How to filter trades
The screener tracks thousands of stocks. Almost none of them are worth selling a put on today. This page is the shortcut: 7 settings, in order, that take the whole list down to a handful you can actually look at properly.
You do not have to understand every number to use it. Each step below says what it is asking in plain English.
In a hurry? This button sets all 7 filters for you. You can change anything afterwards — nothing is locked.
Apply these filters for meWhat you are really asking
7 settings, but only two questions. Every filter serves one or the other, and the order matters — you check that the company is worth owning before you let a big premium tempt you.
Safety, Score and Assignment Quality. When you sell a put you are agreeing to buy the shares if the price falls to your strike. These do the heaviest cutting for exactly that reason.
IV and IV Rank. Only worth asking once the first answer is yes. A fat premium on a company you would hate to own is a trap, not an opportunity.
The 7 settings, in order
Removes about four out of every five stocks in one click. Not because you want to trade weekly options — but an exchange only lists them on stocks with real trading activity, so it doubles as the strictest liquidity test on the page.
Selling a put means setting aside the strike × 100 in cash. At $120 that is $12,000 for one contract. Set the top end to something you could comfortably tie up more than once.
Keeps Fortress and Solid companies — profitable, sensibly valued, stable size. Drops the ones flagged Caution or Danger.
The Quality Score is the screener's own read on the company, from around 15 scored factors. It measures something different from Safety — a stock can be Fortress-rated and still score in the 50s — so both are worth setting. 70 is where the score turns green; below that you are putting visibly weak names on a shortlist built for quality.
The strictest filter here, and deliberately so. Selling a put is agreeing to buy the shares if the price falls. This asks whether you would actually want to own the company at that price.
Implied volatility — roughly how much movement the market is pricing in. More expected movement means more premium. Below 40% there usually is not enough to be worth the cash you are setting aside.
Where today's volatility sits inside this stock's own past year. IV says the premium is large; IV Rank says it is large for this stock. A permanently jumpy name always looks rich until you compare it to itself.
One more check the filters cannot do for you
Earnings. Look at the Earnings column on whatever survives and cross off anything reporting before your option expires. In a typical run this removes about half the remaining names — it is the step people forget most often.
A stock can pass every filter above and still be a coin flip if it reports in ten days. Earnings move prices in ways no score predicts. If you want to see the whole calendar at once, the Earnings Calendar shows who reports when, with IV Rank on every tile.
The exception worth knowing: a company that reported yesterday is often a good candidate rather than a bad one. The risk is behind it, but the elevated premium has not fully faded yet.
Save what is left
Once you are happy with the list, click Add all to watchlist above the table. It saves every stock currently showing in one go — you can drop them into an existing watchlist or name a new one. Much faster than starring them one at a time, and it gives you a list you can come back to tomorrow.
Then check the actual contract
Everything above narrows down companies. None of it picks your option. Click any stock to open its detail view and check these before you place anything:
- Delta at or below 0.30 — a rough read on how likely the option is to be assigned. Lower means safer and pays less.
- Yield of 2% or better — the premium measured against the cash you are setting aside, not against the share price.
- Around 21 days to expiry — on the monthly expirations. Time decay works hardest for a seller in the final few weeks.
- Open interest of 300 or more at that strike — the earlier steps checked liquidity for the stock. This checks it for the exact contract, and a good stock can still have a dead strike.
These thresholds are a sensible starting point, not a rule. They describe conditions in the market — they are not a recommendation to buy or sell anything, and nothing here is financial advice.