The Wheel Strategy

The wheel is a repeating loop: sell a put, maybe get the stock, sell a call, maybe let it go. Here's the whole cycle before we slow down and cover each piece.

A cash-secured put means agreeing to buy 100 shares at a price you choose, with the cash already set aside. Here's exactly how it works, with a full worked example.

Every strike trades premium against assignment odds. Here's that trade-off worked out across three strikes, plus a quick look at using delta as a rough gauge.

The VIX measures market fear. Here's an example framework for using it to size cash-secured put positions — smaller when things are calm, larger (but still capped) when fear runs high.

Bollinger Bands plot a simple range around a stock's average price. Here's how a close below the lower band can be a prompt to look closer at a stock — never a green light on its own.

A bull put spread caps your downside by adding a second, further out-of-the-money put — for a smaller premium than a plain cash-secured put. Here's how the trade-off works.

Assignment on a cash-secured put isn't an alarm bell — it's step three of the wheel working as designed. Here's exactly what happens to your account when it occurs.

The strike price on your assigned shares isn't your true cost — the premium you collected lowers it. Here's exactly how to calculate your real cost basis, and why it matters later.

New wheel traders often treat assignment like something went wrong. Here's why experienced wheel traders treat it as one of two equally normal outcomes, not a mistake to avoid.

Once you're holding assigned shares, the wheel's second phase begins: selling calls against them. Here's how that half of the cycle works, with a worked example picking up right where assignment left off.

A covered call and the wheel strategy get talked about like rivals, but one is actually a phase of the other. Here's exactly where they overlap and where they genuinely differ.

Setting a covered call strike inside the wheel is different from an ordinary covered call — your real cost basis, not the market price, is the number that matters most. Here's how to think about it, with a worked example.

Every trip around the wheel involves choosing a strike and an expiration twice — once for the put, once for the call. Here's how those two choices interact across a full cycle.

Not every wheel cycle goes smoothly — sometimes the stock keeps falling well past your cost basis. Here's what traders actually do when that happens, and the trade-offs of each option.

Every mechanic in this course, run end to end on one trade. Here's a complete wheel cycle from the first put sold to the final shares called away, with every number tracked along the way.

Everything in this course has been the mechanics of running the wheel by hand. Here's how AskProsper's Wheelhouse Smart Portfolio applies the same cycle in a managed, rules-based way.