TRADER DOSSIER — TJ "The Wheel Deal"

Single source of truth. Supersedes the old TJWHEELDEAL_SOP.md and TJWHEELDEAL_RESEARCH.md, which have been merged into this file. Last updated: 2026-08-16

⚡ THE PLAYBOOK — run the strategy in 7 steps

Everything below is expanded, sourced and quoted in Part I. This is the executable version.

The whole thing in one line

Sell puts on stocks you'd be glad to own → get assigned → sell calls above your adjusted cost basis → roll forever, never deliver the shares → use the premium to buy more shares.

STEP 1 — Pick the stock (3 gates, all must pass)

STEP 2 — Size it (never all at once)

🚨 Hard ceiling: daily theta ≤ 0.75% of account net liq. Above that you are oversized and volatility will eventually take you out.

STEP 3 — Sell the put

MANAGESTEP 4 — Manage it

STEP 5 — If it goes against you

Roll cost floor: net credit ≥ $0. Never pay a debit — unless you can name the capital appreciation it buys (see Step 7).

STEP 6 — If assigned, sell the covered call

DEFENDSTEP 7 — Defend the shares

The shares are not for sale. You sell calls to collect rent, not to exit.

Justify every roll before you place it: what capital appreciation does this buy, and does it exceed the cost?

🔁 Scenario quick-reference

PART I — STRATEGY SOP (what he says he does)

Not financial advice. This documents what one public trader says he does. He is compensated via a tastytrade referral link and a paid community, and he posts wins more visibly than losses. Verify everything before risking capital.

0. THE PHILOSOPHY — in his own taglines

Source: N1kmiAHfupc 🟢

"Sell puts, sell calls, collect premium, roll when it makes dollars and cents. That's the tagline for the channel."

"It's not about owning stock. It's about knowing how to make money off that stock.… It's not about an allegiance to a certain company or a certain stock. It's about can you make money with that ticker, and how can you mirror the deltas? Because when you own a share, it's one delta."

That last clause is the mental model underneath everything: shares are just delta-1, and options let you synthesize, hedge, or rent that delta.

ENTER0z. 🔵 THE ENTRY GATE — the 50% drawdown test

Source: UCU7vpxHB6Y 🟢. Apply this before the investment/cash-grab split.

"Oftentimes we're prisoners of the price movement. I had a mentor tell me: before you get into a position, ask yourself — are you going to like it if it's a 50% drawdown? How do you feel about it if you buy it right here and it crashes 50%? Are you still going to be excited about it, to really scoop up more? If the answer is no, then maybe you don't need to be trying to get into it, period — because you only like it if it goes up."

This is the honest-categorization test made concrete, and it's what the 25/25/50 sizing (§2) is built to survive. If you wouldn't gladly deploy tranche 3 at −50%, the position doesn't belong in the "investment" bucket.

He also weighs market sentiment at entry:

"If the market hates a stock, they will continue to hate a stock no matter what… market sentiment is a real thing — it's one of the [things] I evaluate whenever I get in."

0y. ⚫ "THE RICH MAN'S COVERED CALL" — his signature structure

Source: KDC0WNX0RUY 🟢. Another term he coined himself. This explains the naked-calls-on-top-of-short-puts structure seen all over his live positions.

The standard "poor man's covered call" (PMCC): buy a LEAP, then sell short calls against it. You pay premium to open.

His inversion — the rich man's covered call: sell the LEAP.

"Whenever you buy a LEAP and then start selling calls on top of that LEAP, that is called the poor man's covered call. I am calling this the RICH MAN'S covered call. This is whenever you SELL the LEAP at a strike price and you're like, 'Dude, give me those shares, Mr. Market. Please give me those shares because I want to own them at that price.'"

Why the naked calls sit on top

"Why the naked calls on top of the puts? Because those naked calls are essentially a hedge to the downside. In my mind it's almost like buying puts, except I want to COLLECT premium. I don't ever want to pay premium, because I am a premium collector."

Why he claims it beats the PMCC

"The rich man's covered call, if managed correctly, is superior to the poor man's covered call, because you're collecting theta the whole way through and you're collecting premiums. You're a NET PREMIUM SELLER, versus having to pay premium by initiating the position by buying the LEAP. I want to SELL the LEAP."

The cost-basis math he walks through

"Bring in a million in premiums, so now the adjusted cost basis is $9 million. Then add the $620,000 already collected for entering the contracts in the first place — now you're at like $8.4 million adjusted cost basis [8.380]."

→ Every premium dollar collected lowers the effective purchase price of the shares he intends to own. The structure is a financed accumulation vehicle, not a directional trade.

PORTFOLIO0x. 🚨 PORTFOLIO MARGIN — the caveat that reframes every return figure

Source: jq7RoT8qW2I 🟢. Read this before believing any % in this dossier.

"On tastytrade, because we have portfolio margin, it's a lot more capital efficient to place the same trade, collect the same premium, but you're only tying up $128,000 versus $1.6 [million] right off the bat. That's considered a gimme."

That is roughly a 12× reduction in capital tied up for an identical position.

Implications:

• His headline returns (§3h: "73% in 121 days ≈ 421% annualized") are computed on margin-reduced collateral, not on cash-secured collateral. A retail cash account running the identical trades would show a small fraction of that ROI.
• He is not running a cash-secured book. He says elsewhere "I sell cash-secured puts on margin." The word "cash-secured" in his content is loose.
• Portfolio margin is what makes the 0.75% theta cap (§0b) and the "rule of 15%" stress test (§0b) load-bearing — with 12× leverage, a 15% gap is an account event.

He uses "gimmes and gotchas" as his standard framing when walking through a structure: the capital efficiency is the gimme; the assignment/margin exposure is the gotcha.

0w. 🔵 SIMPLICITY DOCTRINE — only four things

Source: m9SPRYpsFFs 🟢

"There's only four things you can do with options: buy calls, buy puts, sell calls, sell puts. Everything else is a combination of all of that. …That's why I never use things like verticals, diagonals, calendars and all this other crazy — because I feel like you lose 90% of the audience when you talk like that."

He deliberately avoids the exotic-name vocabulary (jade lizards, flying saucers, etc.) even when he's effectively trading those structures.

The 100-share commitment gate

Source: ugxgiyUImv4 🟢

"It's got to be 100 shares worth because of my strategy… it's an oversized bet, it's not just doing the one-share rule. You've got to commit to 100. So if you're talking about a $100 stock, that's a $10,000 investment right off the jump — that's nothing to sneeze at. So I'm like, let me take a serious look at whether or not I even think they have a moat."

Options force a 100-share minimum commitment, which is why the moat/quality question has to be answered before the trade — you can't dip a toe.

0a. The three spokes of the wheel — and the mistake most people make

Source: t8dWwkoGRds 🟢

"That's the three spokes of the wheel: the cash-secured put premium, the covered call premium, and the capital appreciation."

The third spoke is the one he insists people miss:

"If you're averse to owning shares — you consider it a bad thing — then in reality you're not a Wheeler, you're a cash-secured put seller. And that's cool, but your upside is only the premium you receive. You did not participate in any capital appreciation."

"The biggest alpha is always going to be in owning the shares and writing those up… I always like to have exposure to the upside because ultimately the market trends up. There's 150 years of historical data that supports that." (0x693LMgoB8)

PORTFOLIO0b. ⚫ PORTFOLIO RISK — the 0.75% theta rule (his hardest-won lesson)

Source: 0x693LMgoB8 🟢 — the single most important risk rule in this dossier.

He tried sizing to 1% of net liq per day in theta and it blew up on him:

"I had this rule of 1%. We got a $10 million account, I want to collect $100,000 a day in premium and theta. Yep. That rule did not work. And they told me it wasn't going to work and I didn't believe them. Dr. Jim Schultz — he's done videos on this — he says the rule is 0.5% and that's on the high end. So we finally landed in the middle. I'm at 0.75. I don't want to exceed 0.75% because if you're exceeding 0.75% of your net liquidation value on your theta per day, you're supersized. You're oversized, and it's just a matter of time before the Vega is going to bite you in the ass."

Why it fails — the Greeks cascade

"[A drop] is going to accelerate the delta, and it's like a snowball… the bigger it gets going downhill it becomes unstoppable. And you got your vega, then this other tertiary Greek called vanna that's going to accelerate the vega, and things can spiral out of control very, very quickly."

DEFENDBuying power is the binding constraint

• Volatility up → buying power down. Inverse, and it bites exactly when you're already hurting. "There was one week where [VIX] spiked like 40–50%… that hurts your buying power."
• The "rule of 15%" — tastytrade stress-tests the portfolio at ±15%: "If Palantir goes a quick spike 15% up or down… they want to know what does that look like." Size so a 15% gap doesn't margin-call you.
• Real example of the exposure he carries: "53 days to expiration on $22 million in notional on MSTR — an agreement to buy 200,000 shares at $110."

0c. 🟡 TAIL RISK — why he stops at 21 DTE

Source: 0x693LMgoB8, t8dWwkoGRds 🟢

"The first 50% of the money that you collect is a lot easier to capture than the second 50%, and that second 50% is called your tail risk. So tastytrade promotes: sell options 30 to 45 days out, manage them 21 days to expiration, and you can likely capture that first 50% and you don't have to deal with the tail risk. Pretend like your expiration date is actually 21 days out."

⚠️ Tension to be aware of: in CASH SECURED PUTS 101 he states a 70–75% capture target (§3). Here he describes the tastytrade 50% framing. In 3CiMGl2Gvm0 he splits the difference:

"If I collect a thousand dollars of premium, ideally I'm okay giving back three or four hundred dollars and just profiting the 600–700s. You won't go broke making a profit in this business."

→ Practical read: target 60–75% capture, and treat 21 DTE as the hard stop.

SELECT0. The one decision that drives everything: categorize the ticker

Before any trade, every ticker goes in one of two buckets, honestly:

"If you are willing to be honest with yourself and properly categorize each ticker you are set up… to manufacture the win. But if you are lying to yourself… the minute that it dips you're going to freak out."

Rule: have BOTH an entry strategy and an exit strategy on day one.

"This isn't 'I'm going to play it as it goes based on the price action.' You already need to have your investment thesis intact when you land on this stock."

ENTER1. Cash-secured put — entry mechanics

ENTERTechnical entry filters (all from the CSP 101 video)

• RSI 30–35 — wants it "a bit oversold"
• Sell the put below the 200-day moving average
• If price is already under the 200-day → treat as a falling knife; drop down and reference the 50-day instead
• Bollinger Band: enter at the lower end
• Mechanics as explained on his channel (Pi8qBv3Oe0M): the middle line is the 20-day moving average, and the bands sit two standard deviations away. "Price generally 95% of the time stays within the two standard deviation confines… when the Bollinger Bands get tight, usually that indicates price is about to make a move."
• Avoid binary events (earnings) unless you are comfortable being assigned

PORTFOLIO2. Position sizing — the "25/25/50" rule

Source: t8dWwkoGRds 🟢 — stated precisely here, in three tranches:

"I have a 25-25-50 rule. It's 25% of the total capital that I would like to allocate to the position. If it dips, then we deploy the other 25%. And then if it really dips, then I deploy the rest — the 50% that's left."

Note the back-loading: half the capital is reserved for the deepest level. He enters small and buys heaviest into weakness — the opposite of averaging in evenly.

Never deploy the full allocation at once. Keep dry powder to average down.

1. Open with 25% of the intended allocation
2. If it drops, deploy the second 25% bullet to lower average cost — and start selling covered calls
3. Price each new put roughly 10% below the crashed price
4. Go heavier at the deepest rung

Worked example he gave: sell the CSP at $10 (25% of allocation) → stock tanks to $8 → sell more puts at $7 with the next 25% → tanks further → "go heavy" at $5.

This is why his live positions look like ladders — staggered strikes and expiries on one underlying (e.g. his MSTR call ladder: 125C Oct 16 / 165C Nov 20 / 165C Dec 18 / 225C Jan 15, 250 contracts per rung).

DEFEND2b. 🔴 THE ROLL TRIGGERS — consolidated

Three distinct triggers, in priority order. Sources: 0x693LMgoB8, IsnBJjjE8DY, WxuMkA6neGI 🟢

Trigger 1 — 21 DTE (the routine one)

"21 days to expiration is typically when I like to manage the options, provided that one of the strikes isn't being challenged or compromised."

Trigger 2 — break-even breached (the defensive one)

"If the strike is breached, then I look at my break-even. Let's say my strike is 20 and I got paid $2 in premium, so my break-even's 22. … Whenever my break-even is breached, that's typically when I roll."

"I look at it a lot like swimming. The more you go underwater, the harder it's going to be to come up for air. You could drown if you get too far underwater."

DEFENDTrigger 3 — the 10% extrinsic rule (assignment risk)

"My rule of thumb is 10%. If less than 10% of the option price is extrinsic value, then I'm seriously considering rolling — because I have to look at the couple of dollars I'm going to sacrifice: is that worth the stress I'm about to eliminate? I'm always looking for the path of least resistance. I want to manage less so that I can make more."

Extrinsic value is what's left of the premium above intrinsic value. As it approaches zero the counterparty has no reason not to exercise → assignment risk.

DEFENDRoll early, while gamma is still low

"Another reason why I like to roll my options when I still have quite a bit of time left on the clock, so that these moves aren't so drastic in the pricing of my option." (3CiMGl2Gvm0) — gamma rises sharply near expiry, so a late roll costs far more.

DEFEND2f. 🔴 "I'M GOING TO ROLL RIGHT UNTIL I'M RIGHT"

Source: hF_-zcBo_Aw 🟢 — the single most concise statement of his whole defense.

"I'll consider rolling those covered calls on the 20s expiring January 2026, which is the bulk of the position — 1,000 contracts representing 100,000 shares. I'm going to roll right until I'm right, and that is the long position right there. Going to roll these till 2030, 2035 if necessary."

There is effectively no scenario in which he delivers the core shares. The covered call is a rent contract he intends to refinance indefinitely. This is why §3b (roll on break-even) and §3l (never pay a debit) matter so much — the roll has to stay free if you plan to do it forever.

2g. 🟡 His comparison framework — how he ranks candidate trades

Source: E0SjbB1y9M0 ("PLTR vs HOOD vs NVDA — which strangle makes more dollars & sense?") 🟢. He lines up candidates on a fixed set of columns:

# contracts · strikes · extrinsic value · capital requirements · notional · delta on BOTH sides

Worked PLTR row (single expiry):

Note the deliberate imbalance again (§2c seesaw): 2× the contracts on the call side, but the extrinsic value on each side is nearly equal — that balance is what he's actually solving for.

MANAGE2h. 🟡 Profit zones and probability

Source: 8anZYY_Zf9w 🟢. He frames a strangle as a range the stock must stay inside, with an explicit probability:

"MSTR just needs to trade between 225 and 400. If I roll in about a week — from the 15-day to the 50-day — those 800 contracts are going to pick up easily another $200,000–400,000 in premiums. As long as MSTR trades between 225 and 400 from now till the end of the year, that gets us there. And as far as percentage of happening, I give that more like a 75%."

"The reason I like to trade more is not just because it's less capital intensive, but because you have a lot more flexibility."

2d. 🔴 "The goalpost" — the strangle width tradeoff

Source: N1kmiAHfupc 🟢. He calls the short put + short call pair his goalpost.

"The wider the goalpost, the less the adjustments, the less the credits."

The whole game is choosing where on that curve you want to live — and he keeps drifting wider as size grows, because at his size adjustments are the real cost.

What actually happens over a position's life

"I start off here with my goalpost. And then I get the first roll, second roll, third roll, fourth roll, fifth roll — and before you know it, it looks like that. And I'm like, dude, the ball just got to stay in the air, and I'm good. And my expiration date is now like 21 days to expiration. That's really my expiration date now. Why? Because I want to eliminate the tail risk. I want to eliminate the gamma — gamma is not your friend, it's the accelerator of the delta. When it's going your way it's great. When it's not going your way, it's not great at all."

→ A position isn't a trade, it's a campaign of serial rolls, and 21 DTE is treated as the real expiration every cycle.

DEFEND2e. 🔴 SCALE OUT WHILE ROLLING UP — the PayPal campaign

Source: rwXTj1mtNmQ 🟢. A live worked example of managing a large short-put campaign, and the clearest statement of his de-risking logic.

The fork: more premium, or less risk?

"At this point the theta is going to be accelerating like crazy. Then I'm going to look to roll the position out an additional year and move that strike price from 50 to either 47.50 or 45 — because at that point it's the angel and the devil: am I going to go after more premiums and keep the strike at 50, bring in another million dollars in premiums, or am I going to de-risk the position and go from 50 to 47.50 or 45, because we get a lot closer to where we're no longer bluffing — we want to take ownership."

"No longer bluffing" is the tell: rolling down in strike moves the position from cash-grab toward genuine intent to own.

DEFENDRolling UP means taking size OFF — every single time

"Are we going to roll the strike from 50 to 55? From 55 to 60? The answer is yes, but I would take some contracts off the table. Every time I rolled up, I'd probably take 500 contracts off the table. If I roll up again, I'll take another 500 contracts off. And then at that point I'd rock with 1,000 contracts at 60 and be happy with that. And then maybe PayPal would pull back a little, and then I could do it again and scale into it."

This is the counterweight to the 0.75% theta cap (§0b): as a position moves against him he shrinks it rather than doubling the short premium.

DEFEND2c. 🔴 THE SELF-FUNDING ROLL — puts pay for the call rolls

Source: 0x693LMgoB8 🟢 — his signature adjustment on a short strangle.

When the stock runs and the short call is threatened, he does not simply pay to roll it. He harvests the now-cheap short puts to finance it:

"I could increase the strike price from like 80 to 100 or 110, 120 on the puts, and those 5,000 contracts are going to fetch me a hell of a lot of premium that I can then use those credits to increase the strike price on the short call… I could pay for those debits with the credits from the short put."

The seesaw: he deliberately runs unequal weights —

"I only got 2,000 contracts [calls] versus 5,000 contracts [puts]. That's why the weight of the short puts is a lot more than the weight of the short calls. It's like a seesaw."

The put side is oversized precisely so it can fund the call side's defense.

DEFENDThe goal of a roll must be stated before you do it

Source: IxkVqiRib1w 🟢

"Whenever you roll, you first have to formulate a goal. What's the goal? The goal is I want to capture $8 more of capital appreciation [rolling $12 → $20 strike] on 50 contracts, 5,000 shares — that's $40,000 in capital appreciation. But the amount that I have to pay to do that, it has to make sense."

DEFENDRolling "out and up," aiming to align expirations

"I want to move the goal post out and up, because eventually I want to match these expiration dates.… I'll roll that strike out and up again — from 220 to 240 or 250 — so that I can stay out of harm's way."

DEFEND"Kick the can" — a worked roll

Source: IsnBJjjE8DY 🟢

"I don't want to deal with this anymore, so I want to kick this can down the road another month. I went from a 125 strike to a 130 strike and collected an additional $26,000 in credit. So I collected 26, I collected 14, and the initial 23 — about $65,000 in premium. My thing is I don't have to do anything because there's a lot of time on the clock."

MANAGE3. Exit rules

He credits the "let it expire instead of buying back for pennies" change with substantially improving his ROI (adopted ~1 yr before the video).

PPD — "Premium Per Day" is his optimization metric: maximize premium collected per day of capital-at-risk. But he will not chase PPD if it moves him "from a real good situation to a not so good situation."

ENTER3b. Covered call — entry mechanics

(Source: "Now let's talk COVERED CALLS!" — he calls it "flipping the script" on the put rules.)

DEFENDThe rolling trigger — where he breaks from consensus

"The ideal time to roll a covered call… it is when your break-even has been breached. [Another creator] says the ideal time to roll is when your strike has been breached — I beg to differ. … If you're still below your break-even there's no reason to roll, because you're still going to be at a net positive on that position if you're okay with assignment."

Rule: roll on break-even breach, not strike breach.

DEFEND4. When to take assignment (vs roll)

Rolling is optional, not the default reflex.

"So rolling out becomes totally optional vs a go-to move."

Take assignment when the adjusted cost basis is still net positive and the covered call he can write against the shares pays more than the roll would.

His RIOT example: break-even ~$820 after premium; stock at ~$810 → still net positive adjusted → take the shares, then sell $850 covered calls. If assigned 1,000 contracts at 850 and called away at 950 → "we just made a shitload of money — an extra 100 grand."

"You have to be very comfortable with owning shares if you want to make bigger money. If you just want to cash grab that's fine, but you're always going to be limited."

MANAGE3d. 🟡 ROI DISCIPLINE — how he decides to take profit early

Source: M3aInHdFalw 🟢. He computes return on collateral, not return on premium.

Worked META trade:

The decision rule:

"Holding out for 20% in a month is not worth it. I think we take ours — just look at the collateral. We always calculate the ROI."

→ Once most of the premium is captured quickly, free the collateral; the residual isn't worth the capital lockup or the tail risk.

Weekly benchmark he uses when screening: "that would be 1% a week, 1.2% a week" — roughly 1%+ per week on collateral is the bar for a new trade.

3k. ⚫ THE "BACK STOP TRADE" — his barbell, and his own coined term

Source: tfU3oFITz6Y 🟢. This is the structure that explains his weird long-dated positions (e.g. the PLTR $50 strike at 500 DTE seen on X in Feb 2026).

"Back Stop Trade is terminology that's only for this channel — it's not universal language. I call it the Back Stop Trade because I played baseball growing up. You essentially sold the cash-secured put in the distance, and it's an oversized trade, and you're doing it at a strike price where you don't even have to look at it because you want the shares — and they typically paid you about 20, 30, 40% annualized for doing so. And then you'd grab all of that premium and do short-dated stuff with that premium — so you're compounding your ROI that way."

The barbell:

The back stop is deliberately set where he'd be happy to be assigned, so it needs no babysitting — which is exactly why he can say "I don't even have to look at it for a while."

DEFEND3l. 🟢 Covered call timing & the net-zero-credit roll floor

Source: tfU3oFITz6Y 🟢

"I'm going to wait for like a really good 5%, 10% day [to] sell some conservative covered calls, maybe out for two weeks — I'm not too far out in time, because if [PLTR] does keep going up another 5, 10, 20% after that, I want to have that flexibility to be able to roll it once, twice, three times if I have to, to make sure that I stay ahead of those shares."

Then the hard rule on roll cost:

"If I have to sacrifice premium for it — I'm not going to pay premium, but if I have to roll for a net credit of zero, then I'm willing to roll up in strike as high up as I can and kick it down the road a couple months."

Note this contradicts the "far-dated" instinct: he goes short-dated on calls precisely so he can keep rolling up and stay ahead of a runaway stock.

3m. 🔴 Put credit spreads — the collateral trap, and spread width

Source: yH8Hy2Xm-sA, pKbYvHNAIU4 🟢

DEFENDThe trap: people size spreads by premium, not by assignment capital

Worked TSLA example — short 210 / long 205, 5 contracts:

"Our 205 protects us from essentially needing $21,000 in capital. Mind you this is five positions, so I have to make a mental note that says I've got to have essentially $100,000 ready to go for Tesla at any moment. And I think that's where people really drop the ball with put credit spreads — they get lost in the sauce just by looking at 'hey, I can make a lot of premium.'"

The margin death-spiral he's personally hit

"I had sold put spreads on ENPH — the first strike was 110 and then 105 — and I couldn't roll it because I lost so much that I didn't have the margin to continue."

→ A spread that moves against you can strand you: no margin left to roll. This is the failure mode a plain CSP doesn't have.

Spread width — he prefers WIDE

"The wider the spread — you want to give those deltas enough room to move.… When you have a five-wide spread, these deltas are just offsetting each other, you're almost forced to go the direction of the contract, and you're going to be in there forever. Even with a 15–20 wide you can still just roll the whole vertical — you don't have to break it down."

⚠️ Note this conflicts with the ⅓-width guest rule in §3i, which assumed $5-wide. TJ's own preference is 15–20 wide.

MANAGE3f. 🟡 PPD — "Premium Per Day", the early-close decision rule

Source: sRGZ3yaWVaU 🟢 — this is the actual math behind closing early.

"When you close out trades early it comes down to PPD — premium per day. Let's say I got $100 in premium for a cash-secured put and it's a 30-day trade, but in 10 days I'm already at $60 profit — I'm at 60%. Might be time to close it out, because I could find another trade that will yield me more premium per day for the remaining 20 days of that contract. A good rule of thumb that I use is about 75% — once I'm at 75% profit I usually [close]."

The arithmetic:

The question is never "am I up?" — it's "is the remaining premium per day still the best use of this collateral?"

DEFEND3g. 🟢 Delta = probability of assignment, and reading skew

Source: oBKAA2SyotY, 0x693LMgoB8 🟢

"The real easy way to look at delta is what is your percentage of assignment.… You can look at 15 [delta] as the percentage that it would actually expire in the money."

So a 15-delta short option ≈ 15% chance of assignment; 30-delta ≈ 30%. This is why his delta choices map directly onto his intent:

Reading skew in seconds

"$400 south is where our strike price is, and that's a two delta. We went $400 north… that's a 17 delta. We're talking equidistant.… That is just a real quick way to know which way the tide is leaning. This has positive call skew."

Method: price the call and put equidistant from spot. Whichever side carries the higher delta is where the market expects movement — and where you're being paid more to take risk.

3h. ⚫ Disclosed returns — the scale he claims

Source: oBKAA2SyotY 🟢, computed live on stream:

"We're utilizing $715,000 in cash to generate $521,000 in premiums over the course of 121 days." → 73% in 121 days ≈ 421% annualized. "This is a game of math, guys."

⚠️ Treat as a self-reported, un-audited figure on a favorable window. It also implies leverage/margin, not a cash-secured book.

3i. 🔴 Put credit spreads — the ⅓-width premium rule

Source: sYmKem77Z3A — ⚠️ likely a GUEST speaking, see §4b. The clip reads "I know you like to do the same… you use spreads a little differently so you don't follow that particular rule" — i.e. TJ does NOT follow this. Recorded because it's a clean rule and useful context, not because it's his.

"On big companies, $5-wide [spreads]… if it's a $5-wide spread then that'd roughly be like 1.6 or 1.7 you would want to collect in premium… take one third of that distance and that should be how much you're collecting. Anywhere from 25 to 33% of the width of your strikes."

Rationale: "if that spread goes against you, you want to have collected a sufficient enough amount of premium to help you start rolling down or closing out for a smaller loss. If you just collected pennies because you never thought it would breach your strike — and it does — then it breached your strike for no good reason."

DEFEND3j. 🟢 Rights vs. obligations — the assignment mindset

Source: sRGZ3yaWVaU 🟢

"Whenever you're the one paying the premium and you're the buyer, you have the RIGHT. The seller has the OBLIGATION.… Some people get all freaked out, 'oh my God, I was assigned' — whoa, no, you're kind of obligated to do so."

Assignment is the contract working as designed, not a failure state. He enters every short put "right and ready to take assignment — that's just the way that I trade the wheel."

An honest caveat he volunteers:

"At the end of the day you're going to make a lot more money just holding the stock long term, and it's less stressful as well."

ENTER3e. 🟢 Covered call strike vs. adjusted cost basis — the hard floor

Source: WHwKUHMvfgA 🟢

"You sell the covered call with the strike price above your $89 cost basis… If you pick a strike price for the covered call below your cost basis, you could be forced to sell at a loss if you don't roll."

Adjusted cost basis = share price paid − all premium collected. Worked example:

• Sell 1× $90 put, collect $100 premium
• Stock tanks to $80, assigned → own 100 shares at $90
• Adjusted basis = $89/share
• Now sell the $100 call — safely above $89

"Keep track of your cost basis. You will collect a lot of options premiums, therefore you should keep track of all the premiums you collect and subtract them from your cost basis."

Never write a call below adjusted basis unless you're prepared to roll forever.

He also notes the wheel works on ETFs (e.g. SPY) if you don't want single-name risk.

3n. 🟡 The covered call's real cost — "not qualified for the reindeer games"

Source: MzT06agA6KE 🟢. His plainest statement of covered-call opportunity cost.

"[Above the strike] the party stops right there at eight bucks. We are not qualified to participate in any more of the reindeer games. Anything above eight bucks, we are not qualified to make any of that money. The good news is those premiums — the $49,800 and the $69,000 — they will help offset that."

The remedy is the roll, priced explicitly in capital-appreciation terms:

"What are my options? I can roll the covered calls out a month… go from $8 to maybe $9 and qualify for another dollar in capital appreciation — and on 60,000 shares that would be another $60,000. That would be a gimme."

The roll is valued as: (strike increase) × (shares) = capital appreciation unlocked — then compared against the debit required. Same logic as §2c.

3c. Covered call DEFENSE — "my shares aren't for sale"

Source: Are Your COVERED CALLS in Danger? WATCH THIS! (39:30, w9CimJxLD80) 🟢

The governing principle behind every covered-call decision:

"What I'm always thinking is my shares aren't actually for sale, first and foremost. I have to put them up for sale contractually if I want to collect premium — and I'm long these stocks. What that means is I don't have a plan to sell some of these stocks for the next three to five [years]."

So the covered call is a rent-collection device on shares he never intends to deliver. Every defensive move follows from that.

DEFENDHe will roll out a FULL YEAR rather than lose shares

Worked example he gives on a 5,000-share position:

"I essentially rolled it an entire year because I wanted to go from a $10 strike to a $12 strike, because I was going to be right about a double… If I had known I was going to get 100% return on those shares when I first bought them, I'd have signed up for it all day long — and it was going to take less than two years. You're doubling a portion of your portfolio in two years."

Read alongside §3b: he rolls when break-even is breached, and he will pay for that roll in time (up to a year) rather than in shares.

ENTERRolling an ITM covered call — how far out?

There is no fixed answer; it is situational:

"It really depends on what is going on with the underlying. You have to be familiar with your stock — is there a catalyst, is there a binary event…"

DEFEND4b. ⚠️ ATTRIBUTION WARNING — the "WHEELERS" videos are panels

Several channel videos titled "WHEELERS ..." (How WHEELERS Deal With PUTS, WHEELERS Talk All Things COVERED CALLS, etc.) are roundtables with guests. Rules spoken in those videos are frequently someone else's, not TJ's.

Example — in How WHEELERS Deal With PUTS! a guest states his own params: 30–40 DTE · 0.10–0.30 delta · 1.5–2% return on capital · avoids assignment entirely · sells CSPs on margin · rolls up-and-out on covered calls and down-and-out on cash-secured puts.

That is not TJ. But the same clip gives a real TJ datapoint by contrast:

Guest: "I know TJ you use higher, probably closer to three or four percent"

→ TJ targets roughly 3–4% return on capital per ~30-day cycle, versus the guest's 1.5–2%. Consistent with his higher 20–40 delta vs the guest's 10–30.

Other guest frameworks captured (useful, but NOT TJ's)

Guest A — How WHEELERS Deal With PUTS (Fu9NbYlIUwk):

"I like to use 30 to 40 days out, 0.1 to 0.3 delta, and ideally 1.5 to 2% return on capital. I like to use 30 as close as I can to 30 days because it makes it an easy calculation for the percent return — 1% on the month, I know that's 12% for the year." "I avoid assignment on either side at all costs… I'm just going to roll up and out on my covered calls and roll down and out on my cash-secured puts as soon as the extrinsic value is at 10 cents, 15 cents or less — that's when I'll start kicking the can down the road, maybe 14 days out."

Guest B — WHEELERS Talk All Things COVERED CALLS (7CFhDVSRQHQ):

"My rule for selling calls is at or above my ORIGINAL cost basis where I bought the shares — not my adjusted cost basis — and I need to get that 30% or greater [annualized] return as well. If I can check those boxes I'll sell the call and I'm happy with the outcome if it gets assigned. Even if the shares are break-even it's still a successful trade, because I guaranteed a 30% return — that was the rule going into selling the premium." "I try to sell as far out of the money as I can while still getting that 30% return, and if I have the opportunity to roll out and up for another 30% annualized credit, I'll do it. That's so much easier with the LEAPS — it's easier to get a 30% return on premium for a $250 stock when your investment is only $4,000."

⚠️ Guest B's "original, not adjusted, cost basis" rule directly contradicts TJ's §3e, which uses the adjusted basis as the floor. Guest B is stricter. Don't blend them.

When reading this SOP: rules tagged 🟢 are TJ speaking in his own videos. Anything in this section is a guest and is labelled as such.

4c. Additional rules from X (Jan–Feb 2026)

• Rolling trigger by DTE: "I'll roll when I'm 60 DTE to the back of the line and drop it to $200" (2026-02-02) — rolls out to a later expiry and down in strike once a position reaches ~60 DTE.
• Very long-dated parking: PLTR puts at $50 strike, 500 DTE — "I don't even have to look at it for a while." Used to neutralize a troubled position.
• Add, don't close: "Yes and then increase contracts to offset" when a position moves against him.
• "The big one as the lab rat" — tests adjustments on his largest position first.
• Buying power is the real risk governor: "As long as buying power is holding up… If buying power gets compromised, I'll have to trim or roll some short puts."
• Tolerance for being underwater: "It doesn't pain me that much to hold onto a loser for long periods of time. Not my first rodeo."
• Realized over paper: "Paper gains aren't very meaningful to me" — he logs realized wins from premium.

Position scale disclosed (Jan 2026)

• "What are my 250k shares and 5k leaps called?"
• "I'm trying to hold the 100k shares all the way to $500 with splits adjusted."
• AMZN ladder (Feb 2026) — a clean worked example of his structure: "agreements to buy Amazon at $220, $200, $180 & $160 while also having an agreement to sell Amazon at $285, 25 days from now"

PORTFOLIO5. Portfolio construction (from his X posts, 2026)

• "$100M North Star" — the stated portfolio goal
• Concentrated: roughly 8 "roster spots"; tickers compete for a slot
• "Share goals" per name rather than dollar targets — e.g. RIOT & CLSK at 150k share goals, PLTR at 35k shares, SOFI >100k shares
• Premiums are used to buy more shares ("using the premiums to stack shares"), not withdrawn
• No exits planned before 2032
• Metric shift he calls out explicitly:

"I used to be soooo enamored with avg cost of shares. Now I'm way more concerned with total share counts. In 2032, the price today won't matter."

• On taking profits:

"I'm a huge fan of See Profit, Take Profit. I use premiums to satisfy that itch." — i.e. premium income replaces selling shares.

• Only sell puts on names you'd own: "Only sell puts on companies you believe in."
• Watches BPR (buying power reduction) when choosing between similar names — dropped RIOT puts in one account because "the BPR was horrible and CLSK is a similar business and cheaper by share price."

EVIDENCE6. Vocabulary decoder

EVIDENCE7. The full curriculum on his channel (for deeper reading)

Watch at youtube.com/watch?v=<ID>.

7b. Covered-call defense — "my shares aren't for sale"

From Are Your COVERED CALLS in Danger? (w9CimJxLD80, TJ speaking):

"What I'm always thinking is my shares aren't actually for sale, first and foremost. I have to put them up for sale [to collect the premium]…"

This is the mental model behind the whole covered-call side: the call is a rental fee, not an intent to sell. Consequences:

• He will roll a covered call out as far as a full year to avoid losing shares. Real example: rolled an entire year to move a $10 strike → $12 strike on 5,000 shares because he expected the stock to double.

"If I'd known I was going to get a 100% return on those shares when I first bought them, I'd have signed up for it all day long… you're doubling a portion of your portfolio in two years."

• Pairs with §3b: roll on break-even breach, and roll far rather than let a core position get called away.

8. Video coverage status (as of this session)

EVIDENCE8b. Method note — how to pull more transcripts

YouTube's caption endpoint returns empty without a signed token, and DOMParser is blocked by Trusted Types. Working recipe (verified):

1. Navigate to youtube.com/watch?v=<ID>
2. Click #expand to open the description
3. Click the button whose aria-label matches "Show transcript"
4. Click the play button with a REAL mouse click (computer:left_click at the player's play control, ~(31, 646) at 1541×784). This is the critical step — video.play() from JS is autoplay-blocked, the video never starts, and the transcript panel hangs on a spinner forever. A synthetic play() will NOT work.
5. Wait ~8s → segments appear
6. Extract with a selector that handles both renders YouTube A/B tests: ytd-transcript-segment-renderer, transcript-segment-view-model and read inner text from span.ytAttributedStringHost, .segment-text (falling back to innerText.split('\n').slice(2) to drop the timestamp lines)

Notes:

• Auto-captions have no punctuation — sentence splitting fails. Chunk by fixed word windows (~130 words) and rank chunks by density of rule keywords (delta / DTE / % / roll / assign / strike / RSI / moving average / break-even).
• The JS tool truncates output at ~1,000 chars, so pull 1–2 chunks per call.
• Some older videos (3+ yrs) have no captions at all — the panel opens but stays empty. Don't burn calls retrying; mark and move on.

🔍 AUDIT — an independent read on this strategy

My assessment, not his. Read before copying anything above.

What's genuinely good about it

What concerns me

Things to consider before copying any of it

1. Cash vs margin changes everything. Run his exact trades in a cash account and the returns collapse. Decide which game you're playing before you copy a number.
2. Naked calls are the line. Everything else here is defensible. Uncapped short calls on high-beta names is a different risk class — you can lose more than the account.
3. The strategy needs a bull or flat market. It monetizes time and range. In a sustained decline you get assigned everywhere at once, on correlated names, with compressed BP.
4. The 0.75% theta cap is the one rule to not negotiate. It's the only thing standing between this and a margin call.
5. "Roll forever" requires the roll to stay free. If a roll costs a debit and you pay it anyway, you've converted a premium strategy into a directional bet.
6. Track realized P&L separately from premium collected. Premium collected is not profit if the shares are underwater.
7. His edge may be size, not method. 5,000-contract positions get fills, flexibility and BP treatment retail doesn't.

Bottom line

The decision framework is genuinely strong — the entry gates, sizing tranches, break-even roll trigger and PPD math are worth adopting regardless of what you trade. The risk posture is aggressive — leverage, concentration and naked calls on volatile names. Those are separable. You can run his process at a fraction of his risk, and that's probably the right way to use this document.

PART II — EVIDENCE & POSITION RECORD (what he actually posted)

Account

• Handle: @TJTheWheelDeal (verified/blue)
• Bio: "Sell Puts Sell Calls Collect Premium" + tastytrade referral link
• Joined February 2023 · 29,100 posts
• Says he has been "selling puts for 6 years" (i.e. since ~2020)
• Runs livestreams: "Premium Junkies with TJ 'The Wheel Deal'"
• Portfolio milestone referenced 2026-08-07: "BACK OVER $10M! COMEBACK IN FULL SWING"

Profile detail

• 43K followers · 1,627 following · Texas, USA · Financial Services
• YouTube: youtube.com/@tjtherealwhee...
• 3,747 photos & videos on the Media tab
• Runs X Community "WHEELERS: PREMIUM JUNKIES" (4.1K members) — "To post trade ideas via a screen shot so that the community can offer insights as to whether it's a good idea or not based on..."

EVIDENCEFEASIBILITY CONSTRAINT (read first)

A complete trade-by-trade ledger (date/ticker/entry/size/exit/P&L) cannot be reconstructed from his X text posts. Reasons:

1. He does not post structured trade alerts. Trade info appears as narrative asides in replies ("I got assigned 5k shares at $9").
2. His actual detailed trade logs ARE published — but as rendered images (daily recap documents, footer reads "verified to the raw CSV to the penny"). These must be opened and read visually, one at a time. 3,747 media items.
3. His portfolio walkthroughs are livestreams/broadcasts, not text.

DEFENDDeep-scroll test result (2026-08-16) — CORRECTION to earlier note

Earlier I recorded that history was capped at 2026-07-31. That was wrong — it was a limit of search, not of the timeline. Tested properly:

• The profile timeline DOES paginate much deeper: document height grew 6,231px → 19,639px under sustained scrolling.
• /with_replies is the richer tab (immediately yielded new posts search missed). The real blockers are mechanical, not depth limits:
• X keeps only ~7–8 <article> elements in the DOM at once and blanks everything else, so every small scroll step must be harvested immediately.
• Scrolling faster than the loader outruns it and lands you in blank virtual space with nothing to harvest.
• The media-heavy timeline freezes the renderer every ~10–20 scroll steps (CDP script injection times out; screenshots fail).
• Recovery requires a reload, which resets scroll position to the top. The deeper you are, the more expensive each recovery becomes.
• Measured throughput: ~49 posts captured in ~25 min of continuous driving. Extrapolated to 29.1K posts that is on the order of 250+ hours, with recovery cost growing as depth increases. It does not converge.

DEFENDBetter paths than brute-force scrolling

1. His YouTube channel — long-form strategy explanation, transcripts are plain text and far easier to mine for the SOP than 29K tweets.
2. WHEELERS: PREMIUM JUNKIES community — purpose-built for trade screenshots.
3. Capture forward, not backward — scrape his daily recap image each day from here on; builds a clean ledger going forward at ~1 image/day.
4. X API / archive export — the only realistic route to bulk history.

Rate limit (measured, not assumed)

• Stall observed after ~40 posts harvested across ~6 searches / ~20 scroll pages.
• Recovery observed in roughly 3–5 minutes → consistent with a rolling 15-minute window (X's standard for read endpoints), where capacity returns gradually as older requests age out rather than all at once.
• The extension's network tool does not expose x-rate-limit-reset headers, so the exact reset value could not be read directly.
• Practical safe cadence: ~20 minutes between harvest waves.

PORTFOLIOCURRENT PORTFOLIO (broker screenshot, ~2026-08-12)

Columns appear to be: last price / day P&L / total P&L

Position / size statements (from text posts, dated)

• 2026-08-16 — $IREN: looking at 10k shares as a swing trade, exit price $75
• 2026-08-15 — $MSTR: adding ~5k more shares; "$MSTR at $300 is a cool $9M for the portfolio"; call ladder offsetting share losses
• 2026-08-15 — $RIOT and $CLSK now 150k share goal positions
• 2026-08-15 — buying $BTC again; holds only ~1/3 of a coin ("very small bet")
• 2026-08-15 — $BMNR: "totally wrong about the timing", still holds
• 2026-08-15 — $SPCX (SpaceX) position open, $140.00
• 2026-08-14 — $PLTR up to 35k shares; "2nd only to $SOFI as the stock that has made us the most $$$"
• 2026-08-14 — $MU and $SOFI "finally flipped green for the year"
• 2026-08-13 — RIOT at 20k shares; CLSK moved to 100k share goal
• 2026-08-11 — $SOFI: >100k shares with covered calls at $25 ("never sell" shares)
• 2026-08-11 — added short puts to $SOFI, +$242k premium collected
• 2026-08-11 — "3 Premium Cash Grabs fighting for 8th spot in the $100M North Star": $CLSK, $HOOD, $RIOT
• 2026-08-10 — $HOOD cash-secured puts, would take ownership @ $60, $88k premium collected while waiting. Cost basis shown 88,655.00, -250 contracts, Feb 19 expiry, 192 DTE, $60 strike
• 2026-08-10 — $CLSK $9 puts; cost 190,328.00, -2,000 contracts, Dec 18, 129 DTE
• 2026-08-10 — stopped selling puts on RIOT in one account: "BPR was horrible and CLSK is a similar business and cheaper by share price"
• 2026-08-15 — $CLSK: "I got assigned 5k shares at $9"
• Historical — $PLTR covered calls "a pain in the ass for like a year on that crazy run up"; bought 5–10k additional shares, closed calls at a massive loss and sold those shares immediately

EVIDENCE2026 TIMELINE (Jan–Aug 2026, via dated X search slices)

Method that worked: from:TJTheWheelDeal since:YYYY-MM-DD until:YYYY-MM-DD — each slice loads fresh at the top, sidestepping the deep-scroll freeze problem entirely. 105 posts captured across the year.

2026 behaviors worth noting

• Very long-dated puts: PLTR puts at $50 strike 500 DTE — far beyond his stated 30–60 day rule. Used to park a troubled position and stop watching it.
• "Increase contracts to offset" — when a position goes against him he sells more contracts rather than closing.
• "The big one as the lab rat" — tests adjustments on his largest position.
• Buying power (BPR) is the real risk governor, not stop-losses. Trimming or rolling is triggered by buying power compression.
• Campaign vs trade is his own framing for the investment/cash-grab split.
• Funds share purchases with premium income ("other people's money").

📓 TRADE JOURNAL — reconstructed from his own on-air numbers

Every row below is him stating the numbers himself on video. These are not complete trade records — he rarely gives entry date, exit date and final P&L for the same trade in one place. Undated rows are marked —.

Closed / realized trades

Open positions he walked through on camera

🔴 Losses and mistakes he admits on camera

⚠️ What is still missing from this journal

• No matched entry→exit records with dates. He narrates positions, he doesn't publish a blotter.
• No account-level P&L curve. No way to verify the 421% annualized claim.
• The 3,747 recap images on his X account are the only true trade-by-trade ledger (footer: "verified to the raw CSV to the penny"). They must be read visually, one at a time — not automated. This is the single biggest remaining gap.

EVIDENCESample daily recap log (image, ~2026-08-11) — the format that HAS real detail

Also visible: ENPH shares 35,000 · MU Completion Order $750 (3 leg) · cash balance $1,876,255

STRATEGY / SOP — direct quotes gathered so far

• "Only sell puts on companies you believe in." (2026-08-12)
• "Selling puts and calls and using the premiums to stack shares. Hoping to be done stacking by EOY. Then it will be about growing the cash pile via cash grabs on puts and calls. Don't intend to exit any positions before 2032 unless they go on a [run]" (2026-08-10)
• "I'm a huge fan of See Profit, Take Profit. I use premiums to satisfy that itch. I've done a ton of swing trades in my career. After considering taxes and redeploying capital, it's not cut and dry to just say See Profit, Take Profit." (2026-08-15)
• "I used to be soooo enamored with avg cost of shares. Now I'm way more concerned with total share counts. In 2032, the price today won't matter too much imo. But that big ass share count will likely add up to a lot if the companies perform." (2026-08-14)
• "Sell puts and calls on the same stocks over [and over]" (2026-08-09)
• On rolling: "So rolling out becomes totally optional vs a go to move"
• "A lot of you watch a position get into trouble and just whine and complain. Take action and make the best [of it]" (2026-08-11)
• Premiums on MSTR "are good enough that I can still make a good return even if it just goes sideways" (2026-08-16)
• Vocabulary: "Premium Cash Grabs", "$100M North Star", "share goal", "roster spot", "Completion Order", "call ladder", "rungs"

Terminology decoder

• Cash grab = short put/call sold purely for premium, not intended for assignment
• North Star = his $100M portfolio goal; positions compete for ~8 "spots"
• Roster spot = a slot in the concentrated portfolio
• Share goal = target share count per name (e.g. CLSK/RIOT 150k)
• Ladder / rungs = staggered strikes & expiries on the same underlying
• BPR = buying power reduction (margin cost of holding the short option)

Open questions / not yet established

• Lifetime P&L, total premium collected, win rate — never posted systematically
• Full trade history before 2026-07-31 — not reachable via X search
• Account size history beyond the "$10M" reference