Get paid to wait for stocks you'd own anyway
The research tool for selling cash-secured puts.
Screen companies on fundamentals first, grade every contract against what your cash could earn risk-free, and watch each position against rules you set: the whole strategy, held to an investor's standard.
The full approach, from the first screen to expiration.
For established, self-directed investors. A sold put can become a purchase of 100 shares at the strike; the decisions stay yours.
A cash-secured put is a paid commitment: you agree to buy a stock at a price you named, and the market pays you a premium now for standing by it. Some of those commitments come due. The stock finishes below your strike and you buy the shares, at your price, in a market that has just marked them lower. That is assignment, and it is why the strategy holds up only under one discipline: sell puts solely on companies you'd be glad to own for years, at prices the market pays you fairly to name, each trade judged fresh on its own day, never the “Wheel” that keeps selling on the same ticker whether or not the company still deserves it. FITools is built to hold that discipline across the whole market, one graded contract at a time.
The buy order that pays
The buy order that pays
You've researched a company, decided what you'd pay, and the market wants more. The usual move is to wait, or to place a limit order below the market and let it sit. Either way, the waiting earns nothing. A cash-secured put is the same intent made binding: you set aside the cash to buy at your price, and the market pays you now for the commitment.
Say the company trades at $80 and your price is $76. Set aside $7,600 and sell a one-month put at a $76 strike for $0.83 a share: $83 collected, about 1.1% of the cash for that period, arithmetic you can re-run. If the stock stays above $76 through expiration, the premium is yours and the cash is free for the next trade. If it finishes below, you buy 100 shares at $76 with money that was always meant for exactly that.
The plain trade-off, stated up front: when the shares arrive, the market price is below $76, sometimes well below. The premium softens that; it doesn't erase it. Which is why the price you name has to be one you'd genuinely pay, not one the premium talked you into.
Who's paying you, and why
Who's paying you, and why
Option buyers are, broadly, two kinds: institutions paying to protect large positions, and speculators paying for long shots. Sell a cash-secured put and you're on the other side of the first trade. You are writing price insurance on a stock, and the premium is what a hedger pays to cap their downside.
That demand is visible in prices: at a similar distance from the current price, puts often carry richer premiums than the matching calls, because downside protection is what institutions consistently pay up for. And the cash securing your put isn't idle while you wait: at most brokers it can sit in Treasury bills or a money-market fund, earning interest until the put expires or the shares arrive.
None of it is free money. An insurer collects premiums because some storms arrive; a put seller collects premiums because some stocks fall, and when they do, the seller buys. Whether a given premium is fair payment for this stock, at this strike, in this month, is exactly the research FITools is built for.
The company clears the bar first
The business clears the bar first
Assignment means buying the company, so the quality bar is the risk management, and FITools applies it before anything else. Twenty-two fundamental filters cover valuation, profitability, growth, and balance-sheet health, from return on equity and margins to debt ratios and the Altman Z-Score, a long-standing measure of financial distress risk. In the default flow, only companies that clear your criteria have their option chains screened at all.
That order matters more here than anywhere: a rich premium on a shaky business is the put seller's classic trap, because the richness is often the market pricing the shakiness. Screening the company first means no premium ever gets the chance to argue you into a business you'd never buy outright.
Every contract graded, every grade explained
Every contract graded, every grade explained
Then your contract criteria take over: expiration window, strike distance, liquidity floors on open interest, volume, and bid-ask spread, an implied-volatility range, and the option to sit out earnings entirely. Scope the screen to cash-secured puts only, and what comes back is every contract that cleared both stages, ranked by one score and graded A through F.
Expand any row and FITools states its case in plain language: what the premium pays against the cash securing it, where the strike sits relative to the price, what the warning flags caught. Component scores and their weights are visible on every result, so you can see what earned the grade and what held it back.
Graded against what your cash already earns
Graded against what your cash already earns
Every grade starts from the comparison that matters most to a put seller: the same cash could sit in Treasury bills, earning the risk-free rate with no stock risk at all. So FITools credits a premium only for its edge over the higher of that rate and a passive covered-call benchmark on the S&P 500. A fat premium that fails to clear the bar scores nothing for income, and when market volatility runs high, the bar rises.
The tool argues against trades as readily as it argues for them: named flags call out thin edges, wide spreads, short expirations, and contracts where implied volatility, the movement the market has priced into the option, runs below what the stock has actually been doing.
The full scoring math, component by component →After you sell
After you sell
Selling the put opens the position, and FITools keeps watch from there, throughout the market day, against rules built for this exact move: the approach to your strike from above, the drop below it, a profit target that says when most of the premium is already captured, an expiration window, and earnings landing before expiration. When market data goes stale, urgent alerts wait for fresh quotes rather than firing on old ones.
A decay gauge shows how much time value each position has left, and when expiration nears with the stock close to your strike, the roll view lays out candidate rolls side by side, scenario by scenario. Assignment stays the plan you made; rolling stays a choice you researched in advance, not a scramble at the close.
FITools is research, not a brokerage: you log your trades yourself, it works alongside whatever broker you already use, and your money never moves anywhere new.
Every rule, and when each one fires →Who this is for, and who it isn't yet
FITools is built for the established, self-directed investor who researches a business before buying it, keeps cash ready for the right price, and wants put selling held to that same standard. If you understand what a cash-secured put commits you to and have hesitated because judging any single contract felt like guesswork, this is the tool that replaces guesswork with process.
A few readers are better served elsewhere right now:
- If you're still learning what selling a put commits you to, learn it by hand first. The free FITools handbook walks through cash-secured puts from the ground up, and doing the first ones manually teaches you what the premium is paying for. The tool is for after you understand the problem.
- If you want picks to follow, this is the wrong tool. FITools surfaces premiums, strikes, volatility, and grades so you judge each trade yourself. It hands no one a list to act on blindly.
- If the cost of a premium research tool would be a meaningful expense relative to your portfolio, it isn't for you yet. That is a fit answer: the tool earns its keep for investors whose cash reserves and holdings are large enough that better put-selling decisions clearly outweigh what it costs.
Paid to wait, on companies you'd own anyway.
The method is laid out in full, free. And if you already sell puts on companies you research, the application is open.
Selling options for income, the whole picture Covered calls and cash-secured puts, two independent moves judged by one system →Learn the strategy from scratch → the free FITools handbook