Wheel Strategy Screener Excel: 2026 Options Income Dashboard for Cash-Secured Put Sellers

Wheel strategy screener excel - if you sell cash-secured puts for income, you already know that the hard part is not learning the rotation. Sell put, get assigned, sell call, get called away, restart. The hard part is figuring out which name to put the wheel on this week. Premium is rich on some underlyings and crushed on others. Some names look attractive on IV30 but blow up on a 5 percent move. Others pay a fat credit but leave you holding a stock you would never have bought outright. A spreadsheet that ranks a curated wheel watchlist by the metrics that actually drive the trade - implied volatility, IV rank, annualized return on cash secured, margin of safety, dividend yield if assigned - is faster than scrolling option chains one ticker at a time.

This guide walks through a premium, dashboard-style wheel strategy screener excel template built on MarketXLS. The workbook screens 22 of the most liquid, wheel-friendly large caps, surfaces a short put strike near the 0.30 delta zone, computes credit per share, cash secured, annualized ROIC and breakeven, projects payoff across five underlying-move scenarios, plans the covered call leg if assigned, and sizes contracts from your buying power. Two downloads at the bottom of the post - a static sample with snapshot data, and a live-formula template that refreshes every time you open Excel.

Wheel Strategy Screener Excel at a Glance

Before the deep dive, here is what the dashboard surfaces for each underlying on day one. Numbers below are an illustrative snapshot captured 2026-06-04 from the sample workbook - not a recommendation.

The screener inside the workbook holds all 22 tickers, fifteen columns of data, and five layers of conditional formatting. Sort by Annualized ROIC to find the highest income per dollar of cash tied up. Sort by Margin of Safety to find the cushion-rich names. Sort by IV Rank to find where the premium is genuinely rich versus the past year of pricing.

What The Wheel Strategy Actually Does

The wheel is a two-stage cash-secured options income strategy. Stage one: sell a cash-secured put on a stock you would not mind owning. Collect premium. If the stock stays above the strike at expiry, keep the premium and write the next put. If the stock closes below the strike, the put is assigned and you buy the shares at the strike, automatically funded by the cash you set aside.

Stage two starts the moment you own the shares. Sell a covered call against those shares at or above your effective cost basis. Collect premium. If the stock rises above the call strike, the shares are called away and you walk away with the original premium, the call premium, and any capital appreciation from the put strike up to the call strike. If the stock stays below the call strike, keep the premium and write the next call. When the shares are eventually called away, you restart the wheel by selling cash-secured puts again.

The two legs sit at opposite ends of a single trade structure. A cash-secured put has the same payoff profile as a covered call written at the same strike on shares you already own at the same price. The wheel is the running-time version of that pair trade, switching between the put leg and the call leg as assignment happens.

Why The Wheel Works When It Works

The wheel monetizes the volatility risk premium. Implied volatility - the volatility baked into option prices - tends to overstate realized volatility on liquid large caps over long stretches of time. Selling options on names where IV is above average captures that premium for the option seller. Adding the cash-secured backing turns the trade from a margin-leveraged short put into a defined-capital income strategy where assignment risk is fully funded.

There are three quiet edges in the structure:

1. Time decay works for you. Every day that passes without a large move erodes the value of the short option. Theta is the seller's friend.
2. Volatility tends to compress after spikes. If implied volatility was 40 when you sold the put and drops to 25 by the next week, the option's value drops mechanically even if the stock has barely moved. Vega works for the seller too.
3. You only run the wheel on stocks you would buy outright at the strike. Assignment is the worst case in a vacuum, but in the wheel framework it is a feature: you are buying a stock you wanted to own anyway at a discount versus the price when you opened the trade.

The wheel is not free money. It does worst in a sharp, persistent drawdown where each cash-secured put gets assigned on the way down and each subsequent covered call gets written against shares whose value keeps falling. Names you would not have wanted to own at the strike are wheel poison.

How The Screener Ranks Candidates

The dashboard's screener layer pulls live data through MarketXLS and computes wheel-relevant metrics row by row. The exact formula stack:

=QM_Last("AAPL")                          // current price
=ImpliedVolatility30D("AAPL")             // 30-day implied volatility
=IVRank1Year("AAPL")                      // 1-year IV rank (0 to 100)
=StockVolatilityThirtyDays("AAPL")        // 30-day realized vol
=Beta("AAPL")                             // beta versus market
=DividendYield("AAPL")                    // trailing dividend yield
=MarketCapitalization("AAPL")             // market cap for liquidity gate
=AverageDailyVolume("AAPL")               // average daily share volume

These eight live cells per row drive everything else. The 1-sigma short put strike is computed from price and IV: Price - Price * IV * SQRT(DTE / 365). The expected per-share credit uses the educational proxy 0.40 * IV * SQRT(DTE / 365) * Price, which lands in the 0.25 to 0.35 delta range for typical large-cap options and is meant for ranking, not for limit-order pricing. Cash secured is Strike * 100 per contract. Thirty-day ROIC is credit divided by cash secured. Annualized ROIC scales that by 365 / DTE. Margin of safety is (Price - Breakeven) / Price where breakeven is Strike - Credit.

For live strikes, credits, and Greeks - the numbers you actually trade off - the workbook references the full option-chain stack:

=QM_GetOptionChainOutOfTheMoney("AAPL")
=OPT_DELTA(price, optPrice, expiry, "P", strike)
=OPT_IMPLIEDVOLATILITY(price, optPrice, expiry, "P", strike)
=OPT_LAST("AAPL 2026-07-18 200 P")
=OPT_BID("AAPL 2026-07-18 200 P")
=OPT_ASK("AAPL 2026-07-18 200 P")
=OPT_OPENINTEREST("AAPL 2026-07-18 200 P")

The educational proxy is for ranking the watchlist quickly. The option-chain stack is for execution.

The Volatility Risk Premium Filter

The single most useful filter in the workbook is IV30 minus 30-day realized volatility, displayed in column H of the Dashboard screener and color-scaled green to red. This number is the volatility risk premium expressed as an annualized spread. When IV30 sits at 25 percent and RV30 sits at 18 percent, the option market is pricing in 7 percent more volatility than the stock has actually delivered over the last month. That gap is the seller's expected edge.

When the spread compresses to zero or turns negative across the watchlist, premium selling gets harder. The market is no longer paying you to take the volatility risk - it is paying you the realized rate or less. Some option sellers cut size in those regimes; some pause the wheel entirely and wait for the next vol spike.

The dashboard's "Positive VRP Count" KPI tile reports how many names in the watchlist currently carry a positive IV minus RV spread. When the majority of the watchlist sits in positive territory, the regime is friendly to short premium. When the majority sits at zero or negative, the regime is hostile.

Strike Selection Sheet

The Strike Selection sheet drills into the math behind one trade at a time. For each ticker the sheet computes:

• Current price
• 30-day implied volatility
• Expected move over the target DTE
• Suggested short put strike (1-sigma down)
• Credit per share
• Cash secured per contract
• Breakeven price
• 30-day ROIC on cash secured
• Annualized ROIC
• Margin of safety from current price

Sort by Annualized ROIC and the top of the table shows the highest income per dollar of cash tied up. Sort by Margin of Safety and the top shows the names with the most cushion before the trade goes against you. The two ranks rarely agree - and that is the point. The highest-ROIC names tend to be the highest-IV names, which means the largest expected moves and the smallest margins of safety. Picking a wheel is the trade-off between premium yield and cushion. The sheet lets you make that trade explicitly instead of guessing.

A 30-day ROIC of 1.5 percent on cash secured looks small until you annualize it. At 30 DTE, 1.5 percent on cash secured annualizes to roughly 18 percent. At 21 DTE, the same 1.5 percent annualizes closer to 26 percent. Shorter DTE squeezes more theta per day but raises gamma risk. The workbook lets you adjust the DTE input and watch the whole sheet recompute, so you can see where the curve flattens for your preferred risk regime.

Scenario Analysis Sheet

The Scenario Analysis sheet stress-tests every candidate across five underlying-move scenarios at expiry: minus 10 percent, minus 5 percent, flat, plus 5 percent, plus 10 percent. For each scenario it computes the per-contract P&L. If the stock finishes above the short put strike, you keep the full premium. If the stock finishes below, you buy the shares at the strike and start the call leg at a paper loss equal to the strike minus the stock price minus the credit received.

A red-to-green heatmap on the five scenario columns makes the comparison visual. Names whose minus-5 percent cell is still green - meaning the strike was far enough below the current price that a 5 percent drawdown does not trigger assignment - are the cushion-rich wheels. Names whose minus-5 percent cell is red but whose minus-10 percent cell is only slightly more red - meaning the strike sits between the two scenarios - are the assignment-likely wheels. Both can be appropriate; they suit different stances on assignment risk.

This is where the wheel framework earns its keep. A standalone short put screener might tell you that NVDA pays a 32 percent annualized ROIC. The scenario sheet tells you that the same trade carries a six-figure paper loss per contract if NVDA drops 10 percent before expiry. The annualized return is real; so is the drawdown risk. The dashboard puts both numbers in the same view.

Covered Call Leg Sheet

The Covered Call Leg sheet plans stage two of the wheel in advance. For each ticker it computes:

• The assignment price (the short put strike from stage one)
• Implied volatility for the underlying
• Expected move at the assignment price
• Suggested covered call strike (1-sigma up from assignment)
• Estimated call premium per share
• Thirty-day ROIC on the assigned shares
• Annualized call leg ROIC
• Combined annualized ROIC across both legs

Combined annualized ROIC across both legs is the number worth focusing on. It assumes you sell the put, get assigned, immediately sell a covered call at the suggested strike, and collect both premiums over a 60-day round trip. It is the wheel's annualized yield estimate.

A wheel that pays a fat first-leg credit but only a small second-leg credit is fragile - if you get assigned, the call leg does not compensate for being long the stock. A wheel where both legs pay roughly equal annualized ROIC is the structural sweet spot. The Combined Annual ROIC column highlights both extremes through a red-to-green color scale.

Position Sizing Sheet

Position Sizing converts everything above into actionable contract counts. For each ticker it pulls the short put strike from Strike Selection, computes cash secured per contract, applies the percent-of-portfolio cap from the Inputs sheet, and derives suggested contracts as INT(MaxCapital / CashSecured). The Premium Collected column then multiplies suggested contracts by credit per contract to show total expected premium from each leg.

The Total row at the bottom sums premium collected across the entire watchlist. With a default 100,000 dollar buying power and 5 percent per wheel, the sample snapshot produces a total expected 30-day premium of roughly 3,500 to 4,500 dollars across the watchlist - call it 3 to 4 percent of buying power for a single 30-day cycle. The exact number depends on which names you actually open wheels on, and the position sizing sheet is the place to pre-allocate.

Adjust the Percent of Portfolio per Wheel input on the Inputs sheet and watch the suggested-contracts column rebase. Tightening from 5 percent to 3 percent drops contract counts and total premium roughly in proportion; loosening to 10 percent doubles them. The cell-reference architecture means every sheet in the workbook stays consistent with whatever risk budget you set on the Inputs sheet.

Correlation Matrix Sheet

The Correlation Matrix sheet is the diversification check most wheel writers skip. The matrix computes pairwise return correlations across the entire watchlist and displays them as a green-yellow-red heatmap.

A wheel portfolio of eight mega-cap tech stocks behaves like one position when the market turns - the diversification is illusory. A wheel portfolio spread across financials, energy, consumer staples, healthcare, and tech behaves like several smaller positions. The correlation matrix surfaces which names move together so you can pre-empt sector concentration before it bites.

The educational version of the matrix in the sample workbook uses an approximation - sector-similar pairs get a higher correlation, cross-sector pairs get a lower one. The template version with live formulas can be populated with =CORREL(GetHistory("AAPL",...), GetHistory("MSFT",...)) style references against the historical return arrays for true rolling correlations.

What Is Inside The Template

Both the sample and the template ship with the same 11-sheet structure:

1. Cover - branded title page, version, data-as-of date, table of contents. No data, pure presentation.
2. How To Use - step-by-step tutorial from open to ranked short list, with input legend and formula box.
3. Inputs - yellow input cells, scenario dropdowns, the watchlist itself. Edit any cell here and every other sheet refreshes.
4. Dashboard - the headline sheet. KPI tile row across the top (median IV30, median IV rank, names above threshold, median annualized ROIC, names above target ROIC, VIX level), bar chart of annualized ROIC by ticker, scatter chart of IV rank versus dividend yield, and the conditionally formatted candidate screener.
5. Strike Selection - the one-sigma short put strike ladder with credit, cash secured, breakeven, 30-day ROIC, annualized ROIC, and margin of safety.
6. Scenario Analysis - per-contract P&L across five underlying-move scenarios with a red-to-green heatmap.
7. Covered Call Leg - the second-leg plan if assigned: suggested call strike, premium, second-leg ROIC, combined annualized yield across both legs.
8. Position Sizing - contracts per name from buying power and risk-budget caps, with totals at the bottom.
9. Correlation Matrix - pairwise correlation heatmap across the entire watchlist for diversification checks.
10. Methodology - how the model works, data sources, assumptions, limitations, and references to live option-chain formulas for execution.
11. Glossary and Disclaimer - term definitions and an educational-only notice.

The premium design layer carries across every sheet: a deep navy and MarketXLS blue palette with gold accent for input cells, KPI tiles with thick navy borders and 22-point headline numbers, frozen panes, hidden gridlines on the Cover and Dashboard sheets, conditional formatting on every comparison column, and a "MarketXLS Functions Used in This Sheet" reference box at the bottom of each tab.

How To Use The Workbook In Five Minutes

1. Open Inputs. Set Portfolio Buying Power, Percent of Portfolio per Wheel, Target DTE, Short Put Delta Target, Risk-Free Rate, Minimum IV Rank, and Target Annualized ROIC. Tweak the scenario dropdowns if you want a more conservative or more aggressive stance.

2. Edit the watchlist. The default holds 22 wheel-friendly large caps. Replace any ticker in column B (rows 15 to 36) with a stock you would actually want to own at a discount. The whole workbook updates.

3. Read the Dashboard KPI row. Are the watchlist medians attractive versus the SPX-equivalent IV and your target ROIC? If yes, proceed. If no, raise IV rank threshold or wait.

4. Scan the screener. Green columns are friendly; red columns are warnings. Sort by Annualized ROIC for the income hunters; sort by Margin of Safety for the cushion hunters.

5. Drill into Strike Selection on three to five candidates. Confirm strike, credit, breakeven, ROIC, and margin of safety pass your sniff test.

6. Stress test in Scenario Analysis. Does the minus 5 percent and minus 10 percent column survive your maximum-drawdown tolerance? If not, drop the candidate.

7. Plan the call leg. Is the second-leg combined annualized yield reasonable? If the wheel's stage two does not compensate you for the assigned shares, the trade is fragile.

8. Size the position. Position Sizing tells you how many contracts the cash budget supports. Total premium collected at the bottom is the expected month-one income from all opened wheels.

The whole flow takes five minutes once you know the layout. The template is designed to compress what used to be a 30-minute multi-tab option-chain exercise into one screen.

MarketXLS Implementation Notes

Every data cell in the Template workbook is a live formula. There is no hardcoded data outside of labels, ticker symbols, and the educational disclaimer text. Open the file with the MarketXLS add-in active and every screen refreshes against live data.

The live formula stack includes the underlying-level functions (QM_Last, ImpliedVolatility30D, IVRank1Year, StockVolatilityThirtyDays, Beta, DividendYield, MarketCapitalization, AverageDailyVolume, RSI, Sector, FiftyTwoWeekHigh, FiftyTwoWeekLow, StockReturnOneYear) and the contract-level functions for actual execution (QM_GetOptionChainOutOfTheMoney, OPT_LAST, OPT_BID, OPT_ASK, OPT_DELTA, OPT_IMPLIEDVOLATILITY, OPT_OPENINTEREST, OPT_VOLUME). The Methodology sheet lists the contract-level stack so you can pull live strike pricing on whichever candidate makes your final list.

For the Black-Scholes Greeks of a specific contract you can layer OPT_DELTA(currentStockPrice, marketOptionPrice, expiryDate, "P", strikePrice) and the matching OPT_GAMMA, OPT_THETA, OPT_VEGA, OPT_IMPLIEDVOLATILITY calls. These give the full Greek surface for the strike you actually intend to sell. Combined with the screener layer and the position sizing layer, the workbook covers the whole flow from watchlist to trade ticket.

Download The Premium Template

Both files are free downloads while we test the new premium dashboard series. The sample is the static version with snapshot data and formula comments; the template is the live-formula version. Open the template in Excel with MarketXLS active and every cell refreshes against live data on its next workbook open.

Download the templates:

• - Pre-filled with the 2026-06-04 snapshot.
• - Live-updating formulas, refreshes automatically.

Frequently Asked Questions

What is a wheel strategy screener excel template?

A wheel strategy screener excel template is a spreadsheet that ranks a watchlist of optionable stocks by the metrics that matter for the wheel: implied volatility, IV rank, expected move, short put credit, annualized return on cash secured, breakeven, and margin of safety. The MarketXLS version here screens 22 wheel-friendly large caps and adds a dashboard layer with KPI tiles, charts, scenario analysis, a covered call leg planner, and position sizing - all wrapped in a single 11-sheet workbook.

What stocks are good for the wheel strategy?

Stocks that work well for the wheel share four traits: deep optionable liquidity (so bid-ask spreads stay tight), a price you would willingly pay for the shares if assigned, large enough market cap that headline-driven gap risk is contained, and enough implied volatility that selling premium pays a real annualized ROIC. The default watchlist in this template covers mega-cap tech, money-center banks, dividend-paying staples, energy, and a few higher-IV names for premium hunters. Names you would never buy outright belong nowhere on a wheel screener.

How is annualized ROIC calculated for cash-secured puts?

Annualized ROIC for a cash-secured put is the credit per contract divided by cash secured per contract, scaled to a year. The math: 30-day ROIC = (credit per share * 100) / (strike * 100). Annualized ROIC = 30-day ROIC * (365 / DTE). At 30 DTE, a 1.5 percent 30-day ROIC annualizes to roughly 18 percent. At 21 DTE, the same 1.5 percent annualizes closer to 26 percent. Annualized ROIC is a ranking signal, not a forecast - you cannot always redeploy capital instantly across rolls.

What is the difference between selling cash-secured puts and the wheel strategy?

Selling cash-secured puts is one half of the wheel. The wheel adds the assignment plan: if the short put closes in the money, you buy the shares at the strike and immediately start selling covered calls against them, collecting a second stream of premium. When the shares get called away, you restart the wheel by selling cash-secured puts again. The screener in this template plans both legs - column-level credit, ROIC and margin of safety for the put leg, and a separate Covered Call Leg sheet for the call leg.

How does this wheel screener compare to a manual option chain workflow?

A manual option chain workflow forces you to load 20 to 30 ticker chains one at a time, scan for the right delta and DTE, and compare credit-per-cash-secured by eye. The screener compresses that into a single dashboard view: every ticker on one screen, every relevant metric in one row, conditional formatting flagging the cushion and the income hunters at a glance, and a strike selection sheet that drills into the math for one trade at a time. For execution you still want the live option chain through QM_GetOptionChainOutOfTheMoney - the screener is the watchlist filter, not the limit-order pricing.

Is this template financial advice?

No. The template surfaces educational candidates and ranks them by transparent metrics. It does not model bid-ask spreads, assignment fees, dividend ex-date risk, gap risk, or tax treatment. Premium approximations are not a substitute for the live option chain. Selling cash-secured puts has the same downside as owning the stock at the strike minus the premium. Position-size accordingly and consult a licensed advisor before trading.

The Bottom Line

The wheel works when you put it on stocks you would happily own, in regimes where the volatility risk premium is positive, with strikes sized for both income and cushion. The hard part is screening - finding the right candidate from a curated watchlist this week, this DTE, at this implied volatility, with a margin of safety that survives the drawdown you can stomach. The wheel strategy screener excel template surfaces all of that in a single 11-sheet dashboard: KPI tiles for the watchlist medians, a conditionally formatted candidate screener, a strike selection ladder, scenario analysis, a covered call leg planner, position sizing, a correlation matrix, methodology, and a glossary.

Pair it with a MarketXLS subscription and the workbook refreshes against live data every time you open it. The sample version above shows what the dashboard looks like with snapshot data; the template version turns it into a recurring tool.

If you want to see how MarketXLS powers the live data layer behind this and the rest of the premium dashboard series, visit marketxls.com or book a demo. For more options income tools, see the Iron Condor Screener and the Covered Call ETF Screener.