Cash-secured puts on T
AT&T Inc. was trading at $23.39 when this page was last refreshed on August 3, 2026. 7 out-of-the-money T puts sat in the 0.15 to 0.25 delta band, paying $16 to $30 a contract against $2,200 of cash you would have to set aside per contract. None cleared the confidence bar.
Numbers on this page come from a snapshot taken on August 3, 2026. They are not live quotes and are not refreshed when you load the page.
| Expiry | Strike | Bid / ask | Premium | Cash secured | Annualized | Keep odds | Break-even |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| August 14 11d | $22.50 | $0.16 / $0.19 | $18 | $2,250 | 25.8% | 77% | $22.33 |
| August 21 18d | $22.00 | $0.14 / $0.17 | $16 | $2,200 | 14.3% | 82% | $21.85 |
| August 28 25d | $22.00 | $0.18 / $0.23 | $21 | $2,200 | 13.6% | 80% | $21.80 |
| September 4 32d | $22.00 | $0.04 / $0.35 | $20 | $2,200 | 10.1% | 78% | $21.81 |
| September 11 39d | $22.00 | $0.27 / $0.33 | $30 | $2,200 | 12.8% | 77% | $21.70 |
One row per expiration: the out-of-the-money strike closest to the middle of the delta band. The cash-secured column is the full obligation, strike times 100, because that is the capital the return has to be measured against and it is the number most screeners quietly leave out.
The capital number is the trade
Every screener quotes a cash-secured put by its premium. The premium is the small number. Selling the $22.00 put expiring September 4 pays $20 and commits $2,200 in cash for 32 days, which works out to 0.9% on the money you tied up, or 10.1% annualized.
Your break-even is $21.81, 6.8% below where the stock was trading. That is the price you would effectively be buying 100 shares at if you get assigned, and it is the only number that should decide the strike. One question, asked honestly: would you buy T at $21.81 and hold it? If the answer is no, $20 is not the reason to say yes.
What the premium is priced off
At-the-money implied vol sits at 27%, which is ordinary for a name this size. Nothing in the pricing is unusual, so the trade lives or dies on strike selection rather than on the vol.
Can you actually get filled
Median bid-ask spread is 20.0% of the mid. That is wide. On a 60 cent contract you are giving up real money the moment you cross, and the widest strike in this ladder sits at 159.0%. Open interest runs about 186 contracts at the median strike. Enough to trade, not enough to be careless with size.
Dates that matter in this window
The earnings calendar was checked and came back clean for the 45-day window. Worth confirming yourself before you write anything: calendars move, and an unconfirmed date is not the same as no date. The stock pays about 4.7% a year, and no ex-dividend date was confirmed inside this window.
The worst case, stated properly
Max loss on this trade is $2,181, which is what you lose if T goes to zero. Nobody plans for zero. A 25% gap on bad news is not exotic though, and on the $22.00 strike that is roughly $427 of unrealized loss against $20 collected. 21 cycles of premium, in one print.
That is the picking-up-pennies critique and it describes the risk correctly. It is a bad argument against the strategy and a very good argument for position sizing, because the trade goes wrong when eight positions in the same sector gap together, not when one does.
What the annualized column hides
The best annualized number in this ladder is 25.8%, on the $22.50 strike expiring August 14. It is $18 of actual cash. It annualizes well because it is an 11-day contract, and annualizing a two-week trade assumes you find twenty-six more like it, at the same premium, with the same risk. You will not.
Questions people actually ask
How much cash do you need to sell a put on T?
Strike times 100 per contract, in full. On the $22.00 strike above that is $2,200 sitting in the account per contract, doing nothing else for 32 days. A broker that lets you post less is giving you margin, which is a different trade with a different risk profile whatever the ticket calls it.
What is the break-even on a T cash-secured put?
Strike minus the premium per share. On the $22.00 strike expiring September 4 that is $21.81, which is 6.8% below where the stock was at the snapshot. Below that price you are down money on the position, premium included.
Is selling puts on T a good idea right now?
This page does not answer that, and neither does the number of strikes in the table. What the app can say is that at the last refresh none of the 7 in-band T puts cleared its 75 confidence bar. Read what that bar guarantees, and the disclaimer, before you treat any of this as a view.
Nothing above is a recommendation. It is what the T chain looked like on August 3, 2026, filtered to the strikes a premium seller would look at first, and the prices have moved since you loaded this page.