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Highest yield is not always the best DTE. Shorter expirations look attractive on annualized return while carrying higher gamma sensitivity and thinner liquidity.
The DTE Optimizer compares expiration windows by yield, gamma risk, liquidity, and event risk — per ticker, monthly-aware, earnings-aware.
Scores 7, 14, 21, 30, 45, 60 and 75 DTE buckets side by side with monthly preference applied automatically.
8-component breakdown: yield, theta efficiency, gamma safety, liquidity, event safety, assignment risk, capital flexibility, upside preservation (covered calls).
Industry "45 DTE rule" is a starting point. The optimizer adapts to the actual ticker, the actual chain, and the actual earnings timing.
Each DTE bucket gets a 0–100 Fit score weighing eight components. Cash-secured puts and covered calls use different weights — CSPs lean on capital flexibility, CCs lean on upside preservation and assignment safety.
The headline numbers are Best Balanced (highest risk-adjusted Fit), Highest Yield (best raw annualized return — usually the shortest DTE), and Lowest Gamma (least sensitivity to underlying moves).
Conviction labels (high/medium/low) reflect how clearly the best choice beats the second-place row. When conviction is low, alternatives are competitive and the optimizer says so.
Monthly options expire on the 3rd Friday of every month. For most liquid underlyings, monthly contracts carry much deeper open interest and tighter bid/ask spreads than nearby weeklies. That structural liquidity advantage matters when rolling positions, exiting early, or trading size.
The DTE Optimizer prefers monthlies within tolerance — if your 45-day target has both a 43-day weekly and a 49-day monthly, the monthly usually wins. If only weeklies fit a target bucket, the optimizer extends the search by up to 7 days to find an adjacent monthly. The Cycle column on each row shows which is which.
Monthly preference is a tie-breaker, not a rescue. A monthly with a 30% spread is still a wide spread — it does not jump ahead of a well-quoted weekly just because it expires on a 3rd Friday.
There is no single best DTE — it depends on the ticker, the strategy, and the current liquidity, gamma, and event landscape. Many premium sellers anchor around 30–45 DTE because shorter expirations carry more gamma risk while longer ones lock capital with diminishing daily premium. The DTE Optimizer compares standard buckets per ticker and identifies the best risk-adjusted choice today.
45 DTE typically captures more theta with less gamma sensitivity than 30 DTE, which is why it is a popular industry anchor. But the optimal choice changes by ticker — earnings timing, liquidity at the strike, and curve shape can flip the answer on any given day. The optimizer scores both side by side so you can compare without guessing.
Annualized return on short-dated options can look enormous because the formula multiplies the period yield by 365 / DTE. A 7-day option that captures 0.6% in premium scores 31% annualized — but it carries much higher gamma risk, more frequent assignment exposure, and trading-cost drag. The optimizer balances raw yield against gamma safety, liquidity, and event risk so the recommendation is risk-adjusted, not just yield-maximized.
Yes. Each row receives an event-safety score that penalizes expirations that include the next earnings announcement inside the holding window. Cash-secured puts get a slightly larger penalty because of gap-down asymmetry. If earnings fall the same day as analysis, a danger flag is surfaced and the row is heavily de-emphasized.
Yes. The optimizer runs separate scoring for cash-secured puts and covered calls. The covered-call variant adds an upside-preservation component so a strike too close to spot does not score well even if it carries strong premium. Open the optimizer from the Covered Call view on any ticker page to see the CC-specific recommendations.
Not yet. The MVP does not currently model early-assignment risk from upcoming dividends on covered calls. Always check the ex-dividend date before opening covered calls — assignment risk spikes the day before ex-div when the call is in the money.
Monthly options (3rd Friday of each month) typically have deeper open interest and tighter bid/ask spreads than nearby weeklies — a structural liquidity advantage. The optimizer prefers monthlies within tolerance, applies a small liquidity boost when their underlying spread is decent, and surfaces a Monthly badge so you can see which row is monthly vs weekly. The boost never rescues poor liquidity — a wide-spread monthly is still treated as wide.
Try the optimizer on a popular ticker: