Selling options for income

The claim

“My Boring Options Strategy SP500 & Stocks Made $150,000 (COPY MY SYSTEM) $AMD $SPY”

@TradingWarz, 13 September 2026, 16,465 views¹²

The tweet gives no amount invested and no period, so the profit cannot be turned into a rate of return². The second of our 2 tweets, seen 15,854 times, sets out a plan: get $100,000 invested, then sell options and make $2,000 to $3,000 a month¹. We read that as 24% to 36% a year (our estimate and inference; our copy of the tweet is cut off)¹. This page judges the scheme, not the people who tweeted.

The sums

Selling a “put” option is like selling insurance. The buyer pays you a fee, the premium. If the share price falls below an agreed price, you must buy 100 shares at it. “Fully backed” means you keep enough cash to buy them.

Premium is not profit. From 2006 to 2018, one-month puts sold at the current price of the S&P 500, the index of 500 large US companies, collected an average of 22.1% of the account a year⁹. Cboe, the exchange that lists these options, publishes the PutWrite index, which tracks selling such a put, fully backed, every month¹⁰. It earned 7.27% a year from January 2007 to 9 October 2026, and about 8.6% a year over the last ten years¹¹. These are our sums from Cboe’s daily file, and the index is calculated, not a real account¹¹¹³.

Those returns include interest on the cash. A 4-week US Treasury bill, a short loan to the US government, yielded 4.03% on 9 October 2026: about $336 a month on $100,000 for doing nothing (our estimate)²². So the seller kept roughly a quarter to a third of the premium, counting that interest (our estimate; the periods differ)^9101113. The claim’s 24% to 36% is about what is collected, not what is kept⁹¹⁰. At the index’s returns, $2,500 a month needs about $350,000 to $410,000 (our estimate)¹¹.

What happens to most people who try

We found no data on what share of ordinary US option sellers make money.

By our sums from Cboe’s file, the index lost money in 63 of 237 months, lost 26.8% in 2008, and fell 28.9% in 22 trading days in 2020¹¹.

Reaching the claimed number takes volatile single stocks, for which we found no long record after losses⁸, or leverage: selling more contracts than your cash covers, with only a deposit behind them²³. Collecting $2,500 a month on $100,000 means contracts covering about $380,000, 3.8 times the account (our estimate)⁷²³. A fall like 2020’s would then lose more than the whole account (our estimate)¹¹.

The collapses we found involved leverage, hidden risk or raising the stakes after losses, not fully backed index puts^35394041.

The upside

The method itself has a long, measured, positive return.

• The index: 9.40% a year over 37 years, against 9.91% for the S&P 500¹². It is calculated, before costs, and published by Cboe, an interested party¹².
• A real fund: XYLD sells calls, the right to buy shares from the seller at a fixed price, on the S&P 500. Its audited return was 8.49% a year over ten years to 30 September 2026, against 15.18% for SPY, a fund that tracks the index¹⁶¹⁷. In the last 12 months it returned 17.57% against 15.60%¹⁶¹⁷.
• One individual: Karsten Jeske, a blogger, reports $103,700 of option profit in 2025, and about 7% a year since 2018 on top of his other investments⁴³⁴⁴. These are his own figures; we saw no brokerage statements, and he gives no account size⁴³. He used about 3.3 times leverage as of September 2024 and trades more than 10,000 contracts a year⁴⁴⁴⁵.

A realistic good result for the fully backed index version is 7% to 10% a year, about $600 to $830 a month on $100,000 before tax (our estimate)¹¹¹²¹⁶. No source we found ranks ordinary sellers by result, so the top tenth’s earnings are unknown.

What it takes to compete

Capital. Among US families who own shares directly, the middle family held $15,000 of them in 2022⁵⁴. At 7% to 9% a year, that earns about $90 to $110 a month (our estimate)¹¹⁵⁴.

Cost. Fees are about $1 a contract; no course or tool is required³².

Early signs. If your contracts cover more than your cash, you are using leverage, and the index record does not describe your risk. If your account’s total value, counting shares you were made to buy at today’s price, has grown less than an index fund over the same period, the “income” is coming from your own capital. Of anyone offering a system, ask the capital, the period, the losing months and the total account value.

Who else makes money from it

Brokers earn whether or not the seller does: Robinhood reported options revenue of $314 million for the last three months of 2025⁶⁵.

The site tradingwarz.com, whose footer links to the X account quoted above, lists live option alerts at $79.99, without saying whether that is monthly³. Its free public sheet lists about 245 dated trades from May 2025 to October 2026, seven at a loss, and a net profit of $752,231.72⁷³. These are the site’s own figures; we saw no brokerage statements⁷³. It gives no account size, and we did not find the tweet’s $150,000 in it⁷³.