Options Trading in Excel Template: Covered Call and Cash-Secured Put Screener for Q2 2026

Options Trading in Excel Template - if that is what brought you here, you want a workbook that does more than render a payoff diagram. You want a real screener, with live underlyings, a clean income score, sized positions, and scenario analysis that respects how implied volatility actually behaves around catalysts. This guide walks through a Q2 2026 build that does exactly that, using real MarketXLS formulas you can verify line by line.

The workbook focuses on the two income strategies most income-oriented investors and advisors run inside a long-only sleeve: covered calls on existing shares and cash-secured puts on names you would be happy to own at a lower price. It also leaves room for collars, buy-writes, and educational analysis of short straddles and iron condors, all routed through the same watchlist.

Options Trading in Excel Template at a Glance

Here is the snapshot of the live screener as of 2026-05-13. Numbers in the sample workbook are static for download, while the template version pulls them via MarketXLS formulas on every refresh.

The Income Score is a tunable blend of trend (price above the 50-day and 200-day moving averages), momentum (RSI in a healthy 45 to 70 window), and underlying volatility (a proxy for premium richness). Inputs on the Main Dashboard let you change the weights without touching a formula.

Why Build This as an Options Trading in Excel Template, Not a Web Dashboard

Excel is the working surface most analysts and advisors already trust. With MarketXLS bolted on, the same spreadsheet pulls live prices, full option chains, implied volatility, Greeks, dividend dates, and historical bars. That means an Options Trading in Excel Template can serve as the daily decision sheet, the journal, and the scenario lab all at once.

A few things this build does well that a generic web screener cannot:

• Names, weights, and rules are yours. The yellow input cells on the Main Dashboard cascade through every other sheet, so changing portfolio size or income tilt rebalances allocations and updates per-name capital needs automatically.
• The option chain spill lives next to your watchlist. =QM_GetOptionChainActive("AAPL") drops the full chain into the sheet, where you can sort by delta, strike, or premium without leaving Excel.
• Educational scenarios are first-class. Earnings beats, misses, IV crush, and quiet drift each get their own row, so you can reason about outcomes before committing capital.
• The same workbook holds the screener, the strategy notes, and the sizing math. You stop bouncing between tabs in a browser.

This is built strictly as an educational, hypothesis-driven workbook. It does not give investment advice and does not predict prices. Every formula and every scenario is reproducible.

The Six Sheets in This Options Trading in Excel Template

Every sheet includes a MarketXLS Functions Used box at the bottom listing the exact formulas in play, plus links to marketxls.com and the book a demo page.

Q2 2026 Market Backdrop and Why an Income Tilt Makes Sense

By mid-May 2026 the tape has settled into a familiar but tense pattern. The S&P 500 sits within a few percent of all-time highs, breadth is mixed, and rate cuts have stayed on the table but on a slower path than bulls hoped a year ago. Earnings season is winding down with a slight beat-rate skew, while energy has stabilized after a choppy first quarter and staples and health care have caught a defensive bid.

That is the kind of tape where time decay rewards patience. Premium-selling strategies, executed on quality underlyings with reasonable position sizing, tend to do better when the index grinds rather than rips. The Options Trading in Excel Template is built for that environment without pretending it is the right backdrop forever. The same workbook can be retuned to favor cash-secured puts during sharper risk-off periods or covered calls during rallies that look stretched.

A few practical reasons to keep this educational rather than directional:

• Implied volatility is a moving target. The 30-day volatility column is a proxy and is not the same as an option-implied figure. Use it to compare names, not to price contracts.
• Catalysts overwhelm Greeks. An earnings beat with a guidance cut can move a stock more than a typical short option position is built to absorb. The Scenario Analysis sheet is there to remind you of that.
• Income is not yield. Premium collected before any assignment or roll is a gross figure. Real outcomes include realized stock moves and the cost of management.

Market Analysis: What the Q2 2026 Watchlist Is Telling Us

Looking at the watchlist with a covered call and cash-secured put lens, three groups stand out.

The Quality Income Group includes PG, KO, JNJ, and PEP. These names sit close to their 50-day moving averages, carry RSI readings around 50, and offer dividend yields above 2.5 percent. Their realized 30-day volatility readings sit in the low 20s, which keeps option premiums modest in absolute terms but very steady. They are the classic covered call candidates: write a slightly out-of-the-money call about 30 days to expiration and let theta do the work.

The Trend Plus Premium Group is led by JPM, AAPL, MSFT, and CVX. Each is above both moving averages with RSI between 55 and 60. Their 30-day volatility readings are higher than the staples, and option premium expressed as a percentage of spot is correspondingly richer. They reward more careful strike selection and benefit from staggered entries rather than full size at once.

The Patient Buyer Group is best for cash-secured puts. XOM and CVX, with their commodity sensitivity, and VZ, with its higher dividend yield, fit names where you might prefer to be paid to wait for a lower entry. The cash-secured put structure pays a premium up front, and if assignment happens you start collecting dividends on a name with above-market yield.

None of this is a recommendation. It is the workbook's way of grouping names by their structural fit with specific income strategies, which is the practical job an options screener should do.

MarketXLS Implementation: Real Formulas, Verified via Function Docs

Every cell in the template version of the workbook is a live MarketXLS formula. None of these are invented. They are the same formulas you would use in any MarketXLS workbook, and the workbook's How To Use sheet lists them in plain view.

Core Watchlist Formulas

=QM_Last(A10)                            // last traded price
=SimpleMovingAverage(A10, "50")          // 50-day SMA
=SimpleMovingAverage(A10, "200")         // 200-day SMA
=RelativeStrengthIndex(A10, "14")        // 14-day RSI
=Beta(A10)                               // beta vs market
=DividendYield(A10)                      // trailing dividend yield
=ForwardAnnualDividendYield(A10)         // forward annual yield
=FiftyTwoWeekHigh(A10)                   // 52-week high
=FiftyTwoWeekLow(A10)                    // 52-week low
=StockVolatilityThirtyDays(A10)          // 30-day realized vol

Column A holds the ticker. Every formula references that cell, so changing a ticker recomputes the entire row.

Option Chain Pull

=QM_GetOptionChainActive(A4)

This spills the active option chain into the sheet starting at the cell you place it in. You get strikes, expirations, bid, ask, last, volume, and open interest. Sort by delta or strike to filter for covered call candidates two to four percent out of the money or for cash-secured puts at a strike you would be a willing buyer.

For deeper chain analysis on a single contract, the OPT family of formulas brings back Greeks and implied volatility:

=OPT_IMPLIEDVOLATILITY(optionSymbol)
=OPT_DELTA(optionSymbol)
=OPT_THETA(optionSymbol)
=OPT_GAMMA(optionSymbol)
=OPT_VEGA(optionSymbol)

The exact option symbol format depends on the contract you want. The chain pull returns the symbols, so you can paste a row of contracts and read the Greeks alongside.

Trend and Filter Points

=IF(C10>D10,1,0)+IF(D10>E10,1,0)         // 2 points if price > 50 DMA > 200 DMA
=IF(G10<=$B$6,1,0)+IF(F10>=45,1,0)+IF(F10<=70,1,0)

The trend points reward classic stacked-up averages. The filter points reward beta inside the Max Beta input on the dashboard and RSI inside a healthy 45 to 70 band. Combine both with the option premium read to get the Income Score that anchors the watchlist sort.

Position Sizing Math

=D4*'Main Dashboard'!$B$2                // dollar allocation = weight * portfolio
=IFERROR(ROUND(E4/F4,0),0)               // approximate share count
=F4*100                                  // cash to back one cash-secured put contract

The Portfolio-Allocation sheet uses these to convert weights into share counts and cash requirements. Cash-secured puts always need 100 shares times the strike (approximated by spot for sizing purposes), and the workbook flags it so you do not oversell puts and exhaust your cash buffer.

The Strategy Sheet: Educational Setups Only

The Strategy-Options sheet is the bridge between the screener and the option chain. Every row is an educational setup, not a recommendation, and every setup is paired with a risk guardrail.

Each strategy has a clean answer to two questions: when do you put it on, and what is the rule that caps your risk. The workbook resists the urge to chase premium for its own sake. Yield without a position-sizing rule is one bad earnings print from being a problem.

Scenario Analysis: Six Paths Through Q2 2026

The Scenario Analysis sheet is the part of the workbook that most rewards repeat use. Six paths, each with an underlying move, an implied volatility change, a strike selection note, days to expiration, and the educational outcome on the call and put leg.

The note that ties this sheet together: implied volatility crush is what makes premium selling work most of the time, and implied volatility pops are what blow up undersized accounts. The workbook does not let you forget either side.

Portfolio Allocation: From Score to Sized Sleeve

The Portfolio-Allocation sheet converts the Income Score into a sized sleeve. With the default 250,000 portfolio size and a 12 percent maximum position weight, the workbook spreads the watchlist into roughly equal sleeves and shows the dollar allocation, approximate share count, and cash needed to back a single cash-secured put contract on each name.

A few sizing rules baked into the math:

• No single name can exceed the Max Position Weight input. That stops a high-conviction view from quietly turning into a concentrated bet.
• Cash for one put contract equals 100 times the spot price. The workbook reminds you that one cash-secured put costs roughly the same as 100 shares, so allocating to puts should not exceed what you would have allocated to shares.
• Beta and yield are shown alongside the allocation so you can spot a sleeve that has drifted toward high beta or low yield over time.

This is intentionally simple. The point is not to model every account-level constraint. The point is to give you a starting frame that you can edit in seconds and that does not let the math get away from you.

Correlation and Comparison: Sanity Check the Watchlist

The Correlation-Comparison sheet is the sanity check. It lays out trend, RSI, beta, 30-day volatility, dividend yield, and a history spill side by side for every name.

=QM_GetHistory(A4)

That single formula brings back the full history for a name as a spill range, which you can chart, run through Excel's CORREL function pairwise, or feed into your own custom calculation. The workbook does not lock you into a fixed view. It hands you the raw data and gets out of the way.

If you want to add a correlation matrix, you can build it manually with =CORREL on the history spills of any two tickers. That is a feature most web platforms either hide behind a paywall or compute on a fixed lookback you cannot change.

Download the Templates

Download the templates:

• - Pre-filled with current data as of 2026-05-13
• - Live-updating formulas

The static version is useful as a teaching tool and as a reference. The live version is where you will spend time once you have MarketXLS installed and want the watchlist to update on every refresh.

Choosing the Right Approach to Options Income

Covered calls and cash-secured puts are the two cleanest options income strategies for most long-only sleeves, but they sit on different sides of the same trade.

• A covered call collects premium on shares you already own. The downside is capped upside if the stock rallies past the strike. The upside is steady income on a name you would have held anyway.
• A cash-secured put collects premium on cash you have set aside. The downside is assignment at a price you committed to. The upside is being paid to wait for a price you would have been willing to pay anyway.

Used together on the same watchlist, they form a wheel. You sell puts at strikes you would buy. If assigned, you own the shares and sell covered calls. If called away, you have cash again and start the cycle. The workbook is built so the wheel logic falls out of the math instead of being a separate spreadsheet.

Three honest limits to keep in mind:

• Premium-selling strategies underperform in fast rallies. Calls cap your upside and puts miss the move.
• Premium-selling strategies are exposed in shock-down moves. Cash-secured puts can lose more than the premium collected if the strike is well above the post-crash price.
• Premium yields are not bond yields. They depend on volatility, time decay, and management. Treat any annualized number you see on a single option as a starting point, not a contract.

The workbook keeps these in front of you. The Strategy-Options sheet labels every row education only, and the Scenario Analysis sheet refuses to give a single point estimate. That is on purpose.

How This Options Trading in Excel Template Compares to a Web Screener

A clean comparison is the fastest way to see where this build shines and where a web tool may still win.

The right answer is almost always both. A web screener for casual browsing, the Options Trading in Excel Template for the daily work and the journal.

FAQ: Options Trading in Excel Template

What is an options trading in Excel template, and why do advisors use one?

Options Trading in Excel Template is the shorthand for a workbook that combines a live underlying watchlist, a screener score, an option chain pull, scenario analysis, and position sizing math. Advisors and self-directed investors use one because Excel remains the most flexible analytical surface for combining strategy logic, sizing rules, and journaling in a single place that they actually control.

Which MarketXLS formulas does this template rely on?

Options Trading in Excel Template relies on QM_Last, SimpleMovingAverage, RelativeStrengthIndex, Beta, DividendYield, ForwardAnnualDividendYield, FiftyTwoWeekHigh, FiftyTwoWeekLow, StockVolatilityThirtyDays, QM_GetOptionChainActive, and QM_GetHistory. Each formula is listed inside the workbook on every sheet that uses it.

Can I use this template for covered calls and cash-secured puts at the same time?

Options Trading in Excel Template is built specifically to support the wheel strategy, which alternates between selling cash-secured puts and selling covered calls on the same names. The Strategy-Options sheet labels each row by strategy, and the Portfolio-Allocation sheet shows both share counts and the cash needed to back put contracts so you can run both legs without oversizing.

How do I tune the Income Score in this options trading in Excel template?

Options Trading in Excel Template uses an Income Score that blends trend points, filter points, and a volatility-based premium proxy. To tune it, change the yellow input cells on the Main Dashboard for portfolio size, max position weight, min IV rank filter, max beta filter, and income tilt. The watchlist rescores automatically because every cell downstream references those inputs.

Does this template work for index options on SPY or QQQ?

Options Trading in Excel Template was built around large-cap single-name underlyings, but the same MarketXLS formulas work for ETFs. Replace any ticker in column A with SPY, QQQ, IWM, or another ETF symbol, and every row recomputes. Keep in mind that index ETF options have their own volatility and correlation profile, so the Income Score thresholds may want to be retuned for those names.

Is this options trading in Excel template investment advice?

Options Trading in Excel Template is educational analysis only. It is not investment advice. Every scenario is hypothetical, every strategy is labeled education only, and no row in the workbook recommends a specific trade. Use it to build your own analysis, not to substitute for licensed advice.

The Bottom Line

The best Options Trading in Excel Template is the one you actually open every day. This Q2 2026 build leans into that idea: a clean dashboard, real MarketXLS formulas, a scenario sheet that respects implied volatility, and a sizing sheet that does not let the math drift. The wheel strategy falls naturally out of the structure, and the workbook quietly refuses to give you a single point estimate.

Download the static version to study the layout, then move to the live version once you have MarketXLS installed and want the watchlist to update on every refresh. If you would like a walkthrough of how a financial advisor or self-directed investor can adapt this workbook to a real book of accounts, book a demo and we will show you the same Excel surface running against your own ticker list.