Cash-Secured Put Calculator

The arithmetic

The default is one $95 put sold for $2.20 with $9,500 of cash set aside to honour it.

• Max profit = the premium, $220, kept in full anywhere at or above $95.
• Breakeven = strike − premium = $92.80.
• Effective cost if assigned = also $92.80 per share — a 7.2% discount to the $100 the stock trades at today.
• Max loss = $9,280, if the stock goes to zero and you are assigned the shares.

"Getting paid to wait" is true and incomplete

The pitch is that you either keep the premium or buy a stock you wanted anyway at a discount. Both halves are real. What the pitch leaves out is that assignment is not random — you get assigned precisely when the stock has fallen, which is precisely when the reason you wanted it may no longer hold. The discount is computed against today's price, not against whatever the price is on the day the shares land in your account.

The honest framing: this is a bullish-to-neutral position with a capped gain and a very large maximum loss, sold in exchange for a modest, reliable premium. It works well for people who genuinely want the shares at that price. It works badly for people selling puts on tickers they would never buy outright.

Return on cash, computed properly

$220 on $9,500 of secured cash over 30 days is 2.3% for the period. Two things ruin that number if you annualise it carelessly: the cash is tied up for the whole period whether or not the trade is good, and one assignment in a falling market can erase many months of premium. Compare the period return against a risk-free rate over the same window before deciding the trade is generous.

Cash-secured versus naked

The payoff chart is identical either way — the difference is entirely in whether the cash to buy the shares actually exists in your account. Selling the same put on margin without that cash does not change the maximum loss by a cent; it just means a decline forces a margin call instead of a purchase you had already funded. The word "cash-secured" describes your balance sheet, not the option.

Where the 100x multiplier comes from

Product specification, not convention: OCC defines a standard equity option as covering 100 shares, premium quoted in points where one point is $100^[1] — so a $1.85 premium costs $185, and every payoff here applies that multiplier to the leg structure.

One exception is worth knowing about: adjusted contracts, covered on the options profit calculator.

Calculating it is the easy half

Cash-secured put maths is two subtractions. The payoff is arithmetic — anyone can run it. What it cannot show is whether you believed the trade when you put it on, or are describing a winner picked out of a month of noise.

That is the gap kappi closes: the position committed before the fact, sealed and timestamped on a log nobody can edit afterwards. A screenshot of this chart proves you can use a calculator; a sealed commit proves you took the trade. $15/month, no free tier.