Tools — Put-Selling Yield Calculator
What does that put actually pay?
Enter a ticker to load its listed expirations. Pick the expiration and strike you’re interested in — the calculator runs against live market data and returns the annualized yield, your cost basis if assigned, and the cushion to breakeven from today’s spot.
What the numbers mean
- Annualized yield
- Premium ÷ strike, scaled to a full year. Tells you what the put pays at the rate you’d earn if you ran the same setup back-to-back for 12 months.
- Cost basis if assigned
- Strike minus the premium you collected. If you’re put the shares, this is what you’ll have paid per share — a lower number than the strike, often lower than today’s spot.
- Downside to breakeven
- How far the underlying can drop from today before assignment puts you underwater on the trade. The premium widens this cushion vs simply buying the stock at spot.
- ATM implied vol
- The current at-the-money implied volatility from the chain. Higher IV = richer premiums, usually because the market is pricing in more uncertainty.
This isn’t a recommendation. Value Options Letter doesn’t know your portfolio. Whether the yield this put pays is “good” depends on whether the underlying is a company you’d actually want to own at the assigned price. That’s the analyst work we do every week in the paid letter.