Best expiration for selling options (DTE)

What DTE changes

Days to expiration (DTE) sets how much time value you sell and how quickly it decays. Short-dated options decay fastest per day, which makes weeklies look like the most efficient trade. Longer-dated options pay more in total but tie up capital for longer.

What the decay curve does not show is the cost side. A short-dated option has less room for the premium to absorb a move, and the bid-ask spread is a bigger slice of a small credit.

What our replays measured

Our paper book compared lanes directly. Puts sold 7 to 14 days out returned minus 0.34% a trade on collateral over 235 unique contracts (interval minus 0.76 to plus 0.06, 66% wins). Puts sold 30 to 45 days out returned plus 0.97% (interval plus 0.15 to plus 1.58) over the same weeks.

An earlier read of the same paper book found the 7 to 14 day bucket negative (minus 0.25%, 241 trades) and the 30 to 60 day bucket at plus 1.2%. A multi-year replay of a daily 7 to 10 day put across many ETFs found it earned close to nothing on most of them, and its returns on non-tech names were near zero with higher correlation, not lower.

Why the 30 to 45 day window held up

A month out, the option still carries enough premium to cover ordinary noise and fees, and there is time for a position to recover from a dip before expiry. It also matches a common management rule: close at half the premium, which often happens well before expiry (see the guide on closing at 50%).

The longer window is not risk free. The losses are the same gaps they always are; the window simply pays more for them.

Using this

If you sell weeklies, measure them on your own tickers against a 30 to 45 day baseline on the same weeks before assuming the faster decay is an edge. The guide on theta covers why fast decay on paper does not always mean more profit in practice.