Wheel Paycheck runs on a fixed weekly rhythm. Knowing it saves a lot of unnecessary worry.
New positions: Fridays only
The system opens new positions once a week, on Friday at 10:00 AM Eastern.
This is the single most useful thing to know about this system. If you deploy on a Monday, nothing will happen until Friday. That's not a fault — there is no daily entry cycle.
Expirations and assignment: weekday mornings
Every weekday at 8:00 AM Eastern, the system checks what happened to expired contracts and updates your records — closing expired options, recording assignments, and opening equity positions where you've taken delivery.
So after an expiration weekend, your account updates Monday morning, and any resulting new position is entered the following Friday.
What a normal week looks like
Nothing on Monday through Thursday beyond the morning reconciliation. Activity on Friday morning. Positions then sit until they expire, which at the default 60 days is roughly two months away.
Long stretches of no activity are the expected state, not a problem.
Why nothing happened on a Friday
Common reasons, all recorded in your execution history:
Every symbol already has a position. One open contract per symbol is the limit.
Your allocation is fully committed. Existing positions have used the budget.
Insufficient buying power at your brokerage for another cash-secured put.
No contract matched your delta and DTE targets.
The covered call floor blocked it — you hold shares, but no strike above your cost basis was available. Applies when the strike-above-entry setting is on.
Your brokerage couldn't be reached. The run is skipped rather than risking a bad trade.
Orders that don't fill immediately
Entries are limit orders placed at the mid price, which means they don't always fill straight away. While an order works at your brokerage, it's repriced automatically to chase a fill.
A new position shows as pending until your brokerage confirms it, then becomes open. Pending positions still reserve capital against your allocation.
If an entry hasn't been confirmed within 24 hours, it's voided and any working order is cancelled. The system will try again on the next Friday.
Changing settings mid-week
Save whenever you like. Changes apply at the next Friday entry run. They don't affect contracts already open, since the system never modifies an open position.
Want something to happen now?
You can trigger an evaluation manually from More options — see Triggering a manual entry. It still won't place a trade unless conditions qualify.