Options profit calculator for option sellers

The calculator

Pick the structure, then enter the strike you sell, the credit you receive per share and how many contracts. One contract is 100 shares, so every figure below is per share times 100 times your contracts. Add a price at expiry to see the profit or loss there.

Calculator: pick a cash-secured put, put credit spread, call credit spread or covered call, enter the strikes, the credit and the contracts, and it shows max profit, max loss, breakeven and return on capital at expiry. It runs in your browser with JavaScript on.

How each number is worked out

Cash-secured put: the most you can make is the premium. You lose money below the strike minus the premium, which is the breakeven, and the worst case is the shares going to zero, a loss of the strike minus the premium. The capital is the strike itself, the cash set aside in case you are assigned. More in cash-secured puts, measured.

Put credit spread (a bull put spread): you sell a put and buy a cheaper one below it. The most you can make is the net credit, the most you can lose is the distance between the strikes minus the credit, and the breakeven is the short strike minus the credit. The capital is that worst case, the dollars at risk. More in put credit spreads, measured.

Call credit spread (a bear call spread): the same shape above the price. The breakeven is the short strike plus the credit. More in call credit spreads, measured.

Covered call: you own the shares and sell a call above. If the shares finish above the strike they are called away, so the most you can make is the strike minus the price you paid, plus the premium. The breakeven is the price you paid minus the premium, and below it you carry the shares' full downside. More in what is a covered call.

What a calculator cannot tell you

Max return is the best case, the result if nothing goes wrong. Whether a structure is worth running depends on how often the bad case arrives and how large it is, and that needs history, not arithmetic. A seller with a high win rate can still earn very little, as why a high win rate is not the edge explains.

The yearly figure simply scales one trade to a year. It assumes you could repeat the same trade back to back with the same result, with no losing trades and no idle cash, so treat it as a ceiling, never a forecast.

Before you size a trade, look at the worst case across everything you hold that moves together: how much of your account to put at risk and ten correlated tickers are about two bets. To see what a rule would have earned on years of real option quotes, by ticker, start with results by ticker.