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Step-by-Step Guide

How to Track Your Wheel Strategy Performance

Cash-secured puts, assignments, covered calls — the wheel has a lot of moving parts. Here's how to see the full picture.

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The problem

Why this is harder than it looks

The wheel strategy cycles through cash-secured puts, stock assignments, and covered calls — sometimes over weeks or months. Your broker shows each phase as separate trades. A cash-secured put that gets assigned becomes a stock position, and the covered calls you sell against it are yet another set of trades. Calculating your true cost basis and total return across the full wheel cycle requires connecting trades that your broker treats as completely unrelated.

Difficulty in market analysis

Limited understanding of options strategies

Loss of capital due to poor trade decisions

Confusion over complex strategies

Step by step

Here's how to do it

1

Export your trades covering the full wheel cycle

Make sure your export date range covers the initial cash-secured put through your most recent covered call. The wheel can span months, so go back far enough to capture the opening trade.

If you've been running the wheel on the same underlying for a while, export the last 3-6 months to capture complete cycles.

2

Import the CSV into OptionsEdge

Upload your ThinkorSwim or Tastytrade CSV. OptionsEdge parses all fills — puts, calls, stock assignments, and closures — and prepares them for grouping.

3

Check that puts and calls are grouped into one wheel position

OptionsEdge detects the wheel pattern: cash-secured put → assignment → covered call. These appear as a single position showing your adjusted cost basis including all premiums collected.

If your wheel spans a very long period, make sure you imported all the fills. Missing the original put means the cost basis won't reflect that premium.

4

Track premiums collected across the cycle

The position detail shows total premium income — from the initial put, each covered call, and any rolls. This is your real yield on the underlying, not just the most recent call.

5

Monitor adjusted cost basis

Each covered call premium and each put premium reduces your effective cost basis. OptionsEdge tracks this automatically, so you always know your true breakeven price.

6

Analyze wheel performance by underlying

Use Dashboard analytics to see which stocks produce the best wheel returns. Filter by strategy type to compare win rates, average premiums, and annualized returns across your wheel positions.

Watch out

Common mistakes to avoid

Only tracking the covered call side and ignoring the premium from the initial cash-secured put

Not updating cost basis when a put gets assigned — the stock basis should include the put premium

Treating each wheel cycle as a separate trade instead of one continuous position

Missing the connection between assignment and covered call in your journal

The easier way

How OptionsEdge handles this for you

Auto-groups cash-secured puts and covered calls into a single wheel position

Tracks adjusted cost basis across the full put → assignment → call cycle

Strategy-level P&L shows total wheel performance including all premiums collected

Roll tracking preserves history when you roll covered calls to new expirations

Analytics reveal which underlyings generate the best wheel returns over time

Keep reading

Related guides

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