# wheel-v1 DTE sweep — cycle speed vs premium per cycle

**RESEARCH ONLY — not wired into any live path.** Same Black-Scholes + realized-vol-as-IV-proxy caveats as wheel-entry-timing.md — a directional comparison, not real historical option quotes.

All rows use CONTINUOUS selling (no dip-gate — that research already showed gating costs more premium than it recovers). Symbols: NFLX, DIS, MARA, SOFI, SMCI. Window: 2y. Target put delta -0.3.

| Expiration | Total cycles | Total premium | Avg premium/cycle | Assignments | Annualized premium |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 7d | 300 | $19358 | $65 | 115 | $9679/yr |
| 14d | 160 | $14592 | $91 | 57 | $7296/yr |
| 21d | 110 | $12674 | $115 | 38 | $6337/yr |
| 28d | 85 | $11290 | $133 | 32 | $5645/yr |

**Best annualized premium: 7d expirations ($9679/yr).**

Read before concluding anything: shorter expirations DO produce more cycles (more chances to be right, more chances to be assigned), but each cycle's premium shrinks faster than the cycle count grows, in this model — extrinsic value scales roughly with sqrt(time), so halving DTE doesn't halve premium, it cuts it by more per-cycle even though you get roughly proportionally more cycles. Whether the annualized number actually favors shorter or longer DTE is symbol- and volatility-dependent — read the per-row numbers, not just the "best" line, before picking a number. This also ignores real-world friction a shorter cycle multiplies: commissions/slippage per round-trip, and more frequent assignment decisions to manage.