Selling cash-secured puts on GOOGL

Selling a put transfers the downside between $340 and zero to you, and you are paid $5.50 per share for taking it. "Cash-secured" simply means you hold the $34,000 required to buy the shares instead of leaning on margin. Same position, honest denominator.

At August 28, 2026: above $340 the put expires worthless and you keep $550 — that is the maximum this trade can make, $550. Below it you're assigned 100 shares at $340, with an effective cost basis of $334.5 once the credit is applied. That is 6.1% below where GOOGL trades today.

The engine puts the probability of keeping the full credit at 76% on GOOGL at $356.13 with 33% ATM implied vol on the Aug 28 expiry. High win rate, capped payoff, uncapped-to-zero loss — the risk profile of every short-premium trade. It is not free money; it is a rent cheque for underwriting someone else's insurance.

Max loss is $33,450 — the strike, less the credit, times 100, if GOOGL goes to zero. That number is not theoretical on single names; it is simply unlikely. Size the position against that figure, not against the premium.

The real-world failure mode is a gap, and GOOGL has the catalysts for one: earnings, cloud growth, and antitrust/regulatory headlines. A put sold 4.5% out of the money offers no protection at all against a move twice that size overnight.

Early assignment is an operational risk rather than a market one: it arrives on a weekend, converts a defined structure into a stock position, and requires cash you may have allocated elsewhere.

Thin credits, and thin for the right reason: Alphabet realizes less vol than it implies less often than its peers, so the short-premium edge is genuinely smaller here. The newly-instituted dividend also reintroduces the early-assignment calculus on ITM short calls, which covered-call writers who learned the name pre-dividend routinely forget to re-check.

GOOGL's Aug 28 strikes are $5 apart near the money (1.40% of spot). On a ladder that wide, "pick the 0.30 delta strike" resolves to whichever rung happens to be closest — sometimes not close at all. 30k contracts of open interest on Aug 28 is workable around the money and thin in the wings — width costs more here than the ladder suggests. 28 strikes on that expiry — 45% of the board — carry prints that agree with their own implied volatility and hold up across the ladder, and those are the strikes priced here. Tight and deep; a fine strike ladder makes precise strike selection genuinely possible.

Skew is inverted: the 25-delta CALL implies 2.0% more vol than the put. That is the market pricing upside risk above downside risk — a squeeze, a takeover rumour, or a crowded short. Selling calls into an inverted skew pays better than usual and is riskier than usual for exactly the same reason. The term structure is flat inside 1.5% between the two captured expiries, so there is no calendar edge to harvest and no event visibly priced into one month over the other.

At 33% ATM implied vol, the Aug 28 options are pricing a one-standard-deviation move of $31.76 over 27 days — roughly −8.9% to +8.9%, or $324.37 to $387.89. Everything the cash-secured put above collects is rent on that range. If GOOGL routinely covers 8.9% in 27 days, the credit is fair compensation rather than edge.

The specific way people lose money on GOOGL: Writing calls at a delta borrowed from a higher-vol name. The same 0.30 delta buys far less premium here, and the assignment odds are identical.