LEARN / THE VIDEO SERIES
Watch the series.
About twelve minutes.
Six short videos, from the idea behind a cash-secured put to reading the board and getting started. Start anywhere.
OVERVIEW · 3:22
What is a cash-secured put?
One real Amazon example: the strike, the premium, the cash you set aside, both ways the trade can end, and where the odds come from.
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What if you could get paid to wait for a lower price on a stock you'd be happy to own?
Take Amazon, which closed Friday, Oct 23, at $247.91, and say you'd be glad to own it at $232.50, a price called the strike. With a cash-secured put, you promise to buy 100 shares at $232.50 if the price is below that on Friday, Oct 30. It's like a buy order below today's price, except you're paid for it, and you can't cancel it for free. On Friday's board, that promise came with a payment called the premium: $3.50 a share, or $350 for one contract.
You set aside the $23,250 it would take to buy those shares. That's the "cash-secured" part: the money is ready, and it stays committed until Oct 30. The $350 premium is 1.5% of the $23,250 you set aside. The board calls that ROC, your return on collateral. It's for those seven days only, not a yearly rate.
On Oct 30, there are two endings. If Amazon is above $232.50, the promise simply ends. You keep the $350 premium, and your cash is free again. If it's below $232.50, you buy the 100 shares at $232.50. The $3.50 a share in premium lowers your real cost to $229, but that's all it does. If Amazon fell to $200, you'd be down $2,900.
Choose a strike further below today's price, and the odds of simply keeping the premium go up, but you receive less premium. Choose a strike closer to today's price, and you receive more premium, with worse odds. Every cash-secured put is that trade-off. You pick the strike, so you pick your odds. The decision is yours. So where do the odds come from? They start with what traders are paying for the option, a price that reflects what's publicly known about Amazon and what investors expect from it. Built into that price is how far the market thinks Amazon could move by Oct 30, called implied volatility. The board works it out with the Black-Scholes model, the standard math for pricing options, then uses the same model to calculate the chance that Amazon finishes above your strike on the expiration date. That's not a guess. It's a calculation of the odds the market is pricing in, and like any probability, it's not a guarantee.
NakedPut.AI researches that trade-off every trading day: which stocks, which strike prices, the premium you'd receive, and the odds. Next, a tour of the board.
NakedPut.AI is research, not investment advice. Options involve risk, and losses can exceed the premium you receive.
THE BOARD · 2:34
The board in ninety seconds
How candidates are grouped by expiration date, how every row is sized, and what ROC and P(OTM) tell you.
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This is the board. Every trading day, it lists cash-secured put candidates, rebuilt every five minutes while the market is open.
The candidates are grouped by expiration date: one, two or four weeks out, with up to 25 for each date.
Every board is dated. This one is from Friday's close, Oct 23. Prices move, so check the time, and confirm the live quote with your broker before you trade.
Let's take a look at Amazon (AMZN). It closed at $247.91. At the board's starting setting, its strike for Oct 30 is $232.50.
That setting is this slider, the odds floor: the lowest chance you'll accept that the stock finishes above the strike. It starts at 70%, and each row shows the strike that meets it. Move the slider, and every strike on the board changes. Episode 2 shows how.
The board sizes every row to about $500,000, so different stocks compare evenly. For Amazon, the row shows that if you sell 22 of the $232.50 puts expiring Oct 30, you'd receive $7,700 in premium. In exchange, you'd be obligated to pay $511,500 for 2,200 shares if you're required to buy them.
For one contract, 100 shares, that's $350 in premium received and $23,250 set aside.
ROC, return on collateral, is the premium divided by the cash set aside: 1.5%, for these seven days, not a yearly rate.
P(OTM) is the chance Amazon finishes above the strike price on the expiration date, also known as Out of The Money. Calculated with the Black-Scholes model, it's 72.6%. That's a 72.6% chance you won't have to buy the shares, and a 27.4% chance you will, at $232.50 a share, even if the price is far lower.
Next: choosing how cautious you want to be.
NakedPut.AI is research, not investment advice. Options involve risk, and losses can exceed the premium you receive.
CHOOSING YOUR ODDS · 1:49
How cautious do you want to be?
The P(OTM) floor: raise it for better odds and less premium, lower it for more premium and worse odds.
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At the top of the board is the P(OTM) floor. It sets the lowest odds you'll accept that a put finishes above its strike. The board starts at 70%.
At 70%, the board's Amazon strike for Oct 30 is $232.50. One contract brings $350 in premium, an ROC of 1.5%, with odds of 72.6%.
Raise the floor to 80%, and the board looks lower for every stock.
Amazon moves down to the $225 strike: $200 in premium for one contract, an ROC of 0.9%, with odds of 82.1%. Better odds, less premium.
Lower it to 60%, and the board looks closer to today's price.
Amazon moves up to $240: $595 in premium for one contract, an ROC of 2.5%, with odds of 61.0%. More premium, with worse odds.
The floor is how cautious you want to be. The board does the math at every setting, and the decision is yours.
Six floors, 55, 60, 65, 70, 75 and 80%, are tracked every morning, so you can see how each one has done. Every other setting is for exploring.
Next: one stock, every strike.
NakedPut.AI is research, not investment advice. Options involve risk, and losses can exceed the premium you receive.
STRIKE BY STRIKE · 1:36
One stock, every strike
Click a ticker to see every strike that qualifies, and how premium and odds trade off across strikes and dates.
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On the board, each stock shows one strike: the one that fits your floor.
Click the ticker to see every strike that qualifies.
This is Amazon's strike list, from the same Friday board. Every row is a real option with its own quote. For Oct 30, eight strikes qualify.
At the top, $242.50 brings $685 in premium for one contract, with odds of 57.0%. The board's pick, $232.50, brings $350, with odds of 72.6%. At the bottom, $225 brings $200, with odds of 82.1%.
Each step down trades some premium for better odds. From top to bottom, ROC falls from 2.8% to 0.9%.
A later date brings more premium for the same strike. On Nov 20, $232.50 brings $565, with odds of 66.9%, because four weeks gives the price more time to move.
Every strike and every date, side by side, with the math done for each one. The decision is yours.
Next: is an option rich or cheap?
NakedPut.AI is research, not investment advice. Options involve risk, and losses can exceed the premium you receive.
RELATIVE VALUE · 1:23
Rich or cheap?
The 0 to 100 relative value score: whether a stock’s options are priced richer or cheaper than usual, and what that does not tell you.
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The last column on the board is the relative value score, from 0 to 100. It asks one question: are this stock's options priced richer or cheaper than usual?
It compares implied volatility, the movement that option prices expect, with how much the stock has actually moved over the last 20 trading days, and with the stock's own history.
Amazon scores 93, at the rich end. Its options were priced well above Amazon's usual level, so buyers were paying more than usual for that protection.
Citigroup scores 25: cheap. Its options were priced below their usual level, so a seller received less premium than usual for the same kind of risk.
Green cells are 70 and up: rich. Red cells are under 30: cheap. Everything in between is fair.
A rich score isn't a signal to sell, and a high price can mean the market expects a big move. It's one more input next to the odds and the premium. The decision is yours.
Next: getting started.
NakedPut.AI is research, not investment advice. Options involve risk, and losses can exceed the premium you receive.
GETTING STARTED · 1:19
Getting started
Subscribing, signing in, the daily research report, and what you manage on your Account page.
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NakedPut.AI is one subscription: $150 a month, billed monthly through Stripe. Cancel any time, and your access runs to the end of the month you've paid for.
Choose Subscribe, create your account, confirm your email, and pay on Stripe's secure checkout page. If you have a promotion code, you enter it there.
Then sign in at app.nakedput.ai. The board is there every trading day, rebuilt every five minutes, with History, Settlements and the Scorecard alongside it.
Each trading morning, you also get the research report by email. Settled results are in the portal, under Settlements and the Scorecard. You can turn the email off on your Account page, and to change your email address, contact support.
Your Account page is also where you change your password, add an authenticator app for sign-in, and manage billing or cancel.
That's NakedPut.AI: we do the math every trading day. Which stock, which strike and how much, the decision is yours.
NakedPut.AI is research, not investment advice. Options involve risk, and losses can exceed the premium you receive.
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