Methodology

What the engine scans

Each cycle, the engine evaluates cash-secured put and covered call opportunities across a broad universe of liquid, widely-traded tickers — leveraged ETFs, sector ETFs, mega cap tech, semiconductors, financials, energy, healthcare, consumer, and more. It filters for liquidity and contract quality before any scoring happens.

What the score measures

Each contract receives a score from a weighted model covering delta alignment, rate of change, trend, pullback context, expected move, and implied volatility rank. Contracts are scored across two strategy tracks: one for leveraged and high-volatility assets focused on pure premium capture, and one for individual stocks where being assigned shares is acceptable. The score is a relative ranking tool, not a guarantee — a higher score reflects a stronger historical pattern, not a predicted outcome.

What "backtested win rate" means

A backtested win rate reflects how a comparable contract would have performed if opened at similar conditions in the past. A trade is counted as a win if it would have expired worthless or been closed profitably before expiry. Backtests are run against historical price data and do not account for slippage, exact fill timing, or every real-world execution detail.

Live picks vs. backtested picks

We track two different things, and we never blend them. A live pick is what the engine actually recommended in real time, logged the moment it was generated — not reconstructed afterward. A backtested pick is today's scoring logic run against historical data, so you can see how the current model would have performed before it existed. Live results are always shown against the specific scoring version that produced them, and backtested numbers get regenerated whenever we make a meaningful change to the scoring — so neither one goes stale or gets to quietly borrow credibility from the other.

Backtested data vs. our take

Wherever you see a pick on Collect52, the backtested statistics and our own conviction note are shown as two separate things. The backtest is historical data. "Our take" is our own judgment layered on top of it. Neither is personalized investment advice — you always execute your own trades, through your own brokerage, on your own decision. See our disclaimer for more on how we describe what we do.

Portfolio Construction: hypothetical backtests

Portfolio Construction is a separate, on-demand tool for backtesting any mix of tickers you choose — including a one-time snapshot of your own real holdings, if you connect a brokerage. You pick the tickers (or load your current holdings) and a period (1D up to 1Y), and it runs that exact mix against historical price data. The return shown is hypothetical — it describes how that specific mix would have performed over the period you selected, not how your actual brokerage account has performed. It will not match your real account's YTD or any other real return, because your real account's history includes trades, deposits, withdrawals, and timing that a backtest of today's mix can't reconstruct.

Portfolio Risk Comparison: real, automatic risk analysis

Portfolio Risk Comparison is different from Portfolio Construction in both what it measures and how. For Plus and above with a connected brokerage, it automatically computes real risk metrics — Sharpe ratio, Calmar ratio, beta, annualized volatility, and max drawdown — for your actual current holdings against SPY, refreshed on a regular schedule rather than on demand. It always uses a fixed trailing 1-year window, which is why its numbers (like max drawdown) won't match Portfolio Construction's figures if you've selected a different period there — the two tools are answering different questions, not disagreeing about the same one.