Cash-secured puts on XOM
Exxon Mobil was trading at $165.17 when this page was last refreshed on September 16, 2026. 13 out-of-the-money XOM puts sat in the 0.15 to 0.25 delta band, paying $128 to $236 a contract against $15,500 of cash you would have to set aside per contract. None of them came back with a score.
Numbers on this page come from a snapshot taken on September 16, 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 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| September 25 9d | $160.00 | $1.17 / $1.38 | $128 | $16,000 | 32.3% | 77% | $158.73 |
| October 2 16d | $157.50 | $1.30 / $1.51 | $141 | $15,750 | 20.4% | 79% | $156.10 |
| October 9 23d | $155.00 | $1.32 / $1.54 | $143 | $15,500 | 14.6% | 82% | $153.57 |
| October 16 30d | $155.00 | $1.83 / $1.96 | $190 | $15,500 | 14.9% | 80% | $153.10 |
| October 23 37d | $155.00 | $2.07 / $2.63 | $235 | $15,500 | 15.0% | 78% | $152.65 |
| October 30 44d | $152.50 | $1.97 / $2.74 | $236 | $15,250 | 12.8% | 80% | $150.15 |
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 $155.00 put expiring October 16 pays $190 and commits $15,500 in cash for 30 days, which works out to 1.2% on the money you tied up, or 14.9% annualized.
Your break-even is $153.10, 7.3% 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 XOM at $153.10 and hold it? If the answer is no, $190 is not the reason to say yes.
What the premium is priced off
At-the-money implied vol is 30%. Rich, and richness has a reason: something in the next few weeks is expected to move this stock, and you are the one selling the insurance against it.
Can you actually get filled
Median bid-ask spread is 16.5% 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 32.7%. Open interest runs about 238 contracts at the median strike. Enough to trade, not enough to be careless with size.
Dates that matter in this window
Earnings land inside the 45-day window. That is the one date that reliably breaks a premium-selling trade: the stock gaps, the strike you picked on a probability model turns out to have been picked on the wrong distribution, and the vol you sold collapses to reward the buyer instead of you. The engine deducts heavily for it. The stock pays about 2.5% a year, and no ex-dividend date was confirmed inside this window.
The worst case, stated properly
Max loss on this trade is $15,310, which is what you lose if XOM goes to zero. Nobody plans for zero. A 25% gap on bad news is not exotic though, and on the $155.00 strike that is roughly $2,922 of unrealized loss against $190 collected. 15 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 32.3%, on the $160.00 strike expiring September 25. It is $128 of actual cash. It annualizes well because it is a 9-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 XOM?
Strike times 100 per contract, in full. On the $155.00 strike above that is $15,500 sitting in the account per contract, doing nothing else for 30 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 XOM cash-secured put?
Strike minus the premium per share. On the $155.00 strike expiring October 16 that is $153.10, which is 7.3% below where the stock was at the snapshot. Below that price you are down money on the position, premium included.
Is selling puts on XOM 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 not one of the 13 in-band XOM puts came back with a score. There is no minimum score, so a high place in the order means better than the rest of this chain, nothing more. Read how the scoring works, and the disclaimer, before you treat any of this as a view.
None of these is a pick. This is a dated snapshot of the XOM chain from September 16, 2026, and an option chain from last week is history, not a quote.