The Wheelhouse

Watch the classic options 'wheel' strategy running for real, every trading day — quality stocks only, every trade explained in plain English, and double-checked before it ever counts.

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For informational and educational purposes only — not investment advice. Smart Portfolios are simulated (paper-trading) model portfolios that illustrate a rule-based approach; they are not a recommendation to buy or sell any security and do not know your personal financial situation. Do your own research and due diligence, and consider consulting a licensed financial professional, before making any investment decision.
Paper-trading results. Trades shown are real orders placed against a sandbox brokerage account using live market data, but no real capital is at risk. Results do not represent a live account and may differ from real trading due to execution timing, liquidity, slippage, taxes, and fees.
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Free — one email per trade, plain-English explanation included.
Starting Capital
$100,000
Currently Invested
$0
Unrealized Gain/Loss
+$0 (+0.0%)
Risk Tier
Moderate
Performance vs. S&P 500 (SPY)
This portfolio's performance history will appear here once it has traded for a few days. Its holdings and starting mandate are shown above in the meantime.
How This Portfolio Picks Its Trades

The Wheelhouse runs the classic options wheel: sell a put on a stock worth owning and collect the premium; if the shares get assigned, sell a call against them and collect again. Every candidate has to clear a strict, published quality and liquidity check first — no exceptions. A research agent screens the list, a strategist decides the day's trade, a narrator explains it in plain English, and an independent auditor double-checks everything before it's published. Shares its real Tradier paper-trading account with The Swing Shift.

Every candidate has to clear all of this, checked fresh, before it's ever considered for a trade:

  • Debt-to-equity under 1.5x
  • Free-cash-flow yield of at least 3% of market cap
  • Market cap of at least $10 billion
  • Average daily volume of at least 1,000,000 shares
  • Option open interest of at least 500 contracts on the nearest 20-45 DTE put
  • Bid-ask spread no wider than 6% of the option's mid price
  • No scheduled earnings report within 7 calendar days of the nearest 20-45 DTE expiration
Read the exact rule, in full (revision 2, effective Jul 17, 2026)

Universe: a fixed, DB-configurable watchlist of liquid, optionable large-cap names, narrowed daily by a live batch quality screen (debt/equity < 1.5x, free-cash-flow yield ≥ 3%, market cap ≥ $10B, average daily volume ≥ 1,000,000 shares, option open interest ≥ 500 contracts on the nearest 20-45 DTE put, bid-ask spread ≤ 6%, no earnings within 7 calendar days of the nearest 20-45 DTE expiration). Entry: sell a single cash-secured put, 20-45 days to expiration, targeting approximately 0.20-0.35 delta (a guideline, not a hard rule — the daily research-and-planning process has discretion within these structural bounds). On assignment: sell a single covered call on the assigned shares, 20-45 DTE, similarly targeting approximately 0.20-0.35 delta, until the shares are called away, then return to selling cash-secured puts. No multi-leg structures. Position sizing: no single put's strike-based collateral may exceed 15% of total portfolio notional; at least 10% of total notional held in uncommitted cash at all times. No new put on an underlying with a scheduled earnings report inside the option's expiration window. This portfolio shares one funded Tradier paper-trading account ($200,000 total) with The Swing Shift — each portfolio is independently budgeted at $100,000, and every trade is checked against both this portfolio's own budget and the real shared account's actual available cash (accounting for what the other portfolio has committed) before it is placed.

See every rule change this portfolio has ever made »
Meet the Research & Trading Team
Sam the Researcher
Screens candidates against the published criteria above before any trade is considered, and writes a daily briefing on what the screen found.
Jake the Strategist
Decides the day's trade, if any, within hard, code-enforced risk limits — Jake never controls position sizing itself; a separate system checks every proposal before it can reach the broker.
Emma the Narrator
Writes the plain-English explanation for a trade only after it has actually filled at the broker — never before, never speculatively.
Dave the Auditor
Independently re-checks every trade against the published mandate and re-runs the original screen with fresh data, before it's allowed to publish.
Budget & Shared Account

The Wheelhouse and The Swing Shift share one funded Tradier paper-trading account ($200,000 total). Each portfolio is independently budgeted at $100,000, and every trade is checked against both this portfolio's own budget and the real shared account's actual available cash — accounting for what the other portfolio has already committed — before it's placed. One portfolio's activity can never leave the other without enough real cash to operate.

Current Holdings

This portfolio hasn't opened any positions yet.

Trade Log

No published trades yet — every trade this portfolio makes will appear here with a plain-English explanation once it's reviewed and published.

At a Glance
Risk tier
Moderate
Starting capital
$100,000
Uninvested cash
$100,000
Benchmark
SPY
Inception
Jul 17, 2026
Frequently Asked Questions

A real, rules-based strategy running live on this site — real market data, real orders placed against a funded Tradier paper-trading account. Nothing here is a backtest dressed up as a live result.

No. Every trade is placed against a Tradier paper-trading (sandbox) account — a real broker connection and real market prices, but no real money changes hands.

No. Smart Portfolios are published for education and transparency — a way to watch a rules-based strategy work in public. Nothing here is a personalized recommendation for any individual reader to buy or sell anything.

A small team of AI agents, each with one job: one screens candidates against this portfolio's published criteria, one decides the day's trade within hard, code-enforced risk limits, one writes the plain-English explanation once a trade fills, and one independently re-checks everything before it's allowed to publish.

Tradier, the broker behind this site's paper trading, doesn't support multiple sandbox accounts. Both portfolios trade through the same funded account, each with its own independent budget and its own hard cash checks — see "Budget & Shared Account" above.

Every trade goes through an automatic compliance check and an independent audit before it publishes. An order that's been placed but not yet filled or reviewed shows up separately under "Orders Awaiting Fill" — the explanation appears once it fills and clears review, not before.

Once each trading day, Monday through Friday around 1:00 PM Eastern, the portfolio's research-and-decision process runs. Most days won't produce a trade — a quiet day with nothing worth acting on is a normal, honest outcome, not a malfunction.

You can see exactly what was traded and why, but this isn't a signal service. Always do your own research and weigh your own circumstances before making any investment decision.