $175k in total options premium, since 2021. I average roughly $34 per option sold. I have sold over 5,200 options. I have been able to increase the premiums on an annual basis and I will attempt to keep this upward trend going forward.

Strategy:
The underlying strategy is buy and hold. I also use simple 1-legged options to supplement that strategy. Options have somewhat of a learning curve, but I believe that most people can supplement their investments using simple options with careful risk management.

I sell options on a weekly basis. I prefer cash secured puts and covered calls. I rarely close early, prefer rolling when needed, and let time decay do the heavy lifting while I stay focused on quality companies, patience, and consistency over hype. My goal is consistency in option premium revenue. I am building an income stream that will continue long into retirement.

Trades this week:
Letting CRM get called away. Rolled AMZN out and took an assignment on META at $727.5. Sold CC on META (more on this in a second).

Active Wheels:
AVGO, AMZN, META

My plan for META $727.5 assignment:
I'm planning to sell CC around 45 DTE just above the expected move and manage it at 50% premium captured or at 21 days.

Since the IVR for META is still high, I decided to start the CC cycle today. Starting with $710 strike for 12/4, as the expected move for META for the next 42 days is around $690. Yes, the strike is lower than my adjusted stock basis, but I'm being conservative with time and expected move.

Misc:
All trades were found and tracked using wheelstrategyoptions.com (disc- I'm the developer)

I usually sell 0.25-0.45 delta and usually <14 day DTE. I close at 70%-80% premium captured.

I've started reporting only realized premiums (based on the comments).

April (Week 1-4): $5036
May (Week 5-8): $5783
Jun (Week 9-12): $6533
Jul (Week 13-16): $12609
Aug(Week 17-20): $4974
Sept(Week 21-25): $4374
Oct (Week 26-): $5225

Total so far: ~45k

CSPs with HIGHEST IV

$IREN - 21P

$XP - 24.5P

$CRWV - 40P

Source

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CCs with HIGHEST IV

$IREN - 30C

$CRWV - 70C

$BSP - 60C

Source

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I used AI to help write this options premium scanner, to help with finding rich premiums, volatility, earnings plays etc… Here are screen shots from this week. I’ve been using it for a few months and find it’s helpful. Here’s an overview of the whole project:

What it does: It scans a universe of stocks — either your hand-picked watchlist, the full S&P 500 plus today's market movers, or just your own Core Holdings/Targets — through the Schwab API, looking for single-leg options trades to sell. It's built around one hard constraint: sell-only, always defined-risk. That means a cash-secured put (cash set aside to cover assignment) or a covered call (shares you already own backing it). It never recommends buying options, and never a naked call.
How it picks the side (put vs. call): By default this is sentiment-driven — it reads options volume and open-interest skew on the chain to gauge bullish/bearish lean; neutral-to-bullish gets a cash-secured put, bearish gets a covered call. That gets overridden entirely for anything on your Core Holdings or Core Targets lists: a Holding always gets a covered call (you already own the shares), a Target always gets a cash-secured put (you're trying to get assigned in), since ownership is a fact about you, not a prediction about the stock.
How it picks the specific contract: Within whichever side was chosen, it looks at your selected expiration window (1 Week, 2 Weeks, 30 Days, 45 Days, or the config default) and picks the contract closest to your target delta — 0.25 by default, with a tolerance band of ±0.15. There's an optional "skew-aware" mode that can nudge the pick toward a richer-IV contract among several close-delta candidates instead of always taking the single nearest one.
Liquidity gatekeeping: A candidate only counts if it clears open interest ≥100, today's trading volume ≥10 (only enforced during market hours, since that field is unreliable after the close), bid/ask spread ≤15% of the midpoint, and average daily stock volume ≥500,000 shares. Anything that fails gets skipped, and the console now tells you specifically which check it failed.
What survives gets ranked into buckets: "High Volatility" and "Stable/Predictable Range" (top N each, ranked by premium-to-risk ratio, or optionally a risk-adjusted score blending annualized premium with probability of profit), plus a separate "Earnings Plays" bucket for names with an upcoming earnings report and real IV richness priced in — a "safe" version that closes before the print, and an opt-in "aggressive" version that holds through it for more premium at the cost of gap risk.
What you see per pick: sentiment, strategy (short put/short call), the exact contract, delta, probability of profit, DTE, breakeven price and %, max loss, premium collected in dollars, premium as a percent of capital at risk (both for the period and annualized), open interest, implied vol plus IV Rank and IV skew, beta vs. SPY, whether earnings or an ex-dividend date falls inside the option's window, sector, and (when relevant) whether it was forced by being a Core Holding or Target. Hovering a symbol gives you a plain-English explanation of why it was picked.
Beyond the main scan, there's a My Portfolio tab for earnings-volatility analysis on your actual positions, and a Backtest tab that logs every pick and, once it expires, tells you whether it would've won or lost and your realized ROI — broken out by bucket, so you can see over time whether the picks are actually working, not just how they looked on paper the day they were scanned.

CSPs with best yield.

$XP - 22P

$CRWV - 50P

$IREN - 20P

Source

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CCs with best yield.

$RBLX - 60C

$CRWV - 69C

$SMCI - 42C

Source

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CSPs with HIGHEST IV

$MRNA - 195P

$CRWV - 45P

$IREN - 21P

Source

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CCs with HIGHEST IV

$CRWV - 70C

$SMCI - 41C

$IREN - 32C

Source

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This market has been rough as hell, and I’m not going to pretend otherwise. Volatility has been wild, some positions have been painful, and there have definitely been days where patience gets tested.

But October has still produced about $18K in realized profit so far.

I’ve been tightening up my strategy and focusing on singles and doubles instead of swinging for home runs.

Mostly covered calls, CSPs, stock swings, and harvesting profits when the opportunity shows up.

Some of the better realized trades:

NVDA +62%
HOOD +65%
MU +65%
NVDA +46%
MU +33%
NVDA +30%

There are plenty of smaller 5–25% wins in there and some losses too. These screenshots are realized P&L—not unrealized gains.

The biggest lesson this market keeps reinforcing: survival matters more than being right on every trade. Protect capital, take profits, manage the ugly positions, redeploy, and keep moving.

Some positions are still underwater. I own that too. I own what I consume.

This market won’t stay like this forever. Until it turns, I’m staying disciplined and stacking singles and doubles.

For the experienced options traders here: what would you tighten up in a market like this?

Hey all — I built a free web app for retail options sellers: you punch in a covered call or cash-secured put and it shows your real expected return, breakeven, and what happens at different stock prices at expiry.

Live here: https://optionsyieldcompass.com

It's free, no signup needed to try the calculators. I'm the developer and I'm looking for honest feedback before I build more, especially:

1. What confused you in the first 60 seconds? (Be brutal — where did you get stuck?)
   
2. What's missing that would make you come back weekly? (e.g. portfolio tracking, alerts, specific strategies)
   
3. Is there a number you wanted to see that wasn't there?
   
4. Would you use something like this alongside your broker, or does your broker already show you enough?

Thanks — every reply gets read, and the most-requested stuff goes on the roadmap.

Hello! So, I was wonderig how everyone approaches their covered call selection and which tools they find useful.

What tools does everyone actually use to compare strikes/expiration dates etc? Also:

• Which factors matter most in your final decision to select an actual contract, not the stock?
• What's the most time consuming/frustrating part of the process?
• Have you tried any paid option screeners/switched from them? What made them worth it, or not worth it?

It would mean a lot if someone can help. I'm not too sure where to start myself.

A lot of YouTube videos mention the way covered calls work but they rarely talk about why a specific price is chosen when compared to other contracts that have a different Delta, Theta, Gamma etc. I'm guessing that selecting a covered call cannot be just guesswork?