Nov 8, 2024 – Nov 6, 2026
The wheel finished $201.67 ahead of buy & hold (earned more: $3756.67 vs $3555.00).
Buy & hold Buy 100 shares and hold | Wheel strategy Puts → calls · keep premiums as cash | |
|---|---|---|
| Profit or loss | $3555.00 | $3756.67 |
| Largest drop | $6758.00 | $4880.19 |
This simulation ran 2024-11-08 to 2026-11-06 (51 trades, 6 cycles).
Simulated premium was $10,257. Simulated stock / assignment P&L was −$6,500. Combined realized P&L was $3,757.
Puts were assigned on 20.0% of put trades (6 of 30). Calls were assigned away on 28.6% of call trades (6 of 21).
This simulation’s wheel P&L ($3,757) beat buy-and-hold P&L ($3,555) on the stored window.
Wheel drawdown was $4,880 on the engine's stored basis; measured as the deepest fall from a P&L peak on the daily P&L series it was $4,880, from the 2025-02-05 peak to the 2025-04-08 trough, and got back to that peak on 2025-08-13. Buy-and-hold drawdown was $6,758 on the engine's stored basis; measured as the deepest fall from a P&L peak on the daily P&L series it was $6,758, from the 2024-11-25 peak to the 2025-04-08 trough, and got back to that peak on 2025-09-18.
On the stored daily series the wheel was ahead of buy-and-hold on 345 of 500 days (69.0%). Its widest lead was $2,492 on 2024-12-19; its widest deficit was −$2,589 on 2026-06-25.
Wheel P&L peaked at $4,798 on 2026-09-04 and bottomed at −$4,214 on 2025-04-08. Buy-and-hold peaked at $6,697 on 2026-08-14 and bottomed at −$6,330 on 2025-04-08.
Of 51 priced entries, 7 used Black-Scholes fills from implied volatility, 27 used historical option bars, and 17 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 | $459 | — | $375 | $84 | $0 | $53 |
| 2024-12 | −$553 | −$1,012 | −$1,716 | $1,163 | $1,219 | $2,144 |
| 2025-01 | $262 | $816 | −$1,164 | $1,426 | $403 | $1,592 |
| 2025-02 | −$619 | −$881 | −$2,347 | $1,728 | $1,285 | $2,775 |
| 2025-03 | −$1,747 | −$1,128 | −$3,863 | $2,116 | $2,413 | $4,291 |
| 2025-04 | −$2,394 | −$647 | −$4,326 | $1,932 | $3,060 | $4,754 |
| 2025-05 | −$1,999 | $395 | −$3,305 | $1,306 | $2,665 | $3,733 |
| 2025-06 | −$889 | $1,110 | −$2,233 | $1,344 | $1,555 | $2,661 |
| 2025-07 | −$560 | $330 | −$1,873 | $1,313 | $1,226 | $2,301 |
| 2025-08 | $429 | $988 | −$295 | $724 | $309 | $723 |
| 2025-09 | $752 | $323 | $384 | $368 | $0 | $288 |
| 2025-10 | $1,321 | $569 | $811 | $510 | $0 | $410 |
| 2025-11 | $2,004 | $683 | $1,063 | $941 | $0 | $158 |
| 2025-12 | $1,930 | −$74 | $804 | $1,126 | $381 | $1,164 |
| 2026-01 | $2,244 | $314 | $2,153 | $91 | $67 | $1,014 |
| 2026-02 | $2,836 | $592 | $2,329 | $507 | $458 | $838 |
| 2026-03 | $2,262 | −$574 | $988 | $1,274 | $1,032 | $2,179 |
| 2026-04 | $2,444 | $182 | $3,985 | −$1,541 | $1,214 | $0 |
| 2026-05 | $3,000 | $556 | $5,231 | −$2,231 | $658 | $160 |
| 2026-06 | $3,858 | $858 | $6,233 | −$2,375 | $0 | $0 |
| 2026-07 | $4,290 | $432 | $5,308 | −$1,018 | $0 | $925 |
| 2026-08 | $4,616 | $326 | $5,581 | −$965 | $0 | $1,116 |
| 2026-09 | $3,737 | −$879 | $3,977 | −$240 | $1,061 | $2,720 |
| 2026-10 | $3,757 | $20 | $4,121 | −$364 | $1,041 | $2,576 |
| 2026-11 | $3,757 | $0 | $3,555 | $202 | $1,041 | $3,142 |
18 of 45 snapshots show simulated wheel P&L above buy-and-hold over their windows. IWM is one of them.
Simulated premium equals 273.0% 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 DIA, QQQ, SPY and XLI, IWM sits above the peer median put assignment rate of 11.9%. 1 of those 4 peers had simulated wheel P&L above buy-and-hold, as did IWM.
The separate 21-Day Rule study for IWM uses a longer 35 DTE recipe, so it is not additive to this snapshot. On that study the managed arm finished +8.2 pp ahead of holding to expiry, against a median of +2.0 pp across tickers.
| Metric | IWM | Family median | Rank (highest first unless noted) |
|---|---|---|---|
| Put assignment rate | 20.0% | 31.0% | 37th of 45 |
| Simulated premium | $10,257 | $10,128 | 22nd of 45 |
| Wheel P&L | $3,757 | $2,828 | 20th of 45 |
| Buy-and-hold P&L | $3,555 | $3,901 | 25th of 45 |
| Wheel minus buy-and-hold | $202 | −$495 | 18th of 45 |
| Ticker | Put assignment | Premium | Wheel P&L | Buy-and-hold P&L | Outcome |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| IWM | 20.0% | $10,257 | $3,757 | $3,555 | Wheel ahead |
| DIA | 11.4% | $9,243 | $5,743 | $7,211 | Wheel behind |
| 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 |
IWM 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: 7 IV / 27 bar / 17 HV
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