Cash-secured puts on UNH
UnitedHealth Group was trading at $367.85 when this page was last refreshed on September 30, 2026. 7 out-of-the-money UNH puts sat in the 0.15 to 0.25 delta band, paying $265 to $628 a contract against $34,000 of cash you would have to set aside per contract. 4 of them came back scored.
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 9 9d | $350.00 | $2.44 / $2.85 | $265 | $35,000 | 30.6% | 79% | $347.36 |
| October 16 16d | $340.00 | $4.85 / $5.00 | $493 | $34,000 | 33.0% | 79% | $335.08 |
| October 30 30d | $340.00 | $6.05 / $6.50 | $628 | $34,000 | 22.5% | 78% | $333.73 |
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 $340.00 put expiring October 30 pays $628 and commits $34,000 in cash for 30 days, which works out to 1.9% on the money you tied up, or 22.5% annualized.
Your break-even is $333.73, 9.3% 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 UNH at $333.73 and hold it? If the answer is no, $628 is not the reason to say yes.
What the premium is priced off
40% at the money is well above a market-average tape. You get paid more here. You get paid more here because it moves more.
Can you actually get filled
Median bid-ask spread is 7.2% of the mid, widening to 15.5% on the worst strike here. Workable, but do not send a market order. Open interest is deep, 1,559 contracts at the median strike, so getting out early is not a problem.
Dates that matter in this window
Earnings land inside the 45-day window. That is the one date that reliably breaks a premium-selling trade: the stock gaps, the strike you picked on a probability model turns out to have been picked on the wrong distribution, and the vol you sold collapses to reward the buyer instead of you. The engine deducts heavily for it. The stock pays about 2.5% a year, and no ex-dividend date was confirmed inside this window.
The worst case, stated properly
Max loss on this trade is $33,373, which is what you lose if UNH goes to zero. Nobody plans for zero. A 25% gap on bad news is not exotic though, and on the $340.00 strike that is roughly $5,784 of unrealized loss against $628 collected. 9 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 33.0%, on the $340.00 strike expiring October 16. It is $493 of actual cash. Over 16 days that is 1.4% 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 30.6%, 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 UNH?
Strike times 100 per contract, in full. On the $340.00 strike above that is $34,000 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 UNH cash-secured put?
Strike minus the premium per share. On the $340.00 strike expiring October 30 that is $333.73, which is 9.3% below where the stock was at the snapshot. Below that price you are down money on the position, premium included.
Is selling puts on UNH 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 4 of 7 in-band puts came back scored, and it would have ranked them and shown you the head of that list. 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 UNH chain from September 30, 2026, and an option chain from last week is history, not a quote.