Cash-secured puts on ORCL
Oracle Corporation was trading at $136.93 when this page was last refreshed on September 30, 2026. 5 out-of-the-money ORCL puts sat in the 0.15 to 0.25 delta band, paying $153 to $223 a contract against $12,000 of cash you would have to set aside per contract. None of them came back with a score.
Numbers on this page come from a snapshot taken on September 30, 2026. They are not live quotes and are not refreshed when you load the page.
| Expiry | Strike | Bid / ask | Premium | Cash secured | Annualized | Keep odds | Break-even |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| October 16 16d | $125.00 | $1.50 / $1.56 | $153 | $12,500 | 27.9% | 80% | $123.47 |
| October 23 23d | $125.00 | $2.16 / $2.28 | $222 | $12,500 | 28.2% | 77% | $122.78 |
| October 30 30d | $120.00 | $2.15 / $2.30 | $223 | $12,000 | 22.6% | 81% | $117.78 |
One row per expiration: the out-of-the-money strike closest to the middle of the delta band. The cash-secured column is the full obligation, strike times 100, because that is the capital the return has to be measured against and it is the number most screeners quietly leave out.
The capital number is the trade
Every screener quotes a cash-secured put by its premium. The premium is the small number. Selling the $120.00 put expiring October 30 pays $223 and commits $12,000 in cash for 30 days, which works out to 1.9% on the money you tied up, or 22.6% annualized.
Your break-even is $117.78, 14.0% below where the stock was trading. That is the price you would effectively be buying 100 shares at if you get assigned, and it is the only number that should decide the strike. One question, asked honestly: would you buy ORCL at $117.78 and hold it? If the answer is no, $223 is not the reason to say yes.
What the premium is priced off
At-the-money implied vol is 54%. That is the kind of number that draws premium sellers in and then runs them over. A 60% IV name can gap 20% on a Tuesday, and the premium that looked like free money on Monday covers about a fifth of that.
Can you actually get filled
Median bid-ask spread is 5.4% of the mid, widening to 6.7% on the worst strike here. Workable, but do not send a market order. Open interest is deep, 5,591 contracts at the median strike, so getting out early is not a problem.
Dates that matter in this window
The earnings calendar was checked and came back clean for the 45-day window. Worth confirming yourself before you write anything: calendars move, and an unconfirmed date is not the same as no date. An ex-dividend date falls inside the window too. On the put side that cuts the other way: the drop on the ex-date is priced into the option already, and early assignment on a short put is driven by extrinsic value running out, not by the dividend.
The worst case, stated properly
Max loss on this trade is $11,778, which is what you lose if ORCL goes to zero. Nobody plans for zero. A 25% gap on bad news is not exotic though, and on the $120.00 strike that is roughly $1,508 of unrealized loss against $223 collected. 7 cycles of premium, in one print.
That is the picking-up-pennies critique and it describes the risk correctly. It is a bad argument against the strategy and a very good argument for position sizing, because the trade goes wrong when eight positions in the same sector gap together, not when one does.
What the annualized column hides
The best annualized number in this ladder is 28.2%, on the $125.00 strike expiring October 23. It is $222 of actual cash. Over 23 days that is 1.8% in the hand, which is the number to compare against anything else you could do with the same capital. The near expiry is close behind at 27.9%, with a lot less time for the position to go wrong.
Questions people actually ask
How much cash do you need to sell a put on ORCL?
Strike times 100 per contract, in full. On the $120.00 strike above that is $12,000 sitting in the account per contract, doing nothing else for 30 days. A broker that lets you post less is giving you margin, which is a different trade with a different risk profile whatever the ticket calls it.
What is the break-even on a ORCL cash-secured put?
Strike minus the premium per share. On the $120.00 strike expiring October 30 that is $117.78, which is 14.0% below where the stock was at the snapshot. Below that price you are down money on the position, premium included.
Is selling puts on ORCL a good idea right now?
This page does not answer that, and neither does the number of strikes in the table. What the app can say is that at the last refresh not one of the 5 in-band ORCL puts came back with a score. There is no minimum score, so a high place in the order means better than the rest of this chain, nothing more. Read how the scoring works, and the disclaimer, before you treat any of this as a view.
None of these is a pick. This is a dated snapshot of the ORCL chain from September 30, 2026, and an option chain from last week is history, not a quote.