HOOD options, measured
Robinhood Markets, Inc.
Spreads lost in five of six years since the 2021 listing, and its first months were the worst year of any ticker we tested.
Selling puts on HOOD
| Cash-secured put | Put credit spread | |
|---|---|---|
| Average per trade | +0.9% | -5.6% |
| Per trade, on | the cash set aside | the dollars at risk |
| 95% interval | -0.6% to +2.0% | -15.1% to +3.1% |
| Trades won | 86% | 75% |
| Worst trade | -35% | -103% |
| Trades | 253 over 62 months | 221 over 62 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 |
|---|---|
| 2021 | -45% |
| 2022 | -10% |
| 2023 | -12% |
| 2024 | +18% |
| 2025 | -2% |
| 2026 | -3% |
What to know about HOOD
Put credit spreads with the wing 5% below averaged -5.6% of the dollars at risk per trade (-15.1% to +3.1%, 95% interval) over 221 spreads, won 75% of the time and were positive in 1 of the 6 years with at least five spreads. The worst year was 2021, at -44.9% a trade, and the worst single spread lost 103.0% of its risk.
Robinhood's 2021 averaged -44.9% a spread, the worst single year of any ticker we tested. 2022 (-10.1%) and 2023 (-12.2%) lost too, and 2024 (+17.8%) is the only positive year. Its worst cash-secured put lost 34.7% of the cash set aside.
The cash-secured put averaged +0.9% of the cash set aside per trade over 253 trades, won 86% of the time, and its worst trade lost 34.7%. Its spread results correlated 0.41 with QQQ's spreads month by month, so it is a partly separate bet from 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.
Option data for HOOD starts with its 2021 listing, so the 260 entries are spread over six years, not eleven.
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, HOOD's spread results correlated 0.41 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.