Covered calls · Cash-secured puts · The wheel
The Income Wheel
A quant's evidence-based system for real monthly options income — including what the sales pitches leave out.
Selling options is a business: you collect small premiums for taking real risks. Businesses survive on risk management, not optimism. This book teaches the wheel as a professional would run it — with the index evidence, the sizing rules, the repair playbook, and a museum of blowups so you never join it.
Get it on Amazon →Paperback & Kindle · By Robert Eisenlohr — quant researcher & developer, former FINRA Series 57 trader
What makes this book different
The evidence, not the pitch
Four decades of Cboe buy-write and put-write index data — returns, volatility, and the drawdowns of 2008, 2020, and 2022 — before you risk a dollar.
A real system
The wheel as a state machine: scan → select → size → enter → manage → roll or take assignment → log → review. With the complete monthly operations checklist.
Risk rules first
Position sizing and risk-of-ruin math, sector caps, event filters, and the exact market regimes where premium selling gets people hurt.
Honest expectations
What realistic annual outcomes look like, why "income" isn't always return, and when a plain index fund beats the wheel.
Taxes & accounts
How premiums are actually taxed, assignment basis adjustments, qualified covered calls, wash-sale traps, and running the wheel inside an IRA.
The Blowup Museum
Volmageddon 2018, the OptionSellers.com collapse, the GME squeeze — each with the one risk rule that would have survived it.
Inside the system
- Part I — Foundations: options in one hour; the seller's edge and its price; reading the chain like a professional
- Part II — The Machines: covered calls; cash-secured puts; the wheel end to end; the selection system; rolling, repair & taking losses
- Part III — The Quant Layer: what the data says; position sizing and ruin; regimes and events
- Part IV — Operations: taxes and accounts; brokers, tooling & automation; the monthly operations manual
- Appendices: formulas, checklists, the Blowup Museum, glossary, sources
Written from the professional side of the screen
Robert Eisenlohr has spent 23+ years as a professional engineer and quantitative developer, most recently building portfolio-analysis and risk systems used inside a Tier-1 global bank — across equities, options, currencies, and futures. Earlier in his career, while working at a proprietary trading firm, he held the FINRA Series 57 (Securities Trader) registration.
He has watched what separates traders who compound from traders who blow up, and it is never the entry. It's the sizing, the process, and the honesty about risk. That's what this book teaches.
Get the book
Available on Amazon in paperback and Kindle. Paperback ISBN 979-8-187809-78-3.
Buy on Amazon →General educational information only — not investment, financial, tax, or legal advice, and not a recommendation. The author is not a licensed or registered investment adviser, broker-dealer, attorney, or CPA. Options carry risk of substantial loss and are not suitable for every investor. Review the OCC's "Characteristics and Risks of Standardized Options" and consult your own licensed professionals before trading.