Wealth Building With Options

Dan ties the wheel strategy to New Year’s resolutions, emphasizing that the wheel only works when it’s traded consistently and in cycles. He explains how to systematize the process so it fits into real life—reducing friction, minimizing time demands and making long-term wealth building sustainable.

• Why the wheel succeeds only as a cyclical strategy
• Commitment...

Dan puts implied volatility in its proper place: It’s not the single most important factor in wheel trading, but it meaningfully improves outcomes over time. Using a field-goal analogy, Dan explains how volatility analysis adds a “little edge” on each trade that compounds across many cycles. He then goes deeper into when volatility matters most, plus a practical framework for evaluating whether selling puts or calls into earnings c...

Dan explains why wheel traders must think about technical analysis differently from momentum or breakout traders. Using a Home Depot analogy, Dan shows how the right tool for the job matters—especially when selecting indicators for skate-objective trades. He dives into oscillators (with a focus on RSI) and introduces a new strike-selection concept he’s developing.

• Why trends and momentum...

Dan demystifies one of the most misunderstood areas of technical analysis: support and resistance. Rather than treating these levels as “magic lines on a chart,” Dan explains the market mechanics behind them—how real buy and sell orders, supply and demand, and human decision-making actually move prices. 

Key Topics

• Why support and resistance are commonly misunderstood

Dan breaks down the true “secret sauce” of successful wheel trading: pairing the right objective (trade vs. skate) with the right type of analysis (fundamental vs. technical). He demonstrates how to reverse-engineer strike prices using dividend yields and valuation metrics and walks through a real example using Verizon (VZ).

• Defining the skate objective vs. the trade objective

Dan compares buying stocks to buying a dry cleaning business to demystify fundamental investing. Learn how value investors like Warren Buffett evaluate companies, and why understanding P/E ratios, earnings, and dividends can help you select better strike prices for your wheel trades.

• The dry cleaner analogy: why buying stock is just like buying a business
• P/E...

Episode Summary In this conversation, Dan sits down with performance coach and former trader Denise Shull, author of Market Mind Games and the real-life inspiration for Wendy Rhoades on Billions. Denise explains why the old mantra “take the emotion out of trading” is scientifically wrong—and how learning to work with your emotions, instead of against them, can dramatically improve your decision-making. From intuition and regret to ...

Finding quality trade ideas for the Wheel Strategy is essential—but where do you actually get them? In this episode, Dan Passarelli breaks down the best (and worst) sources for finding wheel trade candidates. From trade idea services and investment clubs to news media and DIY analysis, Dan explores the pros and cons of each approach and shares what really works for covered calls and cash-secured puts.

Dan also discusses why boring,...

In this episode of Wealth Building with Options, Dan sits down with James Kostulias, Head of Trading Services at Schwab—where he oversees the end-to-end trading experience for clients at a firm averaging over 7 million trades per day for three consecutive quarters.

From Schwab’s latest Q4 Trader Sentiment Survey to the dramatic evolution from “options are too risky” to “options as risk management tools,” James shares an insider’s v...

Why Traders Lie to Themselves — and How to Stop

When it comes to covered calls and cash-secured puts, most traders tell themselves comforting half-truths: “I’d be fine owning the stock if it drops.” “I’d be fine selling my shares if they get called away.” But when those scenarios actually happen—when a stock gaps lower or rallies far past a strike—those same traders often panic, blame the market, and forget the plan they swore th...

Episode 38: The Objective of My Affliction

95% of traders lose money. Not because they're not smart—but because they're missing something fundamental.

In this episode:

• What if most traders are making the same mistake with every single trade?
• What's the simple two-word framework that changes everything?
• Why don't even experienced traders unde...

Summary: Dan Passarelli sits down with coach John Kmiecik to unpack why smart traders still struggle with losses, risk, and variance—and how to reframe decisions using Prospect Theory. They cover loss aversion, the disposition effect, myopic loss aversion, “house money” mental accounting, and practical coaching tactics (like multiple exits and portfolio-level thinking) to build discipline. Dan also corrects a note from last week: n...

In this episode, Dan Passarelli explores how biology and psychology quietly influence every trading decision—often more than logic or data. Through a story that begins in the Chicago trading pits and leads all the way to a conference in Hong Kong, Dan recounts his unexpected encounter with John Coates, a former Goldman Sachs trader turned neuroscientist and author of The Hour Between Dog and Wolf.

That mee...

Have you ever "felt" something was off in the market—before you could explain why? In early 2021, Dan noticed unusual behavior across several stocks; days later, the Archegos Capital blow-up surfaced. It wasn't clairvoyance—it was his subconscious processing patterns his conscious mind hadn't connected yet. In this episode, Dan explores how biology and psychology shape trading decisions: why fear and overconfidence sneak in even wh...

What If You Could Turn a Losing Trade Into a Winner—Without Taking the Loss?

Most covered call and cash-secured put traders hit a wall when their trades go against them. The stock blows through their strike price, they're staring at a loss, and panic sets in. But what if there was a way to defer that loss, improve your odds, and keep your original credit intact?

Enter the net-zero roll—the technique that separates winning traders f...

In this episode of Wealth Building with Options, Dan Passarelli dives deep into the motivations behind trading the wheel strategy—and why understanding them can make or break your results.

Dan begins with a mistake he sees all too often: traders push strikes too far away from the stock price, "running and hiding" instead of sticking to their true objective—getting assigned—which undermines their entire strategy. From there, he lays...

Most wheel traders obsess over single trades and miss the bigger picture. In this episode, Dan Passarelli shares the mindset shift that changed his covered call and cash-secured put trading: manage in cycles, not one-offs.

Using a powerful casino/blackjack analogy, Dan reveals why even professional card counters can lose money for six months straight despite having an edge—and how "how you play" determines your actual results, not ...

In this episode of Wealth Building with Options, host Dan Passarelli dives into one of the most powerful – and often overlooked – forces shaping trading decisions: the endowment effect. This behavioral economics concept explains why we tend to overvalue what we already own, and why that bias can hold traders and investors back from making better choices.

Drawing on research from Richard Thaler and examples ranging from coffee mugs ...

Dan sits down with longtime market maker Kevin “Lex” Luthringshausen to demystify how options markets actually work behind the scenes. They cover dealer/market-maker behavior, why hedging is the real “edge,” how dispersion trading works, and what payment for order flow (PFOF) really is—and why it matters for retail traders. The conversation finishes with practical guidance for covered calls, cash-secured puts, and the “poor man’s c...