Questions

What is PutWatch?

A daily research tool for people who sell options. Every weekday it scores several hundred liquid US names against a fixed, published model and publishes a top ten for cash-secured puts and a top ten for short strangles. You decide what, if anything, to trade.

Does PutWatch tell me what to trade?

No. It reports which candidates its rules scored highest. That is a statement about the rules, not a recommendation about your account — it knows nothing about your tax situation, your other holdings or your tolerance for being assigned.

Does PutWatch place trades or connect to my broker?

No, and it cannot. It has no connection to any brokerage, never asks for brokerage credentials, and never sees your balances, buying power, positions or orders. You place every order yourself, at your own broker.

Who is it for?

People who already sell options and want to spend less time searching. Short strangles need an approval level your broker has to grant you, and cash-secured puts need enough cash to stand behind the strike — if neither of those is true yet, this is not the right tool.

How are candidates chosen?

Every candidate passes eleven hard gates — volume, trading history, fund type, pending mergers, accounting distress, earnings inside the window, expiration range, open interest, contract volume, bid-ask spread and minimum credit — before it is scored at all. What survives is scored out of 100 on six weighted factors. All of it is published on the methodology page.

What expirations does it use?

It aims at 45 days and takes what the monthly cycle offers inside a band of 32 to 70 days. The floor exists to protect the exit rules: the time-based close fires at 21 days, so a much shorter entry would hit its exit almost immediately, in the slowest part of the decay curve.

Does a high score mean a good trade?

It means the candidate ranked highly under rules you can read. Scores use fixed scales rather than daily percentiles, so a 78 in March means what a 78 means in October and a list is never merely "best of a bad day". What it is not is a probability, a forecast or a recommendation.

Can I apply my own rules?

Yes. You set the expiry and delta you want and the exits you use. The defaults are 45 days out, close at 50% of the credit captured, cut at 200%, and out by 21 days. Your settings change what is shown to you; they never change what the record reports.

How do exit alerts reach me?

Positions you add are marked daily and flagged in the app the moment one reaches your profit target, your stop or your close-by date. The flag on the position is the durable record; where your browser supports notifications and you have allowed them, a push notification goes out on top of it.

Are the results real trades?

No, and they are not a backtest either. Every pick that is published is opened as a standardized paper position on the day it is published — one contract, entered at the mid — and closed by fixed rules: 50% of the credit captured, a 200% stop, or 21 days to expiry, whichever comes first. No discretion is applied and nothing is removed for looking bad.

Why is the win rate so high?

Because that is what this strategy does, not because the model is unusually clever. A short put closed at half the credit wins most of the time by construction — the losses are rarer and larger. A high win rate does not mean low risk, and the numbers worth reading are the average return on capital, the holding period and the worst single trade, all of which are published beside it.

What is not in those numbers?

Fees, commissions and slippage are excluded — fills are assumed at the mid. The sample is small and young. Assignment is reported separately rather than counted as a win or a loss, because a put that gets assigned has bought stock at a price the seller chose, which is an outcome with its own arithmetic.

What does it cost?

$49 a month, or $490 a year, which is two months free against the monthly price. One plan; there is no cheaper tier with less in it.

How does the free trial work?

7 days free, with a card required to start it. If you do not cancel before it ends, it converts to the plan you chose and renews until you cancel.

Can I cancel?

Yes, from the billing page in two clicks, at any time. Cancelling stops the next charge and you keep access until the end of the period you have already paid for.

Is this investment advice?

No. PutWatch publishes research and educational material about options markets. It is not an investment adviser, not a broker-dealer and not a financial planner, and nothing it publishes is a recommendation to buy or sell any security or to adopt any strategy.

Can the data be wrong?

Yes. Prices, implied volatilities and earnings dates come from third-party vendors and can be stale, delayed or simply wrong. Check anything that matters against your own broker before you act on it.

What are the risks?

Selling options can lose more than the premium received. A cash-secured put obliges you to buy the underlying at the strike however far it has fallen, and a short strangle carries theoretically unlimited loss on the call side. Do not trade either with money you cannot afford to lose.