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One year ago, on June 16, 2025, I sold the first cash-secured put under what became the weekly "BORING CSPs" which a lot of you saw get posted here regularly. Twelve months and 273 trades later, the account is up $28,527 in net P/L, or +35.13% on the capital I actually put to work. SPY returned +25.65% over the same stretch. I did it with a max drawdown of -9.93%, and on a typical week only about half the account was ever deployed. The rest sat in cash.
That last part is pretty important... I'm not trying to beat the market on raw returns. I'm generating steady income while keeping a big chunk of my money on the sidelines, earning 4%+ in money market, ready to deploy when everyone else is in shambles. When things eventually get ugly, and they always do, I won't be fully invested at the top. Go ask the people chasing fat premiums what their max drawdown looked like this year. Single digits? Probably not.
This post is the full breakdown of one year running the wheel. Every number below comes straight from the trade log, which is downloadable at the bottom if you want to verify any of it.
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## The Strategy
If you've followed along, you already know the drill. I sell cash-secured puts on boring, profitable companies. I get assigned sometimes. When I do, I sell covered calls and collect premium, dividends, and interest while I wait. That's the entire strategy.
I don't panic over assignments, because when one happens I'm just holding shares of a good business and usually getting paid to sit on them.
The wheel does not have to be complicated. People dress it up with screeners full of greeks and twenty indicators. Strip all of that away and it's still the same three steps. The hard part was never the mechanics. It's picking the right companies and having the patience to do nothing when the regime isn't favorable.
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## One Year In
Here's the inception-to-date snapshot, June 16, 2025 through June 20, 2026:
| Metric | Value |
|--------|-------|
| **Net P/L** | **$28,527.69 (+35.13%)** |
| **Realized Income** | $32,616.69 |
| Premiums | $23,972.45 |
| Stock P/L | $5,000.00 |
| Interest | $2,609.63 |
| Dividends | $1,034.61 |
| **Total Trades** | 273 |
| **Unique Tickers** | 47 |
| **Win Rate** | 96.3% |
| **Sharpe Ratio** | 2.02 |
| **Sortino Ratio** | 3.23 |
| **Max Drawdown** | -9.93% |
| **Annualized Yield** | 35.2% |
| **Avg Weekly ROC** | 0.68% |
| **Avg Per-Trade ROC** | 0.55% |
| **Median Weekly Deployed** | $81,200 |
| **Capital Deployed** | $14,411 (10%) |
| **Current Cash** | $132,478 (90%) |
| **Total Capital** | $146,889 |
| **SPY Return** | +25.65% |
| **SPY Annualized** | +25.72% |
| **SPY Max Drawdown** | -10.69% |
| **SPY Sharpe** | 1.46 |
| **SPY Sortino** | 2.08 |
The number I care about most is the Sharpe of 2.02 over a full year. That tells you the returns aren't coming from a couple of lucky trades or wild swings. The strategy returned more than SPY (+35.13% on deployed vs +25.65%), with a higher Sharpe (2.02 vs 1.46), a higher Sortino (3.23 vs 2.08), and a shallower drawdown (-9.93% vs -10.69%). That's the definition of having an edge.
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## The Single-Digit Drawdown
A full year of trading through a war or two, oil spikes, tariff headlines, the QCOM saga, and a brutal semis rout in June, and the worst the account ever drew down was -9.93%. The S&P itself drew down more than that over the same year.
The deepest hole I sat in all year was QCOM. I got assigned at $167.50 and $160, watched it grind down to $124, and stared at roughly $7,900 in unrealized losses before wheeling out with about $2,900 in profit a few months later. I wrote the entire trade up [here](https://www.reddit.com/r/Optionswheel/comments/1t2vigb/wheeled_qcom_for_35_months_it_was_boring_until_it/). It was the hardest stretch of the year and also the best proof the strategy works. I held because the business wasn't trash. The price was down, the company was not. Those are two different things, and knowing the difference is what lets you sit through the red instead of panic-selling the bottom like most retail traders.
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## Never Oversize a Single Name
The reason a name like QCOM could fall that hard and the account still only drew down single digits is sizing. No single position was ever big enough to matter on its own. Even on the busiest weeks the capital was spread across a handful of names, never piled into one. QCOM was painful, but it was one modest slice of the entire portfolio, never a make-or-break bet.
The same applies to sectors and industries. A wheel account stuffed full of semis or high-beta tech might look diversified by ticker, but it's not diversified by risk. When that group rolls over, every position rolls over together. So I spread across sectors instead of stacking one theme.
And past individual positions entirely, I keep a big cash position. On a typical week only about half the account was deployed, the rest sitting in money market earning interest, which added up to $3,643 over the year just for waiting. Right now I'm at 90% cash with no open trades. That cushion is what lets me sit tight when a position moves against me and add when everyone else is getting forced out.
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## What I Traded
Here are the top names by P/L over the year. The majority of these aren't speculative, and didn't generate exciting premium:
| Ticker | Net P/L | Trades |
|--------|---------|--------|
| NVDA | $5,645.95 | 59 |
| GOOG | $4,172.23 | 15 |
| ANET | $3,584.46 | 22 |
| QCOM | $2,889.47 | 23 |
| UAL | $1,303.69 | 23 |
| AAPL | $1,177.46 | 4 |
| ORCL | $1,031.66 | 2 |
| LRCX | $987.82 | 2 |
| MSFT | $901.62 | 5 |
| HOOD | $776.42 | 7 |
| DELL | $719.85 | 4 |
| HPE | $655.73 | 13 |
NVDA was the workhorse, mostly covered call management on assigned shares plus a steady stream of puts. QCOM did most of its damage during the wheel that finally completed in late April, when it ripped through my strikes and got called away above cost on both lots after months of grinding. GOOG, ANET, LRCX, ORCL, and the rest are the same kind of name. Companies that recover when they dip and pay you while you wait. There's no SOFI, no HIMS, no MARA, IONQ, TSLL, etc on this list. That's on purpose.
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## When I Didn't Trade
Look at the activity by month. The trade count tells the discipline story better than anything I could write:
| Month | Trades | Premium |
|-------|--------|---------|
| Jun 2025 (from 6/16) | 4 | $1,189 |
| Jul 2025 | 5 | $589 |
| Aug 2025 | 13 | $1,630 |
| Sep 2025 | 39 | $4,470 |
| Oct 2025 | 39 | $4,958 |
| Nov 2025 | 29 | $1,938 |
| Dec 2025 | 33 | $1,493 |
| Jan 2026 | 43 | $2,099 |
| Feb 2026 | 13 | $1,575 |
| Mar 2026 | 27 | $489 |
| Apr 2026 | 13 | $1,046 |
| May 2026 | 10 | $1,526 |
| Jun 2026 (through 6/16) | 5 | $1,037 |
September, October, and January were busy because the market was cooperating and there was real premium to sell. February, May, and June I pulled way back and did almost nothing, sometimes a handful of trades in an entire month. When breadth is bad or premium is not worth the risk, I sit on my hands. The hardest part of selling premium (or trading in general) isn't picking the strike. It's knowing when not to sell (or trade) at all, and being fine watching weeks go by with the account mostly in cash.
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## Why Boring Works (For me)
Every week I see someone ask what to sell puts on, and the top answers are always whatever X and the theta-based subs are pumping... Usually the premium juicers - SOFI, HIMS, MARA, RIOT, IONQ, etc take your pick. Those names throw off fat premium, but the premium is fat for a reason. The market is telling you the thing could move 15% in a day, 20%+ in a week, and when it does you're stuck holding shares of a company that might not even be profitable.
The people wheeling high-beta junk collected big premium in January and then spent the next several months bagholding through 30 to 40% drawdowns on names that don't bounce back the way a BORING mega cap name does. Meanwhile my trade log is full of companies that recover, pay dividends while you wait, and let the wheel actually do its job because the business isn't broken when the stock is down.
It's boring on purpose. Boring is what helped keep my drawdowns in single digits.
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## Where Things Stand
As of June 20, one year in:
- **$28,527 net P/L** (+35.13% on deployed capital)
- **2 holdings**: 100 shares DG, 100 shares SMCI, both currently red and both being held
- **0 open trades**
- **$132,478 cash** across all accounts (90% of capital)
- **$146,889 total capital**
- **$81,200 median weekly deployed**
DG and SMCI are both underwater right now, and that's fine. They're being wheeled the same way QCOM was, with covered calls and patience, and I'll keep grinding the cost basis down until they come back. That's the strategy working exactly as designed, not breaking.
[One-year portfolio snapshot since inception, June 16 2025 through June 20 2026](https://blog.mlabstrading.com/portfolio_snapshots/mlabs-portfolio-snapshot-2026-06-20_1yr.png)
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## Addressing the "you could have just bought and held SPY" crowd
Before the comments fill up with it, let me get ahead of the obvious one. I posted a similar breakdown a few weeks back and a good chunk of the feedback was some version of "all that effort to barely beat SPY" ([that thread here](https://www.reddit.com/r/Optionswheel/comments/1tsypx2/1117_wheeling_boring_names_ytd_here_are_the/)). It's somewhat of a fair point, so I'll take it head on instead of pretending it isn't there.
First, the context that matters most: this account is dedicated to the wheel and nothing else. It is a small portion of my overall capital in the markets. The bulk of my money sits in separate buy-and-hold portfolios, index funds, and mutual funds that are completely unrelated to this strategy. This was never wheel-or-SPY with my entire net worth. The wheel is one defined-risk bucket doing one job, and I hold plenty of long-only index exposure elsewhere.
Now for everyone still sure buy-and-hold was the obvious move, a few honest questions:
### 1. Before this period started, would you have confidently put 100% of the same capital into SPY and held it the whole time?
### 2. Are you judging the strategy based on what was knowable at the time, or based on the best-looking outcome after the fact?
### 3. If SPY had gone flat or dropped 10-15%, would you still be saying buy-and-hold was obviously the better choice?
### 4. If the critique is "you could have bought SPY," where was that call at the beginning of the year, before the outcome was known? I can't seem to find those posts/comments in theta-based subs.
### 5. What are your returns YTD, 1Y, and max drawdown during those periods?
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## Final Thoughts
The wheel is not going to make you 100% in a year. That was never the goal. But if you pick the right companies, size your positions so no single one can hurt you, and have the patience to sit through drawdowns and dead weeks, it does exactly what it's supposed to. A full year in, I'm up +35.13% on deployed capital, ahead of SPY, with a max drawdown under 10% and, on average, close to half the account in cash.
That's the case for boring. Better risk-adjusted returns, a shallower drawdown than the index, and a strategy simple enough to run for the rest of your life. Year two starts the same way year one did. One boring put at a time.
**[Download Full Trade Log (CSV)](https://blog.mlabstrading.com/trade_logs/trade_log_2026_06_20.csv)**
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### My stack
I have about 30 different jobs running throughout the day inside of my homelab (r/homelab) pulling and processing stocks, options, news, sentiment, fundamentals, and technicals data. Ive been building this over the years and it started as a hackathon project at work 3 years ago (yep, before vibe coding). This pipeline does maybe 95% of the heavy lifting. By 8:05pm eastern, the data for the next day is ready for me to do a quick manual verification pass for the CSP candidates going into the next day. I also built a thin inference layer to do a small portion of the analysis. This inference layer lives in my homelab as well running an open source model (qwen variants) on a RTX3090 - shoutout to those over at r/LocalLLM/.
Here's an actual picture of my homelab: https://www.reddit.com/r/homelab/comments/1ru0xc5/my_homelab_for_now/
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UPDATE as of 10:52am EST: I'm about to play a round of golf w/ my father - will get back to all of the comments after the round. Happy fathers day to the dads out there!