Every premium seller has a great win rate. Selling options at a 30 delta means winning roughly 70% of the time before you've shown any skill at all. That's why win rate is the most quoted and least useful number in wheel trading — the wins are small and frequent, and one unmanaged loser can erase twenty of them.
Premium capture rate
Of the premium you collect when you open, how much do you keep when the trade ends? Expire worthless: 100%. Buy back at half: 50%. Roll a loser for years: often negative, even though every individual roll "felt" fine. Capture rate is the single best measure of trade management, and it's invisible unless something tracks open credit against closing debit on every chain.
Annualized yield on collateral
A $44 premium on $1,750 of collateral over 14 days is a 65% annualized pace; the same premium over 45 days is about 20%. Until returns are annualized against the cash that was actually locked up, you cannot compare trades, strikes, or timeframes — you can only collect anecdotes. This is the number that decides whether your capital is working or just busy.
Profit factor
Total gross profit divided by total gross loss. A wheel with a 90% win rate and a profit factor below 1 is a slow leak with good vibes. Anything sustained above 1.5 means your winners genuinely outrun your losers. It's the fastest way to compare two strategies that both "feel like they're working."
Plan adherence
The underrated one. Grade every trade against the rules of the playbook it belongs to — delta range, DTE window, position size, exit trigger. Two things happen: you find out whether your losses come from the strategy or from breaking it, and the act of grading quietly stops the breaking. Traders who score plan adherence fix in weeks what gut feel doesn't fix in years.
Run those four numbers per strategy — not per account — and the wheel stops being a vibe and starts being a business. The only requirement is that every fill, roll, and assignment gets captured and attributed automatically, because nobody sustains this level of bookkeeping by hand.