Nov 8, 2024 – Nov 6, 2026
Buy & hold finished $1467.69 ahead of the wheel (earned more: $7211.00 vs $5743.31).
Buy & hold Buy 100 shares and hold | Wheel strategy Puts → calls · keep premiums as cash | |
|---|---|---|
| Profit or loss | $7211.00 | $5743.31 |
| Largest drop | $7446.00 | $6903.10 |
This simulation ran 2024-11-08 to 2026-11-06 (51 trades, 4 cycles).
Simulated premium was $9,243. Simulated stock / assignment P&L was −$3,500. Combined realized P&L was $5,743.
Puts were assigned on 11.4% of put trades (4 of 35). Calls were assigned away on 18.8% of call trades (3 of 16).
This simulation’s wheel P&L ($5,743) trailed buy-and-hold P&L ($7,211) on the stored window.
Wheel drawdown was $6,903 on the engine's stored basis; measured as the deepest fall from a P&L peak on the daily P&L series it was $6,903, from the 2025-02-05 peak to the 2025-04-08 trough, and got back to that peak on 2025-10-13. Buy-and-hold drawdown was $7,446 on the engine's stored basis; measured as the deepest fall from a P&L peak on the daily P&L series it was $7,446, from the 2024-12-04 peak to the 2025-04-08 trough, and got back to that peak on 2025-08-22.
On the stored daily series the wheel was ahead of buy-and-hold on 168 of 500 days (33.6%). Its widest lead was $1,843 on 2024-12-18; its widest deficit was −$5,392 on 2026-08-05.
Wheel P&L peaked at $6,554 on 2026-11-04 and bottomed at −$5,436 on 2025-04-08. Buy-and-hold peaked at $10,270 on 2026-08-05 and bottomed at −$6,363 on 2025-04-08.
Of 51 priced entries, 27 used historical option bars, and 24 used Black-Scholes fills from realized volatility. The engine flagged this run as using modeled fills.
| Month | Wheel P&L | Wheel change in month | Buy-and-hold P&L | Wheel minus hold | Wheel below peak | Hold below peak |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2024-11 | $145 | — | $998 | −$853 | $0 | $0 |
| 2024-12 | −$1,064 | −$1,210 | −$1,461 | $397 | $1,318 | $2,544 |
| 2025-01 | $1,078 | $2,143 | $528 | $550 | $343 | $555 |
| 2025-02 | $511 | −$567 | −$174 | $685 | $956 | $1,257 |
| 2025-03 | −$1,096 | −$1,607 | −$2,023 | $927 | $2,563 | $3,106 |
| 2025-04 | −$2,099 | −$1,003 | −$3,377 | $1,278 | $3,566 | $4,460 |
| 2025-05 | −$1,308 | $791 | −$1,726 | $418 | $2,775 | $2,809 |
| 2025-06 | −$817 | $491 | $54 | −$871 | $2,284 | $1,029 |
| 2025-07 | −$292 | $525 | $122 | −$414 | $1,759 | $961 |
| 2025-08 | $278 | $570 | $1,598 | −$1,320 | $1,189 | $70 |
| 2025-09 | $785 | $507 | $2,363 | −$1,578 | $682 | $0 |
| 2025-10 | $2,522 | $1,737 | $3,556 | −$1,034 | $0 | $148 |
| 2025-11 | $2,978 | $456 | $3,707 | −$729 | $0 | $558 |
| 2025-12 | $3,237 | $259 | $4,046 | −$809 | $0 | $730 |
| 2026-01 | $3,816 | $579 | $4,892 | −$1,076 | $0 | $687 |
| 2026-02 | $4,397 | $581 | $4,955 | −$558 | $0 | $1,224 |
| 2026-03 | $3,371 | −$1,026 | $2,308 | $1,063 | $1,026 | $3,871 |
| 2026-04 | $3,488 | $117 | $5,654 | −$2,166 | $1,754 | $525 |
| 2026-05 | $3,845 | $357 | $7,067 | −$3,222 | $1,397 | $0 |
| 2026-06 | $4,459 | $614 | $8,228 | −$3,769 | $783 | $0 |
| 2026-07 | $4,878 | $419 | $8,421 | −$3,543 | $364 | $577 |
| 2026-08 | $5,156 | $278 | $9,146 | −$3,990 | $86 | $1,124 |
| 2026-09 | $3,797 | −$1,359 | $6,844 | −$3,047 | $1,530 | $3,426 |
| 2026-10 | $4,956 | $1,159 | $7,702 | −$2,746 | $1,076 | $2,568 |
| 2026-11 | $4,465 | −$491 | $7,211 | −$2,746 | $2,089 | $3,059 |
18 of 45 snapshots show simulated wheel P&L above buy-and-hold over their windows. DIA is not one of them.
Simulated premium equals 160.9% of the combined wheel P&L here; the median across snapshots with positive wheel P&L is 238.8%.
Compared with its index and broad sector ETF peers IWM, QQQ, SPY and XLI, DIA sits below the peer median put assignment rate of 15.3%. 2 of those 4 peers had simulated wheel P&L above buy-and-hold, while DIA did not.
The separate 21-Day Rule study for DIA uses a longer 35 DTE recipe, so it is not additive to this snapshot. On that study the managed arm finished -9.4 pp behind holding to expiry, against a median of +2.0 pp across tickers.
| Metric | DIA | Family median | Rank (highest first unless noted) |
|---|---|---|---|
| Put assignment rate | 11.4% | 31.0% | 44th of 45 |
| Simulated premium | $9,243 | $10,128 | 24th of 45 |
| Wheel P&L | $5,743 | $2,828 | 15th of 45 |
| Buy-and-hold P&L | $7,211 | $3,901 | 15th of 45 |
| Wheel minus buy-and-hold | −$1,468 | −$495 | 31st of 45 |
| Ticker | Put assignment | Premium | Wheel P&L | Buy-and-hold P&L | Outcome |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| DIA | 11.4% | $9,243 | $5,743 | $7,211 | Wheel behind |
| IWM | 20.0% | $10,257 | $3,757 | $3,555 | Wheel ahead |
| QQQ | 12.5% | $21,936 | $11,936 | $14,196 | Wheel behind |
| SPY | 10.5% | $14,816 | $11,316 | $13,710 | Wheel behind |
| XLI | 18.2% | $4,742 | $4,992 | $2,058 | Wheel ahead |
DIA 21-Day Rule study — the other published study on this ticker.
One fixed recipe: no price tape, no trade list, and model fills where quotes were missing
Requested 2024-11-08–2026-11-08; actual 2024-11-08–2026-11-06.
Pricing sources: 27 bar / 24 HV
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