About Meridian Screen
Meridian Screen is a systematic research tool that reviews thousands of publicly listed companies and surfaces those best suited to the wheel options strategy — selling covered calls and cash-secured puts on stable, profitable businesses.
What is the Wheel Strategy?
The wheel is a three-phase options income strategy designed for stocks you are comfortable owning:
Sell a Cash-Secured Put CSP
You collect premium upfront and agree to buy 100 shares at the strike price if assigned. Maximum loss: you buy the stock cheaper than market price.
Get Assigned (own shares)
If the stock falls below your strike at expiry, you are assigned 100 shares. You now own the stock at an effective cost basis reduced by the premium received.
Sell a Covered Call CC
You sell the right to buy your shares at a higher strike. Collect more premium. If called away, you sell at the strike and start the cycle again.
The strategy generates income through repeated premium collection. It works best on stocks that are not highly volatile, are unlikely to collapse, and have liquid options markets — exactly what this screen identifies.
How the Screen Works
Every company in the universe passes through a three-stage filter before a Wheel score is calculated:
Stage 1 — Profitability gate: Net income > 0 and operating cash flow > 0. Companies losing money are excluded outright — the wheel requires a stock you are willing to hold, and holding a loss-maker is too risky.
Stage 2 — Revenue stability gate: Revenue must not be in structural decline. Stable or growing revenue is required — secular revenue decline creates share-price tail risk that erodes premium income.
Stage 3 — Options gate: The stock must have listed weekly or monthly options with sufficient open interest. No options = no wheel.
Stocks passing all three filters receive a Wheel score (0–100) based on five weighted components:
Fundamental safety averages the quality score (ROIC, ROE, FCF margin, leverage, interest coverage, accruals), valuation score (forward P/E, EV/EBITDA, FCF yield, price/sales, PEG), and margin stability. Volatility profile targets the sweet spot of 25–45% realised 30-day vol — enough to generate meaningful premium without excessive gap risk. Earnings proximity penalises stocks reporting in the next 21 days (IV crush risk). Price level favours the $15–$100 range for capital efficiency. Stocks lose 8 points per accounting quality flag.
Wheel Scanner — Opportunity Score
The Wheel Scanner evaluates individual option contracts from the top-ranked companies. Each contract receives an Opportunity Score (0–100):
Delta is calculated via Black-Scholes from the contract's implied volatility. The target delta zone is 0.20–0.40 — this balances meaningful premium income against the probability of assignment. Contracts with DTE 4–32 days are scanned.
Data Sources
SEC EDGAR
XBRL financial filings for revenue, earnings, cash flow, and balance sheet data. Point-in-time to avoid look-ahead bias.
Price Data
Daily OHLCV price history used for volatility, momentum, relative strength, and entry-timing signals.
Options Chains
Live options chain data fetched at scan time. Bid, ask, open interest, volume, and implied volatility per contract.
Form 4 Filings
SEC insider transaction reports. Net open-market buy/sell activity over the trailing 90 days.
Update Frequency
The Screen data is refreshed by running the pipeline, typically daily on trading days. The Wheel Scanner prices are point-in-time at the moment the scan was run — options prices change continuously during market hours so the Scanner data shown here is a snapshot, not a live feed. Always verify current prices before placing any trade.
What This Screen Is Not
Meridian Screen is not a return forecast. A high Wheel score means the company has characteristics associated with suitability for options income strategies — it does not predict future stock price direction, dividend payments, or options premium levels. Past screening results have not been independently audited for predictive accuracy.
Who builds this
OptionsValuer is built and maintained by Martin Birrell, an IT systems specialist based near Canberra, Australia. I sell cash-secured puts and covered calls on my own account, and I built this screen for my own use before publishing it. It is a one-person project — no team, no fund, no clients, nothing for sale, and no paid placements.
The pipeline runs on my own hardware against public SEC filings and market data, and republishes automatically each weekday. Where the method has known limits, they are stated above rather than hidden — the Wheel score is reliable at flagging names to avoid and weaker at finely ranking the ones that pass.
Contact: use the Feedback button at the bottom-right of the screen page. It reaches me directly, and you do not need to leave an email address. If a figure looks wrong, it may well be — tell me and I will fix it.