The wheel strategy is, by design, systematic. You sell at a specific delta. You manage at a specific profit threshold. You roll when specific conditions are met. If you're doing all of this manually — scanning your positions every morning, calculating ACB by hand, building spreadsheet alerts — you're spending time on work that tools can handle, time that could go toward finding better trades and making better decisions.
Here's the full automation spectrum for wheel traders in 2026, from simple alerts to full scripted trading — with an honest assessment of what you should and shouldn't automate.
Level 1: Alerts and Notifications (Start Here)
The easiest automation win is alert-setting. Every major broker and platform supports price-triggered alerts with no coding required. Set these up and your workflow immediately improves:
- Alert when your CSP has captured 50% of its original premium (time to consider closing)
- Alert 7 days and 3 days before expiration on every open position
- Alert when the underlying reaches your strike price (assignment approaching)
- Alert when IV Rank on your watchlist tickers enters your target entry zone (25-50%)
Tools: ThinkOrSwim alerts, TradingView, broker mobile apps. Setup time: 10-15 minutes per position.
Level 2: Candidate Screening and Research Automation
Instead of manually scanning dozens of tickers, use screening tools that filter by the metrics that actually matter for wheel strategy:
- IV Rank in your target range (25-50% for most wheel traders)
- Options chain liquidity (bid-ask spread under $0.10, volume over 1,000/day)
- Premium yield at your target delta (0.25-0.35)
- Stock price within your capital range
Pair this with fundamental research on MoneySense.ai to filter out screener results on companies with deteriorating financials, negative earnings trends, or recent material 8-K filings. The screener tells you where the premiums are. MoneySense tells you which of those are safe to actually trade.
Level 3: Tracking and Calculation Automation (Highest ROI)
This is where dedicated tools earn their place. Automating your post-trade accounting — ACB recalculation, campaign P&L, roll history, position management dashboard — eliminates the biggest source of errors and wasted time in the typical wheel trader's workflow. OptionWheelTracker handles all of this: log a trade and everything recalculates instantly.
Level 4: Semi-Automated Order Entry
Advanced traders use broker APIs to automate order submission based on predefined rules. The Interactive Brokers API and tastytrade API both support programmatic order placement with Python, which lets you build systems that auto-submit CSPs when IV conditions are met or auto-close positions at specific profit thresholds. Entry-level Python experience is sufficient to build basic automation at this level.
What Should You Actually Automate — and What Shouldn't You?
Our honest recommendation: automate tracking and calculation completely; keep trade execution decisions human. The math never benefits from manual intervention — formulas don't have emotions, and ACB calculations don't need your input to be correct. But trade entry decisions benefit from human judgment about context, news, macro conditions, and factors that no rule-based system captures perfectly. Automate the tedious and error-prone parts. Keep the judgment calls in your hands.