Running a ARCC wheel strategy lets you generate consistent premium income on Ares Capital Corp while setting your own entry and exit prices on the underlying. Ares Capital Corp's wheel combines cash-secured puts and covered calls into a repeatable cycle: sell puts at strikes where you'd be happy to own ARCC, and if assigned, sell calls at strikes where you'd be happy to sell. Use our scanner to find the best ARCC wheel strategy setups in real time.
The wheel works best on liquid, high-quality names with stable fundamentals and active options markets — exactly the profile many large-cap leaders fit. The mechanics are simple: sell a cash-secured put on ARCC, collect premium, and either keep the premium if it expires worthless or take assignment at a discount to current price. Once assigned, sell covered calls against the shares to keep collecting premium until they're called away. Choosing the right strikes, expirations, and IV environment is what separates a profitable ARCC wheel from a losing one.
Ares Capital Corporation is a business development company specializing in acquisition, recapitalization, mezzanine debt, restructurings, rescue financing, and leveraged buyout transactions of middle market companies. It also makes growth capital and general refinancing. It prefers to make investments in companies engaged in the basic and growth manufacturing, business services, consumer products, health care products and services, and information technology service sectors. The fund will also consider investments in industries such as restaurants, retail, oil and gas, and technology sectors. It focuses on investments in Northeast, Mid-Atlantic, Southeast and Southwest regions from its New York office, the Midwest region, from the Chicago office, and the Western region from the Los Angeles office.
The fund typically invests between $20 million and $200 million and a maximum of $400 million in companies with an EBITDA between $10 million and $250 million. It makes debt investments between $10 million and $100 million The fund invests through revolvers, first lien loans, warrants, unitranche structures, second lien loans, mezzanine debt, private high yield, junior capital, subordinated debt, and non-control preferred and common equity. The fund also selectively considers third-party-led senior and subordinated debt financings and opportunistically considers the purchase of stressed and discounted debt positions. The fund prefers to be an agent and/or lead the transactions in which it invests. The fund also seeks board representation in its portfolio companies.
The difference between a wheel that compounds and one that bleeds comes down to strike selection, IV timing, and discipline on assignment. Our scanner handles the heavy lifting: it ranks every leg of the ARCC wheel strategy by delta, premium yield, IV rank, and days to expiration, so you can deploy capital where the math works. Build your ARCC wheel strategy on data, not gut feel — and let the options wheel do what it does best: pay you to wait.
