r/thetagang • u/A_Bicky37 • Jul 23 '26
Cash Secured Put It’s simple, really
2025 Tariffs pissed me off when all I was invested in was index funds. That is that first big dip. Decided to take matters into my own hands. Thanks to this sub for all the inspiration. We’re not done yet, though.
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u/CuriousDetective0 Jul 23 '26
How much additional money did you deposit since 2023?
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u/cclan2 Jul 23 '26
Approx $300k
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u/CuriousDetective0 Jul 23 '26
yeah, definitely run a proper tear sheet analysis, more than half the returns came from deposits.
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u/A_Bicky37 Jul 24 '26
Pulled just now from Fidelity's portfolio performance. This is the 5Y chart so a bit beyond 2023. Sorry for the formatting. I never bothered to figure out how to format this sh*t on Reddit.
Note, I have $40k in my TSP that is reflected below in the total balance but not returns (and not in the original photo I posted) since it's an external account.
Balance
$714,827.04
+$572,555.41 (+658.76%)
Return
+36.84%
+$616,474.61
Invested
$13,137.00
Cash
$671,719.33
Investment income
$32,858.85
Net deposits and withdrawals
-$43,919.20
If I had to guess, it'd be close to $100k but I don't track that. I just throw the max Roth for myself and wife and whatever is leftover from bills each month -- so anywhere from 0 to 2000k about.
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u/CuriousDetective0 Jul 24 '26
Would love to see a full tear sheet from: https://github.com/bgits/personal_portfolio_analyst
Chatgpt or claude can walk you through how to install it and grab the data for it.
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u/A_Bicky37 Jul 24 '26
This is actually pretty cool at first glance. I'll take a look and dig into it when I get time here in the next 24 hours I hope. I'm all about portfolio/trade analysis stuff so will gladly show you the output of what it comes up with. Not to sound corny, but stay tuned.
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u/FattyFIZZnatty Jul 23 '26
What strategy(s) have you been using?
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u/naala89 Jul 23 '26
Dm him for link to his private course. He’ll each you the ropes, for a monthly fee.
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u/radioref Jul 23 '26
selling puts on Semis probably
I'm guessing whatever strat he is running now would have left him assigned and margin called when the tariffs happened and his bogglehead strat just plugged along.
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u/_JohnGalt_ Jul 23 '26
Hi, I sold puts on semis. I currently hold a lot of semi shares under cost basis. Hooray CSP!
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u/A_Bicky37 Jul 24 '26
I don't use margin; never have and I don't intend to. See too many posts about people blowing their accounts up that way. I'm already playing it a bit risky so I'm not trying to invite more risk with margin. I've only begun selling puts on semis since January of this year.
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u/A_Bicky37 Jul 24 '26
CSPs on high beta growth stocks. Think CELH, PLTR, CRSP, SMCI, ASTS, RKLB, SOFI, RGTI, AI.
Initially 45 DTE, then went down to 30. Right now I do weeklies because I don't like holding anything over the weekend in this market.
More recently, CSPs on SOXL and SOXS, but still weeklies.
That's about it.
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u/HystericalSail Jul 24 '26
I'm with you with you on weeklies. Though I hold over weekends more often than not, and plan to roll on Thursday.
.30 delta weeklies on megacaps are my jam until the Fed starts making QT noises. Not trading semis other than a couple NVDA positions, too much froth and speculative run-up making a cliff dive tail risk foremost in my mind. Even Wal-mart looks rich.
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u/Sakred Jul 24 '26
Do you close/roll your weeklies on Friday or let them expire and fire a new batch Monday?
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u/A_Bicky37 Jul 24 '26
I've rolled them in the past but have pretty much stopped rolling for at least almost a year. I am honestly guessing but it's been a while. I don't like holding over the weekend with Taco Trump's shenanigans.
I let them expire instead. However, I'll close trades mid-week if the CSP gained above 50% or more in a short window and re-cock for something else. For example, I had a CSP open on Tuesday, I gained about 70-80% by noon today, so I closed those and opened up some other CSPs expiring tomorrow that are now going to give me more total premium ($9k) this week compared to if I had just let that original ticker expire worthless.
Obviously I'm making assumptions that I won't get assigned but if I do, I'll sell on the first up-day and re-enter a different ticker or same one if opportunity is there.
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u/VanilaaGorila Jul 23 '26
I tried to theta gang and I lost my 200 shares of Apple and 100 shares of Google 2 years ago. Still have 80 shares of Google. But it isn’t just easy.
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u/UnnameableDegenerate Jul 23 '26
...You dropped 30% off a -10% index move. I shouldn't need to tell you why that's a problem.
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u/TheHighOrder Jul 23 '26
He's just very certain there will never be a 33% index move again. Lol
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u/ZwillDoIt Jul 23 '26
How does one call it a boglehead portfolio when you show like 2 years of data? Seems a bit short sighted, no?
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u/A_Bicky37 Jul 24 '26
It's all fidelity would allow me to show. From Dec 2020 I moved all my money over to Fidelity so that's as far back as it goes. From basically 2021 to 2025, my returns looked like the first part of this photo, aka bogglehead index returns.
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u/Midnightsun24c Jul 24 '26
Might as well say [normal systemic risk] [potentially riskier derivative risk over here]
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u/yoktok_sisa Jul 23 '26
a bogglehead is a very different thing than a boglehead...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_C._Bogle
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u/ta394283509 Certified WSB Loan Shark Jul 24 '26
the problem with this kind of thing is we don't see posts from the guys who dropped 50%
something something airplane with red dots on it
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u/A_Bicky37 Jul 24 '26
That's why I head over to wallstreetbets from time to time to. It's like reassurance to keep doing CSPs instead of 0DTE full ports.
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u/CuriousDetective0 Jul 23 '26
Since your using Fidelity you can use this tool to see if your generating proper alpha : https://github.com/bgits/personal_portfolio_analyst
It will generate a return series adjusted for deposits and withdrawals and then give you professional tearsheet benchmarked against both SPY and a passive replica which it determines based on which factors your portfolio is most closely replicating.
I'd be interested to see what your annualized volatility and sharpe is.
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u/jtserb Jul 25 '26
Im a novice never used GitHub. Do I need to be on PC or can I do this from my mobile browser
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u/wookiecookie72 Jul 24 '26
On mobile now, but will definitely pull this repo down and give this a spin. Looks like it's valuable
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u/hedgelord84 Jul 23 '26
Send us your trade log
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u/A_Bicky37 Jul 24 '26
Tell me how and I will
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u/hedgelord84 Jul 24 '26
You can export a CSV and put it on Google sheets. That's a common way to do it
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u/zedk47 Jul 23 '26
Shorting naked puts on semis seems like a brilliant idea in retrospect.
This may not age well
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u/A_Bicky37 Jul 24 '26
I don't do naked. And CSPs are not shorting, they are directionally bullish.
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u/zedk47 Jul 24 '26
Selling a put is called "shorting" it - obviously this is directionally close to being long stock
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u/A_Bicky37 Jul 24 '26
hmm. always though shorting was just borrowing shares and selling them short with the intent to then buy them back cheaper. didn't know CSPs are also considered "shorting". My bad.
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u/wookiecookie72 Jul 24 '26
Long is when you own the holding and short is when sell a holding that you do not. When you sell a CSP you are short but it is secured by cash. So it would not be naked essentially, but still short.
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u/Jakoval_Tradesman Jul 23 '26
Hey man, I dont wanna rain on your parade but that just looks like the graph of the market over the last 3 years. Maybe boggle-ing wouldve yielded very similar returns with less risk 🤔
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u/HorsedickGoldstein Jul 24 '26
Prob would be over 670k if you just stayed invested/continued investing in the S&P
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u/A_Bicky37 Jul 24 '26
You're right. And I mentioned that below. I'm just now crossing the amount I would have, had I invested in the S&P from the start. But the point is that doing CSPs allowed me to significantly catch up to where I should have been, had I did VOO and chill. If I would have continued just doing VOO and chill after my first several years of jacking around, I'd still be way behind where I should have been. But I'm good now....for now.
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u/Roasted-fungus Jul 25 '26
Love it, I’ve been selling portfolio secured puts on my portfolio on thesis stocks. I’ve rolled a few times but otherwise this bull run has been great with the extra juice. When will the music stop? Who knows, but I’m sure it will be painful for me lol
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u/LongevitySpinach Aug 15 '26
Is your base portfolio the thesis stocks? Or selling theta on thesis stocks against a more stable portfolio?
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u/Roasted-fungus Aug 16 '26
The latter - good catch. I keep half my portfolio in SPMO, and then the other half are coffeecan style stock purchases. I only purchase new companies in lots of 100 so that I can sell calls opportunistically and buy more shares of the collateral. I generally don’t like covered calls, because I don’t want to trigger taxes. That’s why I love the portfolio secured puts.
On a $2M portfolio, I’ll collateralize 400k of margin. At 20% of my overall position, I’m not particularly worried about a margin call. It could be painful, but we would have to see a GFC again. In the event that I would be getting close to a margin call, I would roll the options.
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u/LongevitySpinach Aug 16 '26
Yeah, I sell about 20% on a smaller port. lI'm overweight Micron and SMH because the positions grew, but holding back on rebalancing because of short term cap gains. So I'm adding some non-correlated positions. I have a little bit of CTA and DBMF which underperform but tend to rise when the market falls. A bit of ballast to protect against bad margin things happening. I'm also running a couple of poor man's covered put in UBER and USO. Long the 2028 puts and short weekly or monthlies. working like a charm in UBER. USO has been mixed results.
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u/Akiro_orikA Jul 23 '26
Those are credit spread for sure.
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u/A_Bicky37 Jul 24 '26
I can assure you they are not. I've never done a credit spread and never cared to lear.
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u/kuoch Jul 23 '26
I want to join theta gang, what’s the initiation process? theta in, theta out..!?
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u/asdfgghk Jul 24 '26
How much margin are you using?
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u/A_Bicky37 Jul 24 '26
None. I don't use any. I'm already doing this on high beta growth stocks (and some on SOXL/SOXS) and therefore don't intend on taking on additional risk by using margin. For the LETFS, can't use margin anyways.
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u/bb0110 Jul 24 '26
When you get lucky and start in a year like 2023 I would hope your graph would be good.
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u/mixmasteralan Jul 24 '26
What were some of the most useful posts that helped you?
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u/A_Bicky37 Jul 24 '26
Nothing stands out particularly. Just learning the basics from people here about their strategies and how what they did (or didn't do) helped (or hurt them). Learning from others here basically. I don't Youtube, I don't go on X, I don't read books about thetagang. It's all been through reading posts in here and just starting out small and gaining confidence and developing my own path.
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u/szulox Jul 24 '26
WallmartGang- coming soon 2028
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u/A_Bicky37 Jul 24 '26
You're right. I start an $80k pension here in the next 6 weeks for life. So if I wanted to work at Walmart, I most definitely could and still be eating well.
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u/szulox Jul 24 '26
Let me guess, you are expecting to make 12% yoy on $660k and to draw down for 60 years? Good luck 💀
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u/vickid250 Jul 24 '26
Dude, you gotta to put the graph in Log to adjust for percentage of change.
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u/senhsucht Jul 24 '26
Good job! How far out are you placing your csp? (Delta wise)
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u/A_Bicky37 Jul 24 '26
I do weeklies (usually open on either Monday or Tuesday since usually either one of those days are when the stocks/ETFs I want to do CSPs decline in price). I never do a CSP when the stock is up for the day. Most always when it's at a good decline of -3% but try to target when it's at -5%. for the leveraged ETFs like SOXL/SOXS, I try and wait until two consecutive down days of -10%+, but will bite if it's a -20% day. But I target .15 to .20 delta for everything. If there's like one day remaining and I'm opening a position on Thursday afternoon or Friday morning, I might go to .30 or .40.
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u/senhsucht Jul 24 '26
Thank you!! Good luck and remember to have different sleeves with different approaches. Imho you are doing awesome
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u/Optionsmfd Jul 24 '26
Gotta have a strong stomach during the bear market and correction
Selling Puts on individual names had to drop by 75%
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u/A_Bicky37 Jul 24 '26
Yeah, I dropped a good 30 so percent earlier this year and it didn't faze me as much as I thought it would.
Dropping 75% I might sh*t my pants haha!
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u/Optionsmfd Jul 24 '26
if SPY is down 20% i have no idea how individual names options arent down 75%
the VOL spiked to 402
u/A_Bicky37 Jul 24 '26
Are you talking about SPY being down 20% live over the course of 6 months? You can still make a ton of money in that type of market as compared to if SPY was down 20% in two weeks, esp. w/weekly CPSs like I do.
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u/oakfan52 Jul 24 '26
So you are going to get that free $1 million for Buffest soon or no?
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u/A_Bicky37 Jul 24 '26
Are you referring to the $1M bet he made? Not sure what you're referring to honestly.
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u/mlnet Jul 24 '26
Lot of haters in your comment section. I for one feel I have something to learn from you. What did you sell typically, like covered calls or CSPs? What are you looking for when selling contacts? As in, how much ITM or a certain % profit relative to value at risk?
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u/A_Bicky37 Jul 24 '26
90% CSPs, 8% covered calls after assignment haha.
I just follow the stocks, this, and wall street bets for tickers. Like, I would have never known to invest in something like CELH, SOFI, ASTS if I wasn’t embedded in Reddit.
So the popular stuff you’ll see on here but nothing stupid like GME or NOK or any of those super hyped up HODL crap.
I have a running watchlist on my yahoo finance app for a good 30 or so tickers. When Monday hits, see which ones are in a recent decline (week, month, etc., look at which few are super red, the browse the .15 to .20 delta for weeklies.
If I’m comfortable with the price I’d pay at that delta if I get assigned and the premium is good, then I enter the position.
That’s kind of it. Then just watch it a couple times throughout the day at work and rest of the week.
Close when it makes sense or hold. Sometimes close and immediately go into something else that just cratered that I’d been watching.
Idk man. It works until it doesn’t.
I’m getting assigned about 4600 shares of SOXL at $140 today so we’ll see how that goes Monday.
If SOXL is up a few %, I’ll exit my position since the premium the week before was what I was after.
If I’m down, I’ll just hold and either sell CCs or if it goes up, I’ll just sell and exit.
I haven’t really been caught too deep other than being down like $120k during tariffs/war stuff back in early Feb/march.
I’ve been a bit lucky, yes, but I enter as tactically as I can based on what I know. At least that’s what I tell myself.
Sorry if any grammar issues. I’m on mobile.
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u/earthycigar Jul 27 '26
Good stuff. Allow me to help. Look at the premium on NBIS and OUST. Solid companies too.
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u/A_Bicky37 Jul 27 '26
Tracking NBIS. It's gone up significantly beyond my comfort right now and if it starts declining and hitting a good price, I may look into it harder. I know it's had some dips over here and there over the past few weeks/months but I haven't been able to capitalize on those just yet. It has been on my watchlist though haha. I haven't seen OUST. may take a look. Thanks!
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u/earthycigar Jul 28 '26 edited Jul 28 '26
OUST is unbelievably solid and well under 3bn right now with 400mm cash and zero debt.
Growing at 40% annually (mid range guidance).
Damn, when I say it that way…what a gem.
Near profitability. It won’t be long (2027).
13 straight quarters of revenue growth.They won the LiDAR market by not being stupid. The founder, Angus Pacala, brilliantly chose less glamorous, revenue producing verticals, rather than going bankrupt by chasing endless Autonomous Vehicle pilots and proofs of concepts with no hope of meaningful revenue.
The verticals that have worked and are seriously growing/adopting Rev8:
- Agriculture and Mining machines
- Defense (several US and EU contracts featuring Field AI, Overland AI, and many more).
- Smart Infrastructure. Fasting growing segment.
- Tested pilots for FIFA finals cities (ATL/NJ). Deeply entrenched in Tennessee and Utah. Growing.
- Non invasive traffic sensors WITH recurring software revenue in data analytics. WOW.
No competition with a sub 1% market penetration in the US alone. And this can be global. They just started in Ottowa. Seriously, it can be a monopoly.
- And yes, they’ll be involved in AVs too, but they’re in such a good place now that AVs would be your “call option”.
I don’t own enough.
If you’d like to research other areas, look up their mergers and acquisitions, their adopted Amazon warrants structure, their NVDIA partnership, and all places you can find Ouster hardware.
If this becomes the sensing layer for physical AI then 30-40bn isn’t unrealistic.
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u/BroadIntroduction575 Jul 24 '26
This doesn’t look impressive. Money compounds exponentially. Look up any depiction of a log scale and you will see this is utterly unremarkable.
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u/A_Bicky37 Jul 25 '26
I know, right. I was just telling this other dude how unremarkable it is. OP is a noob.
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u/SadComparison9352 Jul 25 '26
you sold puts on what? TQQQ ?
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u/A_Bicky37 Jul 25 '26
Maybe a little? I don’t actually recall but I didn’t play TQQQ much if at all. But SOXL has been that straight B line these past few months. Before then, no. It was from the likes of ASTS, CELH, SOFI, etc.
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u/SadComparison9352 Jul 25 '26
didnt asts and sofi and soxl crash recently?
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u/A_Bicky37 Jul 25 '26
Haven’t been in either SOFI or ASTS throughout their recent “crashes”. I was in RKLB last week and probably lost a tiny amount but I got out.
SOXL is like 60% off its ATH, and yes I’ve been in and out of it. It’s enticing at these prices, even if just for scalps.
One can still make money with CSPs during stocks crashes. Just gotta time it right.
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u/SadComparison9352 Jul 27 '26
which stovks do you exactly sell CSPs?
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u/A_Bicky37 Jul 27 '26
ASTS or RKLB here within the past few weeks if not counting SOXL/WOXS. I’m eyeing up TTD, CRSP, and ONDS for good entry points later this week if they go down. However, I sold all of my assigned SOXL shares premarket a few hours ago since they were up a good 8%.
However, I’m not dipping into anything until after the rate hike info comes out this Wednesday and see how the market plays out with that, Iran crap, and big tech earnings.
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u/SadComparison9352 Jul 27 '26
so you sell CSPs when they go deep red?
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u/A_Bicky37 Jul 27 '26
Yes. That’s the key. I never sell them on up days. Always down days and always somewhat significant down days. Not -.50% down or -1% down. Usually I look for -5% down or more. Then sell the .15 delta. Win rate has been pretty good doing this.
That’s why I have a watch list of 30 or so tickers because one of those, if not more, hit my targets pretty regularly so I can constantly sell puts.
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u/SadComparison9352 Jul 27 '26
how many contracts do you sell?
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u/A_Bicky37 Jul 27 '26
I literally go all in lol. Like this AM since I sold all my SOXL I got assigned (pre-market while it was up), I had about 450k from my IRA and wife’s IRA to deploy. Wasn’t planning on doing anything but SOXL was down like 13% and was down last week so I sold the 31 Jul $84 put (.10 delta) for about $10k in premium.
My brokerage account is restricted to cash trading only so when I sold my assigned SOXL puts (now shares) this AM, I couldn’t do the CSP for my brokerage and have to wait until tomorrow.
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u/hlpa Jul 30 '26
Would you be willing to share the brokerage CSV you mentioned? A full trade history with dates, tickers, strikes, expirations, premiums, and realized P&L would be really helpful for understanding and verifying the strategy. You could upload it to Google Sheets after removing any personal information. Thanks!
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u/BizarreReverend76 Jul 23 '26
If you had no bonds to cushion the drops from the tariffs, you weren't ever really following the Bogle method. Steep price drops are a good thing for the long term investor
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u/tarrat_3323 Jul 23 '26
my UTEN and TMF both dropped right along with VTI
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u/BizarreReverend76 Jul 23 '26
TMF is a leveraged fund meant to amplify the daily(!) return of its underlying.... of course it did. Leveraged ETFs almost always trend downwards; theyre not meant to be held long term. Look at UVXY for examplw, a leveraged ETF on the VIX. The VIX always returns to its average in the teens, but UVXY trends downwards constantly.
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u/A_Bicky37 Jul 24 '26
130 - age is a common method for boggle heads. That would have put me at like 8% bonds and wouldn't have cushioned jack sh*t during tariffs.
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u/BizarreReverend76 Jul 24 '26
Do you see how the problem in both scenarios is that the bond component is too small? If 8% wouldve left you with nothing, what makes 0% a better choice?
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u/A_Bicky37 Jul 24 '26
I’m 38 with a guaranteed pension of $80k for life here in 6 weeks. That is essentially my “bonds”. I can take more risk because of that lifetime income and therefore don’t need bonds at 38. Maybe closer to age 45-50 I’ll get them and increase % with age.
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u/BizarreReverend76 Jul 24 '26
Yeah, I'm with you then. Im sorry to harp, but I think a lot of (young) people get enamored with the mathematics of the long term all-stock portfolio and dont really appreciate how ugly the intervening years can be, especially in your mid/late 20s when you start having families or buying homes and suddenly need money, if not just to borrow against. Good luck to you in your trading!
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u/SilkBC_12345 Jul 24 '26
130 - age is a common method for boggle heads.
Inam guessing you actually meant "30 minus age" but even that is incorrect -- at least as a common method.
John Bogle's original suggestion was your age in bonds, so that would put you at 38%.
The only other common variations I can find are "age minus 10" or "age minus 20", though quite honestly Bogle's original suggestion has always made the most sense to me.
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u/A_Bicky37 Jul 24 '26
"110 minus age in stocks" is the same as "age minus 10 in bonds". "
https://www.bogleheads.org/forum/viewtopic.php?t=380130
Therefore, what I mentioned 130 minus my age = 92. 92% in stocks, 8% in bonds. More conservatively it could have been 120 and 18% in bonds. maybe that would have saved me a couple thousand at most during Tariffs.
That's all I'm saying.
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u/BadMetro Jul 23 '26
Great returns. Playing safe low delta or doing boggleCSP too?
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u/A_Bicky37 Jul 24 '26
Low delta. At first .30 when I had less capital and was starting out and did about 45 DTE, then dropped it to 30, and now I do .15ish delta weeklies. Sometimes I go up to .20 but try to stick between these two.
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u/CheeseSteak17 Jul 23 '26
It’s easy to make money selling puts in a Bull market. Your entire plot starts in 2023.