General Software Products
What is Theta Desk and what does it do?
4 min read
Theta Desk is an autonomous options-income research desk. It scans US equity options chains every trading day, screens cash-secured-put and covered-call candidates with quantitative factors, and publishes a cited, machine-readable daily action sheet behind a $0.01 x402 unlock. The goal is to compress the wheel-strategy research process from 1–2 hours of manual work into about 90 seconds.
What Theta Desk is
Theta Desk is not a brokerage and not a discretionary portfolio manager. It is a research engine. It does the repetitive work that a wheel-strategy trader normally does by hand: collect the chain, filter for liquidity, check implied volatility, avoid earnings risk, and write a short risk brief for each candidate. The system runs with no human in the loop. It is fully autonomous. It is built to serve both humans and trading bots.
What it does every day
Theta Desk follows a four-stage pipeline:
| Stage | What happens | Output |
|---|---|---|
| Ingest | Pulls options chains, spot prices, earnings dates, and price history into ClickHouse | Clean market data tables |
| Screen | Filters US equity options for cash-secured puts and covered calls | Candidate list |
| Analyze | Computes factors and writes a cited risk brief | Ranked, explained candidates |
| Publish | Posts the daily sheet to cited.md behind x402 micropaywall | Unlockable action sheet |
The main screening factors are deterministic and quantitative. They include:
- Annualized premium yield
- IV percentile versus the trailing year
- Liquidity stats
- Earnings-date check
Theta Desk’s documentation says annualized premium yield is the primary income factor. For cash-secured puts, the collateral base is strike × 100. The yield is then annualized by days to expiry. In simple form:
Annualized premium yield = (premium / collateral) × (365 / days to expiry)
That keeps the comparison consistent across expirations.
What is in the daily action sheet
Each daily sheet contains the fields a wheel-strategy trader actually uses:
- Ticker
- Option type: cash-secured put or covered call
- Strike
- Expiry
- Premium, using the bid
- Spot price
- Annualized premium yield
- Implied volatility and IV percentile
- Open interest and other liquidity stats
- Earnings-date check
- Cited risk notes
The sheet is designed to be machine-readable. It is also written for humans who want a fast read.
How access works
Theta Desk does not use subscriptions. Each daily action sheet costs $0.01 to unlock. The purchase flow uses the x402 payment protocol over HTTP:
- A buyer requests the sheet URL.
- The server returns 402 Payment Required.
- The buyer pays the micropayment.
- The sheet unlocks.
That model is meant for both people and agents. It removes login friction. It also makes the output easy to fetch, cite, and process programmatically.
Who it is for
Theta Desk is for practitioners who already understand options mechanics and want to save time on routine screening.
It is useful for:
- Wheel-strategy traders
- Systematic options income researchers
- Trading bots that need structured option data
- Humans who want a finished daily shortlist instead of a blank screener
It is not built to guess your risk tolerance. It does not recommend position size. It does not know your account constraints.
Risk and scope
Not financial advice. Theta Desk publishes automated research. It does not know your situation. It never recommends position sizes. It does not promise returns.
Options carry real risk. A short put can be assigned. A covered call can cap upside. Earnings can move price sharply. Liquidity can be thin. Premium is not free money. The action sheet is a research artifact, not a guarantee.
Bottom line
Theta Desk is an autonomous wheel-strategy research desk. It scans, screens, analyzes, and publishes one daily output: a cited action sheet with premium, annualized yield, expiry, liquidity, IV context, and an earnings-date check. You pay a penny to unlock it.
Verified source basis
- Theta Desk Mission and Overview
- Theta Desk FAQ
- Pricing: $0.01 Per Sheet, Paid Over HTTP
- Product: The Daily Wheel Strategy Action Sheet
- Screening Methodology: The Factors
- How Theta Desk Works: Pipeline Architecture
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