Wheel Position Size Calculator
How many contracts fit inside your risk budget.
Your numbers
Total capital available for the wheel.
As a percent of the portfolio, e.g. 20.
The put strike you plan to sell.
Results
- Contracts
- 2
- Capital deployed
- $9,000.00
- Share of portfolio
- 18.00%
- Risk budget
- $10,000.00
How it works
The fastest way to ruin a working wheel is to run too much of it on one underlying. Position sizing fixes a ceiling — a percentage of the portfolio you are willing to tie up in any single name — and then works out how many contracts fit under it. The count always rounds down, because a contract is indivisible and rounding up would breach the ceiling you just set. When the answer comes back as zero, the honest conclusion is that this strike is too expensive for your account, not that the limit should be raised.
contracts = ⌊(portfolio × risk percent) ÷ (strike × 100)⌋
Worked example
On a $50,000 portfolio with a 20% per-position cap, the budget is $10,000. A 45-strike put ties up $4,500, so two contracts fit — $9,000, or 18% of the portfolio.
Common questions
What percentage per position is sensible?
Traders commonly cap a single underlying between 5% and 20% of the account. The smaller the account, the harder that is, which is a real constraint on running the wheel with limited capital rather than a rule to bend.
Why does it round down?
Contracts are indivisible, and rounding up would put you over the limit you just set. If two-and-a-half contracts fit, you sell two.
Should the cap apply per stock or per sector?
Ideally both. Three separate 15% positions in the same sector behave like one 45% position on the day that sector sells off.
Other wheel calculators
- Premium Yield CalculatorTurn a premium into a yield you can compare across strikes and expirations.
- CSP Cash CalculatorHow much cash gets locked up when you sell a put.
- Assignment Probability CalculatorRead delta as a rough odds of being assigned.
- IV Rank CalculatorFind out where today's implied volatility sits in its yearly range.
- Theta Decay CalculatorSee what time decay is worth to you per day.
- Wheel Capital CalculatorHow much capital it takes to run the wheel on a given stock.
- Covered Call Max Profit CalculatorWhat a covered call makes if the shares get called away.
- Options Liquidity CheckerCheck whether a contract is actually tradable before you sell it.
- Wheel Expectancy CalculatorWhat one wheel cycle is worth on average, given your own numbers.
Stop doing this by hand
Wheel Income screens live option chains for cash-secured puts and covered calls, then tracks every cycle from assignment through called away.
Try the screenerFor information and educational purposes only. Not investment advice. Options carry risk, including loss of the entire position.