Bitcoin hit a new all-time high, my crypto miner got called away at break-even, and I actually beat the S&P 500 this month. First time in a while. I’ll take it.
Welcome back to the challenge where I pit my options-selling strategy against the boring, reliable S&P 500 — and then report back on exactly how complicated I managed to make something that’s supposed to be simple. If you’re new here, the short version: I deposited $6,000 into a Roth IRA back in June 2023, and every month I sell cash-secured puts and covered calls (a strategy known as the Wheel) to try to generate income. At the same time, I track what that same $6,000 would be worth if I’d just bought shares of VOO — the Vanguard S&P 500 ETF — and done absolutely nothing.
Same disclaimer as always: I’m not a financial advisor and these posts are not investment advice. You’d be ten months behind schedule anyway, so copying these trades wouldn’t do you much good. This is for educational and entertainment purposes only. And if you do find this entertaining, I’m sorry to report you’re a money nerd, like me.
I post every trade each week along with my running commentary, then compare both accounts and keep a cumulative score. So here we go again.
You can catch up on previous months here:
- Month 1, June 2023
- Month 2, July 2023
- Month 3, August 2023
- Month 4, September 2023
- Month 5, October 2023
- Month 6, November 2023
- Month 7, December 2023
- Month 8, January 2024
- Month 9, February 2024
To start the month I am beginning from an account value of $6,019.08. After February’s grand total of nine dollars in gains, the bar was set somewhere around the floor — and for once, March managed to step over it. Don’t get too excited, but it was a decent month.
Before the week-by-week, here’s the board I’m carrying into March. I’ve got three positions, all of them stocks I was assigned and am now wheeling. There’s 100 shares of AFRM (Affirm) at a $48 cost basis from a January assignment, with no call against them at the moment. There’s 100 shares of HUT (Hut 8, a Bitcoin miner) from a February assignment at $9.50, with a $9.50 covered call already sold and expiring March 1st. And there’s 100 shares of VOD (Vodafone), with a $9 call open into March 15th. Everything that happens this month happens to one of those three names.
Week 1, March 1–2
March opened on a Friday, and the only thing on the docket was a leftover from February finishing its run. The HUT 8 Corp (a Bitcoin mining company, ticker HUT) covered call at the $9.50 strike — the one I’d sold on February 26th — expired worthless on March 1st. That’s the outcome I wanted. A covered call, for anyone just joining: I own 100 shares of a stock and sell someone the right to buy them from me at a set price (the strike) by a set date (the expiration), and I keep the premium up front. If the stock stays below the strike, the call expires worthless, I keep both the premium and my shares, and I get to do it all over again. HUT was trading below $9.50 into Friday, so that’s what happened — I kept the premium and the shares, free to sell another call.
The other two holdings just sat there. AFRM was uncovered and I left it that way, and the VOD call kept ticking toward its March 15th expiration. Nothing to do on either but let them ride.
| Date | Description | Qty | Price | Fees & Comm | Amount |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 3/1/2024 | CALL HUT 8 CORP $9.5 EXP 03/01/24 — Expired | 1 | — | — | — |
Week 2, March 3–9
With the HUT shares free again, I went right back to selling calls against them. On March 4th I sold the March 8th $9.50 call on HUT and collected $59.34 in premium. Now, $59 on a $9.50 stock is a fat premium — that’s the kind of number you only see when the options market is pricing in big moves, and in early March it absolutely was. Bitcoin was running hard toward what would become a new all-time high, and anything crypto-adjacent had wildly elevated implied volatility. Implied volatility is just the market’s expectation of how much a stock might swing, and the more swing traders expect, the more they’ll pay for options — which is great news when you’re the one selling them. HUT was bouncing right around my $9.50 strike, so a four-day call paid like a slot machine.
Then on March 8th the call expired worthless, HUT having stayed below $9.50 into the close. Another clean expiration, another $59 in the bank, shares still mine. The crypto rally was lifting everything except, apparently, the exact thing I needed to stay below.
AFRM again stayed uncovered on purpose. With the stock down in the $30s, a call at my $48 cost basis would’ve paid almost nothing, and selling one at a lower strike would just lock in a loss I’m not ready to eat. So it sits, and I wait for either a rally that lets me sell a call worth selling or a decision to give up and move the money elsewhere. VOD’s call, meanwhile, kept riding toward the 15th untouched.
| Date | Description | Qty | Price | Fees & Comm | Amount |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 3/4/2024 | CALL HUT 8 CORP $9.5 EXP 03/08/24 — Sell to Open | 1 | $0.60 | $0.66 | $59.34 |
| 3/8/2024 | CALL HUT 8 CORP $9.5 EXP 03/08/24 — Expired | 1 | — | — | — |
Week 3, March 10–16
Week 3 was a busy one with a lot of little expirations cleaning off the board. On March 11th I opened two new covered calls. The first was another HUT $9.50 call expiring March 15th — but this time the premium was a measly $6.34. The difference from the week before tells the whole story: HUT had cooled off and dropped further below $9.50, so the call was deep out of the money and barely worth anything. The safer the strike feels, the thinner the premium.
The second was a covered call on AFRM (Affirm Holdings, the buy-now-pay-later fintech) at a $48 strike, also expiring March 15th, for an even thinner $7.34. Affirm had faded down into the $30s after its February earnings pop wore off, which left my $48 strike a long way up the hill — hence the eight-cent premium. I’m still holding those 100 AFRM shares from the assignment back in January with a $48 cost basis, so I keep selling calls at $48 to avoid locking in a loss, and I collect whatever scraps the market will give me. Most weeks that’s a few dollars at best, and this was one of them.
March 15th was the third Friday of the month — the big monthly options expiration — and it cleared three positions off the board at once. The HUT $9.50 call, the AFRM $48 call, and an old VOD (Vodafone) $9 call I’d sold back in February all expired worthless on the same day, with no shares called away on any of them. There was also $0.32 in bank interest, because every penny counts when your monthly gains have recently been measured in single dollars.
By mid-month Bitcoin had punched through to a fresh all-time high around $73,800 on March 12–13 — the first time in its history it set a record before a halving rather than after one. The spot Bitcoin ETFs approved back in January had pulled a flood of institutional money into the market ahead of the April halving. That was great for crypto sentiment and slightly inconvenient for me, since I was the one selling $9.50 calls on a Bitcoin miner and hoping they’d expire worthless.
| Date | Description | Qty | Price | Fees & Comm | Amount |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 3/11/2024 | CALL HUT 8 CORP $9.5 EXP 03/15/24 — Sell to Open | 1 | $0.07 | $0.66 | $6.34 |
| 3/11/2024 | CALL AFFIRM HLDGS INC $48 EXP 03/15/24 — Sell to Open | 1 | $0.08 | $0.66 | $7.34 |
| 3/15/2024 | CALL VODAFONE GROUP $9 EXP 03/15/24 — Expired | 1 | — | — | — |
| 3/15/2024 | CALL AFFIRM HLDGS INC $48 EXP 03/15/24 — Expired | 1 | — | — | — |
| 3/15/2024 | CALL HUT 8 CORP $9.5 EXP 03/15/24 — Expired | 1 | — | — | — |
| 3/15/2024 | Bank Interest | — | — | — | $0.32 |
Week 4, March 17–23
A quieter week of small premiums. On March 18th I sold two more covered calls: a VOD $9 call expiring March 22nd for $5.34, and a HUT $9.50 call expiring March 22nd for $4.34. Pocket change, but pocket change is still change. Vodafone continues to be the sleepiest corner of this account — I keep selling $9 calls on it, they keep expiring worthless, and the stock keeps drifting sideways-to-down. It’s like collecting rent on a building nobody wants to buy. HUT, meanwhile, was still hanging out below $9.50, so its call was cheap too.
Both calls expired worthless on March 22nd. Bitcoin had started pulling back from its mid-month high by this point — crypto is a two-way street and the post-record profit-taking had kicked in — which helped keep HUT below my strike right when I wanted it there. After weeks of the rally working against me, the pullback finally worked in my favor for an expiration. Funny how that goes.
AFRM, still uncovered after last Friday’s expiration, kept doing what it does best lately: nothing worth writing home about. Same call as the past two weeks — the premiums at my strike aren’t worth the paper — so I left it be.
| Date | Description | Qty | Price | Fees & Comm | Amount |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 3/18/2024 | CALL VODAFONE GROUP $9 EXP 03/22/24 — Sell to Open | 1 | $0.06 | $0.66 | $5.34 |
| 3/18/2024 | CALL HUT 8 CORP $9.5 EXP 03/22/24 — Sell to Open | 1 | $0.05 | $0.66 | $4.34 |
| 3/22/2024 | CALL HUT 8 CORP $9.5 EXP 03/22/24 — Expired | 1 | — | — | — |
| 3/22/2024 | CALL VODAFONE GROUP $9 EXP 03/22/24 — Expired | 1 | — | — | — |
Week 5, March 24–30
The most eventful week of the month. On March 25th I sold a HUT $9.50 call expiring March 28th and the premium jumped all the way back to $55.34. Remember, the week before that same call paid me four bucks. The fat premium was the market telling me HUT had run right back up to — and through — my $9.50 strike as Bitcoin stabilized near its highs into late March. When a call premium balloons like that, it usually means the stock is at or above the strike and the odds of getting called away are real.
I also sold a longer-dated VOD $9 call on the 25th, this one expiring all the way out on April 19th, for $16.34. Pushing the expiration further out collects a bit more premium up front, and frankly I wanted one set-it-and-forget-it position heading into next month.
Then March 28th — the Thursday before the long Easter weekend — arrived and the HUT call I’d just sold got assigned. When a covered call expires in the money (the stock closes above your strike), the buyer exercises and your shares get called away — sold at the strike price whether you like it or not. So my 100 shares of HUT were sold at $9.50, generating $949.97 in proceeds. My cost basis on those shares was $950.00 from the February assignment, so on the shares themselves I came out almost exactly even — three cents of fees, basically a rounding error.
And this is the part I’m actually happy about. Add up the whole cycle — the put I sold in February that got me into HUT, plus every call I sold against the shares afterward — and I collected $225.04 in premium and walked away from the shares at break-even. That’s $225 on a $950 position in about five weeks, with no loss on the stock itself. After the better part of a year watching the index lap me, running one full wheel cleanly from start to finish is the kind of small win I needed.
| Date | Description | Qty | Price | Fees & Comm | Amount |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 3/25/2024 | CALL HUT 8 CORP $9.5 EXP 03/28/24 — Sell to Open | 1 | $0.56 | $0.66 | $55.34 |
| 3/25/2024 | CALL VODAFONE GROUP $9 EXP 04/19/24 — Sell to Open | 1 | $0.17 | $0.66 | $16.34 |
| 3/28/2024 | CALL HUT 8 CORP $9.5 EXP 03/28/24 — Assigned | 1 | — | — | — |
| 3/28/2024 | HUT 8 CORP — Sell (Called Away) | 100 | $9.50 | $0.03 | $949.97 |
Week 6, March 31
March 31st landed on a Sunday, and with Good Friday closing the markets on the 29th, the month had really already wrapped on Thursday the 28th. So Week 6 was a single closed-market day with nothing to trade. On to the numbers. Trades settled on the 1st so they are showing 4/1 on the statement.
S&P 500 (VOO) Summary Activity and Results
March was another solid month to own the index and ignore it. VOO started the month at the February 29th close of $466.93, and after the first trading day printed $471.43, it climbed to close the month at $480.70 on March 28th (the 29th being Good Friday, that was the final trading day of the month). On price alone, that’s a 2.95% gain.
The market had plenty to like. The big event was the Federal Reserve’s March 19–20 meeting, where the Fed held interest rates steady and — importantly — kept its projection of three rate cuts later in 2024 intact. Investors had been nervous that hotter inflation data might scare the Fed off cutting, so a “we’re still planning to cut” message was exactly the reassurance stocks wanted, and the index drifted to new highs on the back of it. The AI-driven mega-cap tech names that dominate the S&P 500 kept doing their thing. When your benchmark is carried by the biggest companies in the world during a tech melt-up, you don’t have to do much.
March is also a dividend month for VOO, which pays quarterly. The ex-dividend date was March 22nd at $1.543 per share. On my running balance of 15.804 shares that’s $24.39 in dividends, which I reinvest at the March 22nd closing price of $479.18 — buying another 0.051 shares and bringing the running total to 15.855 shares.
| Date | Activity | Cash In/Out | Share Price | Shares | Total Shares | Total Value |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 5/31/23 | Initial Purchase | $6,000.00 | $383.89 | 15.628 | 15.628 | $6,000.00 |
| 6/22/23 | Dividend Reinvest | $23.88 | $407.93 | 0.059 | 15.687 | — |
| 6/30/23 | End of Month | — | $407.28 | — | 15.687 | $6,364.94 |
| 7/31/23 | End of Month | — | $420.68 | — | 15.687 | $6,599.11 |
| 8/31/23 | End of Month | — | $413.83 | — | 15.687 | $6,491.80 |
| 9/27/23 | Dividend Reinvest | $24.08 | $390.91 | 0.062 | 15.749 | — |
| 9/29/23 | End of Month | — | $392.70 | — | 15.749 | $6,160.09 |
| 10/31/23 | End of Month | — | $384.17 | — | 15.749 | $6,051.43 |
| 11/30/23 | End of Month | — | $419.40 | — | 15.749 | $6,605.11 |
| 12/21/23 | Dividend Reinvest | $25.22 | $455.38 | 0.055 | 15.804 | — |
| 12/29/23 | End of Month | — | $436.80 | — | 15.804 | $6,903.19 |
| 1/31/24 | End of Month | — | $443.82 | — | 15.804 | $7,014.13 |
| 2/29/24 | End of Month | — | $466.93 | — | 15.804 | $7,379.36 |
| 3/22/24 | Dividend Reinvest | $24.39 | $479.18 | 0.051 | 15.855 | — |
| 3/28/24 | End of Month | — | $480.70 | — | 15.855 | $7,621.45 |
Month End Results on Live Account
The live account opened March at $6,019.08 and closed at $6,262.28 — a gain of $243.20, or 4.04%. After a couple of months where the account barely twitched, $243 feels almost extravagant.
What drove it was a mix of things. I collected $154.38 in net premium across the month plus another $0.32 in interest, which is a respectable haul of options income. On top of that, the HUT wheel closed out cleanly — shares called away at break-even after I’d banked all the premium — and the AFRM and VOD shares I’m holding firmed up enough on the month to push the account’s mark-to-market value higher. No assignment pulling cash into a new position this time, and nothing sold at a loss. For once the pieces lined up the right way.
Heading into April, the open positions are: 100 shares of AFRM sitting uncovered for the moment (the last call on them expired on the 15th), and 100 shares of VOD with a $9 covered call already sold and expiring April 19th. HUT is gone, called away at the end of the month. The open question is what to do with those uncovered AFRM shares — whether to keep selling calls down at a strike that pays nothing, or just hold and wait.
March 2024 Trade Summary:
| Date | Description | Qty | Price | Fees & Comm | Amount |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 3/1/2024 | CALL HUT 8 CORP $9.5 EXP 03/01/24 — Expired | 1 | — | — | — |
| 3/4/2024 | CALL HUT 8 CORP $9.5 EXP 03/08/24 — Sell to Open | 1 | $0.60 | $0.66 | $59.34 |
| 3/8/2024 | CALL HUT 8 CORP $9.5 EXP 03/08/24 — Expired | 1 | — | — | — |
| 3/11/2024 | CALL HUT 8 CORP $9.5 EXP 03/15/24 — Sell to Open | 1 | $0.07 | $0.66 | $6.34 |
| 3/11/2024 | CALL AFFIRM HLDGS INC $48 EXP 03/15/24 — Sell to Open | 1 | $0.08 | $0.66 | $7.34 |
| 3/15/2024 | CALL VODAFONE GROUP $9 EXP 03/15/24 — Expired | 1 | — | — | — |
| 3/15/2024 | CALL AFFIRM HLDGS INC $48 EXP 03/15/24 — Expired | 1 | — | — | — |
| 3/15/2024 | CALL HUT 8 CORP $9.5 EXP 03/15/24 — Expired | 1 | — | — | — |
| 3/15/2024 | Bank Interest | — | — | — | $0.32 |
| 3/18/2024 | CALL VODAFONE GROUP $9 EXP 03/22/24 — Sell to Open | 1 | $0.06 | $0.66 | $5.34 |
| 3/18/2024 | CALL HUT 8 CORP $9.5 EXP 03/22/24 — Sell to Open | 1 | $0.05 | $0.66 | $4.34 |
| 3/22/2024 | CALL HUT 8 CORP $9.5 EXP 03/22/24 — Expired | 1 | — | — | — |
| 3/22/2024 | CALL VODAFONE GROUP $9 EXP 03/22/24 — Expired | 1 | — | — | — |
| 3/25/2024 | CALL HUT 8 CORP $9.5 EXP 03/28/24 — Sell to Open | 1 | $0.56 | $0.66 | $55.34 |
| 3/25/2024 | CALL VODAFONE GROUP $9 EXP 04/19/24 — Sell to Open | 1 | $0.17 | $0.66 | $16.34 |
| 3/28/2024 | CALL HUT 8 CORP $9.5 EXP 03/28/24 — Assigned | 1 | — | — | — |
| 3/28/2024 | HUT 8 CORP — Sell (Called Away) | 100 | $9.50 | $0.03 | $949.97 |
Final Comparison
The good news, for once: my account beat VOO this month. I gained 4.04% in March against VOO’s 3.28%. It’s a small win, about three-quarters of a percentage point, but after the beating I took in February I’ll take any win I can get.
Cumulatively, though, VOO is sitting at $7,621.45 — up 27.02% from the original $6,000 — while the live account is at $6,262.28, up 4.37%. VOO is still ahead by $1,359.17. And this is the part that’s either funny or depressing depending on the day: that gap was $1,360.28 at the end of February, so a month where I actually beat the index closed the cumulative gap by about a dollar and ten cents. That’s what a 23-point hole does to you. You don’t climb out of a year of underperformance in one good month.
It’s the same story I’ve been telling for months. The Wheel works best when the stocks underneath it are also going up, and mine — AFRM, VOD, HUT — have mostly been dead weight while the index gets hauled higher by mega-cap tech. March felt good because, for once, the underlying stocks cooperated and the premiums ran clean. The approach is fine; it just hasn’t run into a market that rewards it yet.
| Date | S&P 500 ETF Account (VOO) | Change % | Total Change % | Live Account | Change % | Total Change % |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 5/31/23 | $6,000.00 | — | — | $6,000.00 | — | — |
| 6/30/23 | $6,364.94 | +6.08% | +6.08% | $6,072.00 | +1.20% | +1.20% |
| 7/31/23 | $6,599.11 | +3.68% | +9.99% | $6,051.67 | -0.33% | +0.86% |
| 8/31/23 | $6,491.80 | -1.63% | +8.20% | $6,153.84 | +1.69% | +2.56% |
| 9/29/23 | $6,160.09 | -5.11% | +2.67% | $6,132.29 | -0.35% | +2.20% |
| 10/31/23 | $6,051.43 | -1.76% | +0.86% | $6,007.87 | -2.03% | +0.13% |
| 11/30/23 | $6,605.11 | +9.15% | +10.08% | $6,263.07 | +4.25% | +4.38% |
| 12/29/23 | $6,903.19 | +4.51% | +15.05% | $6,470.21 | +3.31% | +7.84% |
| 1/31/24 | $7,014.13 | +1.61% | +16.90% | $6,009.56 | -7.12% | +0.16% |
| 2/29/24 | $7,379.36 | +5.21% | +22.99% | $6,019.08 | +0.16% | +0.32% |
| 3/28/24 | $7,621.45 | +3.28% | +27.02% | $6,262.28 | +4.04% | +4.37% |
Ending Thoughts
March was the first month in a while where I closed out the month without feeling like I’d been quietly robbed. The HUT wheel ran start to finish the way it’s supposed to, and I edged the index for the month — even if the cumulative scoreboard still reads a lopsided 27% to 4% in VOO’s favor.
What I keep reminding myself: this is an income strategy, not a moon shot. The point isn’t to beat VOO in a runaway bull market — that was always going to be hard. The point is to grind out consistent premium and, ideally, hold up better when the market eventually has a bad stretch. We haven’t had that bad stretch yet. When we do, the gap should narrow faster than a dollar and ten cents a month.
Heading into April: the Bitcoin halving lands around the 19th, which has historically been a catalyst for crypto, so I’ll be watching whether it’s worth wheeling back into a miner. AFRM is the decision I keep putting off — 100 uncovered shares well below my $48 cost basis, where selling calls pays nothing and dropping the strike locks in a loss. And VOD just keeps drifting along, now with a call running out to April 19th. Stick around.
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