Cash-secured put calculator
What one contract pays, what it ties up, and what that is worth annualized.
Dollars per share
Per share, as quoted
Calendar days
Premium
$85
one contract
Capital required
$4,915
cash secured
Breakeven
$49.15
per share, if assigned
Return
1.73%
over 45 days
Annualized
14.0%
simple, not compounded
Breakeven buffer
1.70%
credit ÷ strike
How each figure is worked out
- Premium is the credit per share × 100, because one contract covers 100 shares. Options are quoted per share and sold per contract, and conflating the two is the most common way a return figure comes out a hundred times wrong.
- Capital required is (strike − credit) × 100. The credit arrives when you open the trade and is part of the cash that would buy the shares, so it reduces what has to be set aside — on a $50 strike with an $0.85 credit, dividing by $4,915 rather than $5,000. A small difference, and it is the denominator of every other figure here.
- Breakeven is strike − credit, per share. Below that, assignment costs money.
- Return is premium ÷ capital, over the holding period.
- Annualized multiplies that by 365 ÷ days. Simple, not compounded — which is what an options desk quotes, and the honest choice: a 45-day trade repeated eight times is not a compounded year, and treating it as one flatters short-dated trades.
- Breakeven buffer is the credit as a fraction of the strike: how far below the strike the stock can settle before assignment costs you money. It is not the same thing as the distance from today’s price to the strike, which is the larger number usually called the cushion.
What it leaves out
Commissions, fees and assignment costs are excluded, and the credit is whatever you type rather than a price you would actually be filled at. Your broker’s margin requirement may differ from the cash-secured figure. An annualized return is a rate of pay, not a forecast — it assumes you could repeat this trade all year, and nothing guarantees that you could.
Cash-secured put screener
A calculator prices one put you have already found. A screener finds them: it filters a universe for names liquid enough to trade, picks a strike by delta, rejects anything with an earnings date inside the trade, and ranks what is left on return, implied volatility and risk. WheelTheta does that with eleven hard gates and six scored factors, and every gate, weight and curve is on the methodology page.
Other calculators
Covered call — Net basis before and after a call, and what being called away returns.
Assignment probability — The chance a short put or call finishes in the money, beside its delta.
WheelTheta runs this arithmetic on several hundred names every weekday and publishes a top ten from them — the daily screen.
Research and education, not investment advice. Selling options can lose more than the premium received. See the disclaimer.