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Most people find this site one of five ways. Pick the one that sounds like you. Behind it is the one article I would hand you if we were sitting across a table, and two more for after that.
Everything on this page is free. The paid services are near the bottom, and I will tell you when you get there.
How to use this page
01 Find your door and read the first piece. It takes about ten minutes.
02 Read the three pieces on sizing, hedging and bad stretches. Everyone here reads those, whatever door they came through.
03 Open Sunday's issue at 6 ET. Then open the one after it, which tells you how the first one's ideas worked out.
Andy Crowder. Twenty-five years of selling options premium, the first of them next to one of the original CBOE market makers.
Five doors, one room
They came for the opposite. Find your door. The first piece is the one I would hand you in person. The two after it are where I would send you next.
01
Probably more than once. The problem was not the stock you picked. It was the side of the trade you were on. You paid for a chance, and someone sold it to you. This site is about being that someone.
Read first
The Statistical Truth About Options Trading: What Most Gurus Won't Tell You
The numbers on how often long options expire worthless, and who collects when they do.
Then: the research on the long-term edge in selling premium, and the six gates before every trade.
02
Good companies, held patiently, producing no income at all. A covered call changes that. You agree to sell your shares at a price you already like, and you get paid now for agreeing.
Read first
Covered Calls: Your First Options Strategy for Steady Income
The mechanics in plain language, what you give up, and when giving it up is a good trade.
Then: delta, time and the decision to roll, and a smarter way to think about covered calls.
03
They can. The people selling the dream leave out what happens when the stock drops. The Wheel is the cleanest version of the idea, and the honest version includes getting assigned, so that is where I start you.
Read first
The Wheel Strategy Explained: How to Sell Puts and Calls for Income, and Where It Goes Wrong
Both halves of the cycle, the returns that are reasonable to expect, and where it goes wrong, stated up front.
Then: how to pick stocks for the Wheel, and managing a losing cash-secured put, where assignment is the plan.
04
You can know them. The options market prints a probability for every strike, every day. It is called the expected move. Once you can read it, you will not want to trade without it.
Read first
Expected Move: The Single Most Important Metric Before Placing Any Options Trade
Where the number comes from, how to read it off the chain, and how to turn it into a strike.
Then: picking credit spread strikes by probability, and how much to risk on your first trade.
05
Skip the introductions. Start with the research on why the edge exists, then the portfolio risk most sellers never measure. The Sunday volatility table assumes you already know what IV Rank means.
Read first
The Variance Risk Premium: The Research Behind Why Selling Options Works
The academic record on implied versus realized volatility. It is the reason this side of the trade pays.
Then: beta-weighted delta, the hidden correlations in a portfolio that only looks diversified, and The Implied Truth, the Sunday volatility table.
The idea everything rests on
Options prices contain a forecast. Not where a stock will go, but the range it will most likely stay inside, the way a weather service draws a cone around a storm. Most people buy tickets on where inside the cone the stock will land. I take the other side. I sell those tickets, outside the cone, where the odds of keeping the premium are high, and I size each trade so the loss that will eventually come cannot take out the wins around it.
Two pieces explain it: why probabilities matter more than predictions, and the law of large numbers.
2 in 3
How often a stock finishes inside its one standard deviation range. For a $100 stock over a month, roughly $91 to $109.
70 to 85%
The odds of keeping the premium on the strikes I sell. You can read it off the options chain before you place the trade.
1 in 5
An 80 percent trade still loses one time in five. That is not a flaw. It is the price of the other four.
100
About how many trades it takes before the arithmetic takes over. One trade tells you nothing. A hundred tell you everything.
The strategy is the easy part. What separates the sellers still trading after twenty years from the ones who quit is how they size, how they hedge, and what they do when the one in five shows up three times in a row.
Sizing
How much of the account one trade may risk. That number matters more than any strike you will ever choose.
Hedging
Buy protection when volatility is cheap and nobody wants it. What a small standing hedge does for a book of short premium.
Bad stretches
The same win rate can give you a smooth year or a ruinous one, depending on the order the losses arrive. How to build so the order does not matter.
The site runs on a weekly rhythm. Nothing is urgent, nothing is a countdown, and the only email you get without asking is the Sunday issue.
Tuesday
A new article on the site. Usually a strategy report: one setup, the probability math, a real example worked through.
Thursday
A second article, usually the teaching side. An Options 101 piece, a Greek explained, or a management rule written down so it can be followed.
Sunday, 6 ET
The free issue, in your inbox. The Implied Truth comes first: IV Rank, IV Percentile, RSI and expected moves across the major underlyings in one table, so you can see where premium is rich before the week starts. The ETF watchlist says where it is worth selling and where it is too cheap to bother. The Income Board lists a handful of puts at the one standard deviation line on real stocks, with the odds beside each. One article goes deep on a single strategy. One section is about what to do with your own head when a trade moves against you. Ten minutes gets you the market, the board and the bottom line.
Every issue teaches one thing you can use that week: a strike you can check against the odds, a rule you can apply to a position you already hold, or an idea that changes how you look at the next trade.
Hundreds of articles, sorted the way a trader thinks about them rather than the order I wrote them. Each topic opens the full archive on that subject. If you are new, work through the first row before you touch the second. If you have sold premium for years, most of the depth is in the third.
Three services, one for each strategy family I trade. Each is a real portfolio with a weekly issue, alerts that give the strikes, the credit and the plan, and a track record that includes the losers. If the free Sunday issue has not earned a paid subscription from you, do not buy one.
Credit spreads and iron condors
Credit spreads, iron condors and VIX hedges on liquid ETFs and large stocks. The trades go on outside the expected move, the risk is capped when you enter, and the weekly issue shows every open position with its probability and what I will do if it moves against us.
For the trader who wants probability-based income without owning shares.
The Wheel
Cash-secured puts on stocks worth owning. Covered calls once you are assigned. The weekly issue covers premium collected, assignments, rolls and the names I am screening for the week ahead.
For the investor who owns stocks, or wants to, and would like them to pay.
Poor man's covered calls
Poor man's covered calls built on deep in-the-money LEAPS, run as model portfolios with different jobs. Every open position is listed with its LEAPS delta, cost basis and the short calls sold and rolled against it.
For the trader with a smaller account who wants the covered call payoff without the share count.
All three, plus the room
Every service, alert and report in one feed, plus what only exists at this tier: the courses, the webinars, the video library and the community where questions get asked and answered. It is for the trader who wants all three strategy families in one portfolio, with the risk visible at every point.
One thing I'd ask
Reply to any Sunday issue with the number, or with what went wrong last time. One line is plenty. I read every reply, and most of what I write starts with one.
The issue arrives Sundays at 6 ET. If it does not show up, check Promotions, then Spam or Junk, and drag it to your inbox once.
One welcome email, then Sundays at 6 ET, and nothing else. No sequence, no countdown, nothing to buy.