Tracking Options P&L: Complete Wheel Strategy Cycle Results on AAPL (Part 4)

The Grand Finale: Completing a Full Wheel Strategy Cycle on AAPL

This is it — Part 4 of the AAPL wheel strategy series, and we're wrapping up a complete cycle from start to finish. If you've been following along, you've watched this position evolve from a single cash-secured put all the way through assignment, covered call selling, and now final resolution. The entire journey demonstrates exactly how the continuous wheel strategy works in practice, not just in theory.

Here's a quick recap of how we got here. In Part 1, we sold a cash-secured put on AAPL at the $270 strike. In Part 2, that put expired in the money, and we got assigned 100 shares of Apple at $270 per share. In Part 3, we turned around and played both sides — selling a covered call and another cash-secured put, both at the $270 strike, since Apple was trading right around $270.26 at the time.

Now, in this final installment, both of those positions have reached expiration. AAPL closed at $272, which means the covered call expired in the money (our shares get called away) and the cash-secured put expired worthless (we pocket that premium free and clear). Let's walk through exactly how to close everything out, track the transactions, and review the final results.

How the Positions Closed at Expiration

With AAPL closing at $272 on expiration Friday, here's exactly what happened to each open position:

The $270 Covered Call — Expired In the Money

Since Apple closed at $272, which is $2 above the $270 strike price, the covered call expired in the money. This means our 100 shares of AAPL got called away at $270 per share. We received $27,000 back for the shares, plus we keep the premium we collected when we sold the call.

This is the ideal outcome for a wheel strategy practitioner. You sold premium, you collected that income, and now your shares are called away so you can redeploy that capital and start the cycle all over again.

The $270 Cash-Secured Put — Expired Worthless

The cash-secured put at the $270 strike expired worthless because AAPL closed above $270. This is the best-case scenario for any put seller — you keep 100% of the premium you collected, and you're not obligated to buy the stock. Your collateral is freed up, and you pocket the cash.

Capital Gains vs. Cash Flow: The Mindset That Matters

Here's where a lot of newer option traders get tripped up. When you look at this trade, a capital gains investor would say: "You sold your shares at $270, but Apple closed at $272 — you left $2 per share on the table! That's $200 of missed profit!"

And technically, that's true. But that perspective completely misses the point of the wheel strategy.

When you're running the wheel, you're not trying to capture every dollar of upside. You're building a consistent cash flow machine powered by option premium. The $3 of upside you "missed" is irrelevant when you consider the premium you collected on five separate transactions over just two weeks. The goal isn't to time the top — it's to systematically extract income from the market whether the stock goes up, down, or sideways.

Think of it this way: a landlord doesn't care that their property went up $10,000 in value this month. They care about the rent check that shows up every month. Option premium is your rent check. The stock price movement is secondary to the income stream you're building.

Tracking the Closing Transactions in MyATMM

Now for the practical part — how to properly close out these positions in MyATMM so your cost basis, premium tracking, and performance metrics are all accurate. There are three steps to clean up from this expiration.

Step 1: Delete the Expired Cash-Secured Put

Since the cash-secured put expired worthless, there's nothing to track beyond the premium you already collected when you opened the position. Simply delete the put from your positions in play. The premium stays in your transaction history — you just get to pocket that money. That's always a nice feeling.

Step 2: Handle the Covered Call Assignment

The covered call expired in the money, which means your shares got called away. In MyATMM, you can use the assignment helper to process this. When you click the assignment button on the covered call, the platform generates a "sell to close" transaction for the stock position at the strike price ($270 per share = $27,000 total).

One important detail: zero out the commissions and fees. When shares get called away through assignment, brokerages like Schwab and ThinkorSwim don't charge you commissions or fees on the stock transaction itself. The assignment helper may pre-populate default commission values, but for assignment-related stock transactions, those should be set to $0.00.

Step 3: Clean Up Positions in Play

After processing the stock sale, delete the covered call position and the stock position from your positions in play. You no longer own any shares, and both option contracts have expired. Use the "clear" function to remove any proposed records and clean up the board.

The Complete Transaction Summary: 5 Trades, One Full Cycle

With everything closed out, here's the complete picture of every transaction in this wheel strategy cycle on AAPL. Five total transactions, each one building on the last, all tracked in MyATMM's cost basis page.

Notice the symmetry here. The stock purchase (Transaction 2) and the stock sale (Transaction 5) cancel each other out at the same $270 strike. You bought 100 shares at $270, and they got called away at $270. The profit on this cycle comes entirely from the option premium collected on Transactions 1, 3, and 4.

Understanding Cost Basis with Premium: The Long Game

Once all positions are closed and you own zero shares, the MyATMM dashboard shows some interesting numbers. Your shares owned is zero, shares from puts is zero, stock value is zero, and there's no unrealized gain or loss. Your cost basis reads $0.00 because you don't hold any shares.

But here's where it gets really interesting — and this is one of the most powerful aspects of tracking your wheel strategy over time.

How Cost Basis with Premium Works

When you own zero shares, your cost basis naturally shows as zero. But the moment you re-enter a position on that same ticker — whether through another put assignment or a direct stock purchase — MyATMM recalculates your cost basis with premium by factoring in all previously collected credits across your entire history on that ticker.

This means that every premium dollar you've ever collected on AAPL continues to work in your favor. Over time, as you run the continuous wheel strategy on the same ticker, your cost basis with premium keeps dropping. Eventually, it can actually go negative.

The key requirement for this to work is consistency: keep selling covered calls above your cost basis without premium, and the credits keep accumulating. Over time, this mechanical approach to income generation can produce remarkable results on quality underlying stocks.

Dashboard and Performance Review

Let's take a look at the big picture on the MyATMM dashboard now that this wheel cycle is complete.

Portfolio Overview

We started with a $100,000 deposit in the brokerage account. After completing this entire AAPL wheel cycle, here's where we stand:

• Brokerage Balance: $100,843.47 (full capital returned plus premium)
• Total Premiums Collected: $843.47
• Overall Gain/Loss: +$843.47
• Active Positions: 0 (capital fully available for redeployment)

The positions tab shows no active positions currently. However, by toggling the "include past three months" filter, you can pull up the AAPL activity and see the complete history — all five transactions and the total premium collected. This historical view shows the aggregate for any ticker across the entire time you've been tracking it in the application, not just recent transactions.

Performance Tab: Measuring ROI

The performance tab is where things get really interesting for tracking your progress against your income goals. For this AAPL wheel cycle:

The performance tab measures your premium income against your total working capital for any given month. This gives you a clear picture of whether you're hitting your income targets. A solid benchmark for the wheel strategy is 1% per week, or roughly 4% per month on total deployed capital.

With this AAPL cycle, we achieved about 1.56% in two weeks on the deployed capital — which is slightly below the 1% per week target. But remember, we had an additional $46,000 in idle capital that could have been deployed on other tickers simultaneously. The performance tab aggregates premium across all tickers, so as you add more positions on different stocks, your overall monthly return climbs toward that 4% monthly target.

Setting Up Commission and Fee Defaults

One thing worth mentioning before we wrap up is the preferences page in MyATMM, which lets you configure default commissions and fees for each transaction type. This saves you from manually entering the same values every time you track a new transaction.

Configurable Defaults

On the preferences page, you can set defaults for:

• Buy to Open — commissions and fees for opening long positions
• Sell to Open — commissions and fees for opening short positions (selling puts and calls)
• Buy to Close — commissions and fees for closing short positions
• Sell to Close — commissions and fees for closing long positions
• Stock Transactions — separate defaults for stock buys and sells
• Exercise/Assignment Fees — if your brokerage charges a fee for assignment or exercise events

For example, if your brokerage charges $0.50 per contract for options commissions, you can set that as your default and it will automatically populate every time you enter a new transaction. This is especially helpful when you're processing multiple transactions quickly, like we did in this AAPL cycle.

What's Next: Expanding the Wheel Strategy to More Tickers

This wraps up the complete AAPL wheel strategy series. Over four parts, you've seen every step of the process:

1. Part 1: Selling the initial cash-secured put on AAPL at the $270 strike
2. Part 2: Getting assigned on the put and acquiring 100 shares
3. Part 3: Playing both sides — selling a covered call and another cash-secured put simultaneously
4. Part 4: Closing out all positions, tracking the results, and reviewing performance (this article)

The beauty of the wheel strategy is its repeatability. Now that we have our full $100,843.47 back in working capital, we can immediately start another cycle on AAPL or deploy capital to a different ticker entirely. The process is the same regardless of the underlying stock — sell puts, get assigned, sell calls, get called away, repeat.

Future series are planned for other popular wheel strategy candidates including TSLA, MSFT, and NVDA. Each stock has its own personality when it comes to premium levels, volatility, and optimal strike selection, so those series will provide additional real-world examples of how to adapt the wheel strategy to different market conditions.

In the meantime, you can use the MyATMM Screener to find other stocks suitable for the wheel strategy by filtering for the premium levels and strike prices that match your income targets and risk tolerance.