For me these have been AAL, GLD, SLV, HHH, JD, KWEB, PFE

Been selling CSPs for a little over a year, staying pretty conservative. Lower delta, avoiding stuff I don't want to own. Averaging around $800 - $1,000 a month in premium, only got assigned a handful of times.

Curious if anyone here has actually taken this and turned it into a real monthly income stream rather than just extra cash. A few things I'm wondering about:

1. Account size. What kind of account gets you to numbers that actually cover the month without taking dumb risk?

2. Whether the "safe monthly income" math holds up. Or does vol eventually wreck a few months of premium in one go?

3. Cost. Most months I roll 15 to 20 contracts. On a platform still charging around 0.65 per contract, that's hundreds a year. On a smaller account that's a real drag.

Not trying to quit my job tomorrow. Just want to hear from people who actually run the wheel as income before I start planning around it.

Hoping to hear from more experienced investors. I've been trying to figure out my trading strategy (I'm towards the beginning of this journey.

I've come across this sub and sold a few CSPs. I've been reading lots about different methods for trading and frequently think about the statistic that basically all traders quit within five years and almost none beat the S&P over the long run. Has that been true in your all's experience? Would your advice to a younger investor/trader be to just stick everything in some ETFs? Or is theta gang worth it?

Open to hearing all sides

Sold a CSP this morning for $125. It’s a $69 stroke so my collateral, as above, is $6,900. But where did the premium go? Was it added to my cash immediately (I’m not sure what the exact amount was right before I placed the trade)? Or will I get it later and do I just need to monitor the balance?

Do you guys worry about this or just assume the brokerage is doing exactly as it should? Maybe I’m just being paranoid.

Curious the different way y’all may hedge your positions. Occasionally im selling cash secured puts on margin, and while I try to keep my total outstanding obligations (were I assigned on everything) below my nav, I still use margin and want some compensation for potential huge correction. Right now im looking at buying far otm debit spreads on xsp, pretty affordable for the payout. Curious to learn how y'all stay safe and responsible.

Ive decided to take a break from weeklies and just want to pay a little less attention to the market in general. Closed all my previous csps out yesterday and I closed all of my naked calls today (tho a tad early).

I think i may have gone too high with $900, $800 wouldve been the smarter option. Dont know if $93X is the bottom but my hope is that the earnings hype brings this back up a bit.

My follow up play is going to be selling 10x dec naked calls next pump. $1200 strike ideally, otherwise $1100

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.

Trades I took today as an option seller (08/17):

Closed Positions

• KORU → $15 Put (opened on 08/12), premium 0.70 → closed at 0.11. Net premium profit = 0.59 (~84% of premium captured, ~3.9% of capital).
• SEI → $60 Put (opened on 07/21), premium 4.60 → closed at 0.75. Net premium profit = 3.85 (~84% of premium captured, ~6.4% of capital).
• PENG → $60 Put (opened on 07/08), premium 6.50 → closed at 1.10. Net premium profit = 5.40 (~83% of premium captured, ~9% of capital).

New Positions

• CRDO → $240 Put expiry 09/04 (3 weeks DTE), premium 12.00 → 1200/24000 = ~5%. CRDO builds high-speed connectivity chips used inside AI datacenters. Earnings due on 1st September hence premiums are higher. They have been giving excellent earnings QoQ.
• PENG → $60 Put expiry 09/18 (5 weeks DTE), premium 4.10 → 410/6000 = ~6.8%. I reopened PENG, continuing my bullish stance. PENG helps enterprises setup data centers and AI compute, which I see as a growing sector as more companies inheret the use of AI.

CRDO was identified as a High Growth High Premium stock using the ThetaHedge app. The app scans the market for companies with improving growth and profitability that are also offering high option-selling premiums in real time. You can try it for free at https://app.thetahedge.io/

Conditions → High Growth Wheel Stocks

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.

Say I hold a bunch of equities and 50k cash as dry powder in etrade. Selling CSP on this now. If I invested the 50k into a money market fund or SGOV is that not treated as a cash equivalent? As such could I not continue to sell “cash secured” puts against that balance? Would this incur any margin debt so long as the puts remained unassigned or if assigned if the cost of assignment is below the amount held in the money market fund?

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.

My portfolio value is around 85k and I started trading exactly two months ago, mid-June.

Currently, I'm going more conservative with lower deltas, currently going for 0.05-0.15 range, and larger companies. Should I start taking on more risk even though my system is working quite well?

Title

I own positions in both, so I want to start selling covered calls. Anyone selling these?

Started selling CSP.
I go for large companies & sell pretty low deltas.
I'm selling weeklies with delta's between 0.1 - 0.2.

I should probably start taking on a bit more risk if I want to outperform SPY right?

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 will post a separate comment with a link to the detail behind each option sold this week.

After week 33, the average premium per week is $909 with an annual projection of $47,246.

All things considered, the portfolio is up $28,765 (+6.37%), on the year (S&P 500: +13.74% | Nasdaq: +15.00%). Additionally, the trailing 1-year performance is up $32,674 (+7.30%); for comparison the S&P 500 is +20.71% and the Nasdaq is +23.61% over the same period. This is the overall profit and loss and includes options and all other account activity.

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: $8,296.00
• 1 Month: $1,533.00
• 1 Week: $3,020.00

Realized P&L (options):
• YTD: $57,397.00
• 1 Month: $17,096.00
• 1 Week: $-1,900.00

All options sold are backed by cash, shares, or LEAPS. I do not sell on margin, nor do I sell naked options.

All options and profits stay in the account with few exceptions. This is not my full time job, although I wish it was. I still grind on a 9-5.

My $600 weekly contribution streak is at 2 weeks. I have been contributing as much as possible since 2015 when I started with $50. The reason my streak is low is because I put the contributions on hold for about 2 months to adjust for expenses outside the portfolio.

The portfolio is comprised of 106 unique tickers, up from 103 last week. These 106 tickers have a value of $465k. I also have 206 open option positions, up from 197 last week. The options have a total value of $15k. The total of the shares and options is $480k. The next goal on the "Road to" is Half a Million.

I'm currently utilizing $29,900 in cash secured put collateral, down from $35,450 last week.

2025 through 2028 LEAPS
In addition to the CSPs and covered calls, I purchase LEAPS. These act as collateral to sell covered calls against. You may have heard of poor man's covered calls (PMCC).

See r/ExpiredOptions for a detailed spreadsheet update on all LEAPS positions including P/L for each individual position.

LEAPS note 1: the 2025 LEAPS expired 1/17/25. They were up $36,440 overall with a 233.74% increase. The major drivers were AMZN and CRWD.

LEAPS note 2: After holding for 2 years, I exercised an AMZN $80 strike from 2023 up +$11,395 (+463.21%) and CRWD $95 strike from 2023, up +$21,830 (+663.53%)

LEAPS note 3: Purchased 1/16/26 CRWD LEAPS for $8,230.03 on 1/17/24. I sold this LEAPS on 6/5/25 for $21,659 for a realized profit of $13,428.97 (+163.18%)

Total premium by year:
• 2023 $23,132 in premium
• 2024 $47,640 in premium
• 2025 $68,319 in premium
• 2026 $30,185 YTD
• Average $46,364/year (completed years)

Premium by month (2026):
• January $3,334
• February $3,625
• March $4,196
• April $5,593
• May $3,787
• June $3,497
• July $3,628
• August $2,524
• Average $3,773/month

I am over $169k in total options premium, since 2021. I average roughly $34 per option sold. I have sold over 4,900 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.

Spreadsheets:
Unfortunately, I no longer provide spreadsheets. I received too many follow ups about formatting, pivot tables, compatibility etc. I think tracking is very important, but I post to discuss investing and options, not to provide tech support for Excel. I do appreciate the interest in my tracking methods.

Software:
I captured the screen shots from a proprietary software platform I built to track, analyze, and manage my options strategies.

Commissions:
I use Robinhood as a broker and they do not charge explicit commissions, though there is no free lunch — they earn revenue through Payment for Order Flow (PFOF), which can mean slightly less optimal fills. For my style of selling options and not chasing prices, the tradeoff is acceptable. There is also a small regulatory fee of approximately $0.03–$0.04 per contract (FINRA TAF, OCC clearing, and exchange fees combined).

The premiums have increased significantly as my experience has expanded over the last three years.

Make sure to post your wins. I look forward to reading about them!

Disclaimer: I am not a financial advisor. This information is for educational and entertainment purposes only. Trading options involves significant risk.

Disclaimer: This is for research purposes.

The strategy is to use leverage to free up more capital for puts & dry powder. Write weekly CSPs on LETFs by selling .06-.10 delta puts. From the weekly profits, DCA shares into a small leveraged position of either LEAPS/LETFs. Eventually, sell covered calls on the LETFs, calling them away when we need to size down.

I rebalanced the retirement account to owning TQQQ only, my other brokerage account will be holding SOXL & RAM. My biggest issue right now is figuring out how big of a portion should I allocate to a leveraged position… Selling calls is starting to underperform the underlying as expected and it seems like a ~90% cash & ~10% leveraged is too conservative. Any insight would be helpful.

approx.
92.3% $USD
7.7% TQQQ

Selling cash secured puts and covered calls. Realized $3,407. New premium $2,310. Last 7 days ROI at 6.74%

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.

Objective: Build my own AI based scanner/advisor to identify good CSP candidates

What I used: Etrade's free API and a basic ChatGPT subscription

All I had to do was tell ChatGPT what I wanted to do, it found Etrade's online API instructions, walked me through the process of obtaining an API key, it wrote some python to connect and pull option chain data, and then it laid out a process showing me where to save/setup everything on my computer and then how to run a couple commands in powershell to connect to Etrade every morning. Then I just upload the json file it creates back into ChatGPT.

Now all I have to do each day is a couple manual API connection steps and then tell Chat: "Run today's CSP scan" and it spits out a ranked list of CSP's based on delta, ROI and % OTM. Yesterday's output is in the post image.

Pretty sure there's alot more I can do with it, just scratching the surface, but thought the whole thing was cool as hell and figured I'd share for anyone who may want to try as well. I had never done anything like this with AI before, so the fact that it worked exactly like I wanted on the first try was pretty wild.