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Sharing my wheel trading journey for the last 12 months. Obviously this doesn't mean I an "expert" or have an edge etc. Sharing to get feedback and also inspire someone who is getting into wheel. My background: I generally do 0DTE IC, straddle (see my recent posts) and scalper but go into Wheel for net income. Use that income to buy other growth stocks/etfs (leveraged/high yield etc). Found options extremely fascinating instrument to trade.
1. Increased my portfolio allocation in October, so you can see the jump from Sep to October. I have been trading for a year with small port and been making 3-5k per month.
2. Not sharing my acct size or yield at this time, but it is a large account size (> 500K)
3. Trade mostly 30dte, unless there is FOMC/earnings events then I try to evaluate R:R is worth to trade options expiring after those events.
4. I trade on margin but have strict risk management per trade and not exceed 50% of overall total exposure.
5. Strike selection is generally conservative, with strike around 1std delta and/or strong support for CSP/resistance zones for CC. I use tastytrades, optionstrate for this, but this is getting very mechanical and time sink. Might build a strike-selection bot, where i can scan and spit out proper strikes.
6. My stock/etfs picks are similar to what everyone is trading, but I curate for high-IV tickers that I don't mind owning. One ticker that I am enjoying is weekly spreads on leveraged ETFS like TQQQ.
7. Close at 50%/75% profit. But, management has gotten lot harder with so many trades. May look at tools/bots/mechanics in the market that can help with management or build a new one. I rather focus on strategy/edge refinement than do daily/weekly management.
8. Anyone is a genius in bull market, but Nov/Dec tested my strategy. CSPs in Nov/Dec were close to being touched. I could have just let them get assigned but the PUT premium was very high than CALL, so rolled instead. (Ideally, I don't mind owning, but CALL premiums were lot less than PUT, so made sense to roll than get assigned and CCs on them).
1. One such bad trade was CRWV where the stock tanked 20% below my strike and the call premiums at breakeven were horrible. So, had to roll 3 months out. The price is still below the strike, so might roll out/down again (closing is difficult as the cost is very high).
2. During this time, I also changed my strategy to short call credit spreads on high IV tickers, and short put credit spreads on inverse etfs (e.g. SQQQ).
9. Rolling increases the overall cost of the options (it has no impact on your P/L). e.g. Rolled 10 contracts of NBIS, where the total cost doubled. Again, not a problem if you're ok with the assignment but if you don't want assignment, then it will take longer to hit profit targets to close CSP.
10. I stagger my trades, so open every week based on IV > HR and other technicals and GEX. I have been doing more 0DTE SPX / credit spreads now, as wheel may not be always suitable. Finding some success with IC 0DTE (winrate > 90%) but level of effort is very high for the returns. Will move to bots.
11. Jan 2026 has been amazing as i banked 12K in 7d. Downdays with elevated high-IV are best as some of the tickers had very high IV rank. Also increased my risk appetite with more open trades.
12. Mentality - I need be disciplined to avoid being greedy or feel emotional about not making trades or force to make trades to meet monthly goal. I think risk management truly helps to mitigate these urges. I also think having a community can really help, so you can bounce ideas, ask questions etc.
13. Plan to build return/risk benchmark against SPY (e.g. sharpe / sortino etc) as I want to know if it is just better to buy/hold vs trading. Also, exploring MEIC+ 0 DTE, short-calls+delta hedging etc.
https://preview.redd.it/609ixg3w28cg1.jpg?width=665&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=b2b89db765ee28e7c2162ca43f8553ff7ca2c0ae
Open to feedback!