GOOGL options, measured
Alphabet Inc. Class A
Spreads were positive in 9 of 11 years, and the interval's lower end sits just under zero at -0.1%. It is a single stock that moves with the Nasdaq.
Selling puts on GOOGL
| Cash-secured put | Put credit spread | |
|---|---|---|
| Average per trade | +0.5% | +5.0% |
| Per trade, on | the cash set aside | the dollars at risk |
| 95% interval | +0.2% to +0.8% | -0.1% to +9.5% |
| Trades won | 90% | 87% |
| Worst trade | -16% | -100% |
| Trades | 241 over 127 months | 177 over 108 months |
A spread's worst trade is always close to the whole risk: when it loses, it loses the width at once. Returns on the two structures are on different bases, so compare each with its own capital, not with each other.
Year by year
| Year | Average per trade |
|---|---|
| 2016 | +6% |
| 2017 | +11% |
| 2018 | -5% |
| 2019 | +17% |
| 2020 | +16% |
| 2021 | +13% |
| 2022 | -9% |
| 2023 | +4% |
| 2024 | +4% |
| 2025 | +5% |
| 2026 | +4% |
What to know about GOOGL
Put credit spreads with the wing 5% below averaged +5.0% of the dollars at risk per trade (-0.1% to +9.5%, 95% interval) over 177 spreads, won 87% of the time and were positive in 9 of the 11 years with at least five spreads. The worst year was 2022, at -8.8% a trade, and the worst single spread lost 100.2% of its risk.
Alphabet lost in 2018 (-5.3% a spread) and 2022 (-8.8%), the same years as QQQ. Its 2019 to 2021 run averaged between +13.2% and +17.1% a year; since 2023 every year has landed between +3.8% and +4.6%. Two entries were left out because a stock split fell inside the trade.
The cash-secured put averaged +0.5% of the cash set aside per trade over 241 trades, won 90% of the time, and its worst trade lost 16.3%. Its spread results correlated 0.62 with QQQ's spreads month by month, so it adds little diversification next to a Nasdaq position.
This is a single company, and the replay does not skip earnings, so every earnings gap is in these numbers. A single stock can also fall for reasons that have nothing to do with the market.
Entries before March 2022 are priced from daily closing prices with a measured haircut; later entries use the real bid and ask.
Month to month, GOOGL's spread results correlated 0.62 with QQQ's.
How these numbers were made: a 25-delta put 30 to 45 days out, entered roughly weekly from January 2016 to September 2026 and held to expiry, the spread with a long put 5% below. Shorts at the bid, longs at the ask, fees included; before March 2022 prices come from daily closes with a haircut measured against real quotes. Intervals come from a month-clustered bootstrap. These are historical replays, not live quotes and not a forecast; every result, including the ones that failed, is on the track record. This is education, not a recommendation to trade anything.