How it works
A Treasury base, with options income written on top.
ReTrader runs the options wheel for self-directed investors: it recommends cash-secured puts and covered calls on a basket of liquid ETFs, only when volatility pays you, and tracks the whole thing. It never executes a trade — you stay in control at your own broker.
The mental model
Think of it as a cash/Treasury portfolio with options written on top. The large majority of your capital sits in short Treasuries and a money-market ETF (BIL) earning the risk-free rate; selling cash-secured puts on liquid ETFs layers option premium on that base. When a put is assigned, that slice moves into the ETF shares — which you write covered calls against until they’re called away, and the capital rotates back to Treasuries. The base is the engine; the premium is the bonus you collect for selling volatility when it’s well-priced.
The five steps
- 1
Set your basket and sizing
Choose a basket of liquid index and sector ETFs and a notional target (how much option exposure you want relative to your account). ReTrader derives per-ticker limits so no single position can dominate the book.
- 2
Sell only when volatility pays you
ReTrader scores each ticker by its implied-volatility percentile (IVP) — how rich premium is versus its own past year. It green-lights selling when premium is strong and tells you to WAIT when it isn't, so your Treasury base earns instead of forcing thin trades.
- 3
Sell cash-secured puts (Leg 1)
ReTrader recommends the strike, expiration, and contract count for each cash-secured put, and shows the premium, breakeven, downside buffer, and profit target. You place the order at your own broker; ReTrader logs it and tracks the good-till-canceled buy-to-close.
- 4
If assigned, sell covered calls (Leg 2)
If a put is assigned, you own the ETF. ReTrader tracks the assigned shares and recommends a covered call at or above your cost basis, flagging any lot that has no call written against it so you never leave income on the table.
- 5
Stay on top of it in about an hour a week
A weekly review surfaces drift, expirations, and what needs attention; a stress monitor watches for sharp moves; and email or SMS reminders nudge you when it's time to act. You make every decision — ReTrader does the math, the tracking, and the reminders.
What ReTrader does not do
It never executes trades, never holds custody of your money, and never gives financial advice. It holds no broker credentials. Every recommendation ends at your screen and your weekly email — you place each order yourself.
Two buckets, not one wheel
The V13 framework treats your book as two buckets with different rule sets. The premium engine — liquid, higher-IV tickers like SPY, IWM, GLD, SLV, USO — is sold for premium and governed by the IVP band table, the entry checks, and a new pass/fail overlay (the dual entry gate, below). The hedge sleeve — TLT and bond-class tickers generally — is held for non-correlation. You acquire the hedge sleeve by buying shares to its allocation target, then write covered calls on those held shares as a modest income overlay. You sell puts on the hedge sleeve only when its own implied volatility genuinely spikes — not on quiet bond IV. A bond ticker sitting in the 2nd percentile of its own IV range isn't an opportunity; it's the hedge working.
The dual entry gate (RON + buffer)
After the IVP band selects a candidate strike, V13 §3.3a applies a pass/fail overlay: a cash-secured put fires only if it clears BOTH an annualized return floor AND a breakeven buffer floor. The defaults: 6% annualized RON (full-hold to expiration — the conservative figure, not the realized number after an early GTC close) AND 5% breakeven buffer. Why two numbers? Buffer and return are the same lever pulled in opposite directions: further OTM widens the buffer and crushes the return; closer fattens the return and shrinks the buffer. One combined number can't distinguish a safe-but-worthless trade from a well-paid one. Both floors are adjustable in Settings (RON 5–8%, buffer 4–6%), and individual tickers can carry their own override for deliberate exceptions.
What to expect
Base case is roughly 8–10% gross annualized — the prevailing T-bill yield plus collected premium — and up to 9–12% in favorable volatility regimes. These are gross, pre-tax targets, not guarantees; the range floats with interest rates, and because this is a short-volatility strategy, drawdowns can be significant in sharp market declines. ReTrader is built for self-directed investors with $500k+ in a Portfolio Margin account.
A built-in brake when the book gets stressed
The strategy works because the large majority of your capital sits in short-Treasury yield, with options written on top. That mental model breaks once a big share of your Net Liq has shifted into assigned shares — you start behaving like a long-only stock book, exposed to compounding the next leg down on already-stressed collateral. ReTrader has a doctrinal guardrail for this: when your assigned-share value reaches a threshold you set (default 50% of Net Liq, adjustable 50–100% in Settings), the engine pauses new cash-secured-put entries and clamps your effective notional target to 1.0×. New CSPs resume automatically when your covered calls call shares away (or you close positions) and the share share drops back below your threshold. You can still override the lockout to log a trade by hand — the brake is a guard rail, not a kill switch — but the engine never recommends writing a new put while the book is at or above the threshold. This is V13 §3.6a; the full doctrine ships in the trading plan PDF.
One last requirement: a dedicated account
ReTrader needs to run in a separate Portfolio Margin brokerage account dedicated to this strategy — not the same account where you hold AAPL, mutual funds, individual bonds, or other buy-and-hold positions. The reason is mechanical, not philosophical: Portfolio Margin runs a risk-based stress test on the entire account, so long-only holdings both consume margin capacity and change the stress profile of the wheel positions. The strategy's "T-bill portfolio with options written on top" foundation also assumes the large majority of capital sits in short-Treasury yield — a mixed account doesn't have that base. And the performance analytics ReTrader shows you assume Net Liq movements are explained by the wheel and T-bill yield; with buy-and-hold positions in the same account, every dashboard number becomes a noisy mirror. If you don't already have one, open a separate Portfolio Margin account at your broker — most allow this without much friction.
Educational software — not financial advice. Returns are gross, pre-tax targets, not guarantees. Consult a CPA and a qualified financial advisor before implementing.