08dThe Greeks
The Greeks are five numbers that answer five different questions about an option position: how much it moves with the stock, how much it earns per day, how fast that exposure changes, what happens if volatility shifts, and what happens if rates do. They are not advanced material — they are the vocabulary of the trade, and the wheel is much easier to reason about once they read as plain English.
Each one below gets a one-line summary and a deep dive: what it measures, how to read it, how premium sellers actually use it, and a worked example with the arithmetic shown so the number on your screen is checkable.
These figures now appear live on your own positions — the Assign column and the Theta / day strip in your Trade Journal, and on every Opty AI Trader position card.
| Greek | An options chain quotes | Your short put is | Meaning |
|---|---|---|---|
| Delta | −0.30 | +0.30 | behaves like owning shares |
| Theta | −0.05 | +0.05 | decay is income, not cost |
| Gamma | +0.02 | −0.02 | short gamma — the real risk |
| Vega | +0.10 | −0.10 | short volatility |
The Four That Matter
Between them these four describe essentially everything a premium seller needs to know about a position.
Volatility
What you are actually selling, and how to tell whether the price for it is good.
Completing the Set
Real Greeks that rarely drive a wheel decision — here so the picture is whole, and so you know why they are quiet.
Reading Them Here
How this platform computes and displays these numbers, including why some of our signs disagree with your broker's chain.
If you only remember four things
- Delta is roughly your odds of assignment, and it is how the strike tiers on this platform are defined.
- Theta is what the book earns per day for doing nothing. It is the income the wheel runs on.
- Gamma is the honest name for the risk. Selling premium is short gamma, and it is why the final days before expiry behave differently.
- Implied volatility is what you are selling, and IV Rank is how you tell whether the price for it is unusual for that stock.
Like everything in this guide, these are descriptions of conditions and reference levels — context for your own decisions, not instructions to trade.