Selling cash-secured puts on INTC

Selling a put transfers the downside between $82 and zero to you, and you are paid $4.13 per share for taking it. "Cash-secured" simply means you hold the $8,200 required to buy the shares instead of leaning on margin. Same position, honest denominator.

At August 28, 2026: above $82 the put expires worthless and you keep $413 — that is the maximum this trade can make, $413. Below it you're assigned 100 shares at $82, with an effective cost basis of $77.87 once the credit is applied. That is 13.7% below where INTC trades today.

The engine puts the probability of keeping the full credit at 71% on INTC at $90.2 with 85% ATM implied vol on the Aug 28 expiry. High win rate, capped payoff, uncapped-to-zero loss — the risk profile of every short-premium trade. It is not free money; it is a rent cheque for underwriting someone else's insurance.

Max loss is $7,787 — the strike, less the credit, times 100, if INTC goes to zero. That number is not theoretical on single names; it is simply unlikely. Size the position against that figure, not against the premium.

The real-world failure mode is a gap, and INTC has the catalysts for one: earnings, foundry-customer announcements, and government subsidy news. A put sold 9.1% out of the money offers no protection at all against a move twice that size overnight.

Liquidity is a risk, not a convenience. The moment you most want out of a short-premium position is the moment the spread is widest, and the exit price you modelled at mid will not be available.

Cheap shares plus high implied vol is the combination that draws small accounts to Intel, and the yield tables look wonderful. What they encode is a genuinely bimodal outcome: the foundry strategy works or it does not, and the market is pricing both branches. Selling puts here is selling insurance on a binary event with no settlement date — sustainable at small size, ruinous at the size the buying power allows.

INTC's Aug 28 strikes are $2 apart near the money (2.22% of spot). On a ladder that wide, "pick the 0.30 delta strike" resolves to whichever rung happens to be closest — sometimes not close at all. 18k contracts of open interest on Aug 28 is workable around the money and thin in the wings — width costs more here than the ladder suggests. 32 strikes on that expiry — 47% of the board — carry prints that agree with their own implied volatility and hold up across the ladder, and those are the strikes priced here. Liquid near the money with a fine ladder; the far wings carry stale prints more often than the volume suggests.

Skew is inverted: the 25-delta CALL implies 6.5% more vol than the put. That is the market pricing upside risk above downside risk — a squeeze, a takeover rumour, or a crowded short. Selling calls into an inverted skew pays better than usual and is riskier than usual for exactly the same reason. The term structure is backwardated — Aug 28 implies 3.1% MORE vol than the following month. That is the signature of a dated event inside the front month, and it is the strongest argument for picking the expiry that sits behind it.

At 85% ATM implied vol, the Aug 28 options are pricing a one-standard-deviation move of $20.95 over 27 days — roughly −23.2% to +23.2%, or $69.25 to $111.15. The structure above sells the part of that distribution the market thinks it will not reach. Whether that is a good trade is entirely a question of whether 23.2% is too much or too little for INTC over 27 days — the delta table cannot answer that, and neither can we.

The specific way people lose money on INTC: Reading a low share price as low risk. The percentage moves here are semiconductor moves; the dollar amounts just make them easier to underestimate.