Some strategies in the Marketplace don't always close a trade for cash. Sometimes they let it turn into stock on purpose. When that happens, the strategy's track record has two halves — the options it sold, and the shares it ended up holding — and this page explains how you're shown both.
What "getting assigned" actually means
When a trader sells an option, someone else has the right to act on it. If they do, the trader is assigned:
- Sells a put and gets assigned → they must buy 100 shares per contract, at the strike price. They now own the stock.
- Sells a call against shares they own and gets assigned → they must sell those 100 shares per contract, at the strike price. The stock is gone.
Traders who run "the wheel" do this deliberately. They sell puts on a stock they're happy to own, take the shares if it comes to that, then sell calls against those shares until the stock gets called away — collecting premium the whole time.
Note
Nothing goes wrong when a trade is assigned. It's the plan working, not a trade blowing up.
How an assigned trade is scored
Here's the important part. When a sold option is assigned, the trader keeps every penny of the premium — the option was never bought back, so there was no cost to close it.
So on the trade list, an assigned trade shows a blue WHEEL tag and a gain equal to the premium collected. It is not shown as a loss, because nothing was lost on the option.
Warning
You may have seen wheel trades listed elsewhere as enormous losses — figures like −1,300% or −10,000%. That happens when the cash used to buy the shares is mistakenly recorded as the cost of closing the option. It isn't. That money bought stock, which the trader still owns.
The Wheel holdings table
Whenever a strategy has taken delivery of shares, a separate Wheel holdings table appears on its listing, below the headline stats. It's kept apart from the trade list on purpose — these are stock positions, not option trades.
Each row shows one stock the strategy is currently holding:
| Column | What it tells you |
|---|---|
| Ticker | The stock itself, e.g. GIS |
| Shares | How many shares are held — always 100 per contract assigned |
| Avg paid | The average price per share actually paid |
| Cost | The total cash tied up in that stock |
| Break-even | The price the stock needs to reach for the whole cycle to come out even |
| Held since | When the most recent batch of shares arrived |
Break-even is usually a little lower than Avg paid, and that's the premium doing its job — see the example below.
How Total P&L is reported
When a strategy has a share leg, the Total P&L on its listing counts both halves, and the line underneath splits them out:
−$1,200 options · +$8,300 shares
That way you can see which half is actually carrying the strategy. Shares only count once they've actually been sold or called away — stock the strategy is still holding isn't counted as a profit or a loss, because nobody knows yet what it'll sell for.
Note
You may see a line saying some shares were sold from positions the strategy already held before its history here begins. Those sales are real, but what was originally paid for the stock isn't on record, so there's no honest way to score them — they're left out of the total rather than guessed at.
A worked example
A trader sells one $60 put on O (Realty Income) and collects $0.55 — that's $55, since one contract covers 100 shares.
O closes below $60 at expiration, so the put is assigned:
- The option trade closes as a $55 gain. He kept the whole premium. It's tagged WHEEL on the trade list.
- 100 shares of O appear in Wheel holdings, bought at $60 — $6,000 of cash.
- But he only spent $5,945 out of pocket, because that $55 of premium offsets the purchase. So the table shows Avg paid $60.00 and Break-even $59.45.
Months later he sells the shares at $62.50:
- The shares leave the holdings table.
- +$250 is added to the strategy's shares P&L ($2.50 per share × 100).
- Combined with the $55 premium, the full cycle made $305.
Tip
If a strategy's options P&L looks thin but its shares P&L is large, that's a wheel strategy working exactly as intended — most of the money is made on the stock, with the premium as a steady bonus on top.
What this means when you're comparing strategies
A wheel strategy ties up real cash. Holding 100 shares of a $60 stock means $6,000 sitting in that position, possibly for months. The Cost column tells you how much capital the strategy is carrying right now — worth weighing against your own account size before you follow it.
If you follow a strategy like this yourself, the Allow Wheel setting controls whether your account takes those assignment-friendly trades at all. It starts off, so you'll skip them until you decide otherwise.