Protective Put Calculator
Model a protective put (married put) before you place it. Enter your stock position and long put to instantly see your capped downside, breakeven, and open-ended upside on a full P&L chart, with Greeks and probability of profit.
How to Use This Calculator
Enter your stock position and long put and the calculator handles the rest. Results update instantly as you type.
Pull current market data (optional)
Type a ticker like AAPL and click Get Price. The calculator fills in the current stock price, dividend yield, and the risk-free rate from the 13-week T-bill, then loads the option chain so you can pick actual strikes and premiums.
Set up your protective put
The protective put leg is preloaded for you. Pick the strike, expiration, and premium straight from the option chain, or type your own numbers. The calculator works out implied volatility from the premium you enter, and you can still edit it. The stock leg is included automatically.
Calculate and read the results
Click Calculate P&L to see max profit, max loss, breakeven, return on risk, and probability of profit, plus position Greeks: delta, gamma, theta, vega, and rho.
Stress test before you trade
Drag the view-date slider to see your P&L curve on any day before expiration, shift implied volatility up or down 50 points, and scan the price-by-date P&L table to see how the trade behaves across scenarios.
This protective put calculator prices each leg with your choice of an American-style binomial model (the default for US equity options) or European Black-Scholes-Merton, and accounts for dividend yield. You can set a per-contract commission, copy a shareable link to your exact setup, download the chart as a PNG, and switch to dark mode.
Understanding the Protective Put
Key numbers every protective put trader needs to know before buying the hedge.
A protective put pairs 100 shares of stock with one long put option. The stock is the position you want to keep; the put is insurance against it falling. If the stock drops below the put strike, the put gains value dollar for dollar with the decline, putting a hard floor under your loss. If the stock rises, you keep the entire gain minus what you paid for the put.
When the shares and the put are bought at the same time, the combination is usually called a married put. The payoff is identical either way, and it is the same shape as a long call: limited downside, open-ended upside. That is no accident. Stock plus a put is the synthetic equivalent of a call at the same strike.
The strike you choose sets your deductible. An at-the-money put gives the tightest floor but costs the most. A put 5% to 10% out of the money is cheaper but leaves you absorbing the first part of any decline. The calculator above makes this tradeoff concrete: pick different strikes from the option chain and watch max loss, breakeven, and probability of profit move.
Protection is not free, and the cost compounds if you hedge continuously. Buying puts month after month can drag a flat stock position into a loss, which is why many traders reserve protective puts for concentrated positions, earnings weeks, or other event risk. Use the view-date slider to see how the hedge decays as expiration approaches, and the IV slider to see what a volatility spike does to the put’s value before you need it.
Protective Put Example Trade
XYZ is at $100. Own 100 shares bought at $100. Buy 1 $95 put for $2.50. The put caps your downside at $95 until expiration.
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Protective put — frequently asked questions
A protective put is 100 shares of stock plus one long put option. The put acts as insurance: if the stock falls below the put strike, the put gains value and caps your loss, while the stock keeps its full upside minus the premium paid.
Yes, the payoff is identical. A married put specifically means you bought the shares and the put at the same time, while a protective put usually describes adding a put to shares you already own. This calculator handles both: set the stock purchase price to your actual cost basis.
Max loss is (stock purchase price − put strike + put premium) × 100 per contract. In the example above, owning shares at $100 with a $95 put bought for $2.50 caps the loss at $750 no matter how far the stock falls before expiration.
The stock purchase price plus the put premium. Buying shares at $100 and a put for $2.50 means the stock must be above $102.50 at expiration for the combined position to profit. The calculator marks the breakeven on the P&L chart automatically.
A collar adds a short call on top of the protective put, which pays for some or all of the put but caps your upside. If you mainly want cheap protection and can give up gains above a level, use the collar calculator. If you want to keep open-ended upside, stick with the protective put and treat the premium as an insurance cost.
There is no single right answer; it is a price-versus-deductible tradeoff. At-the-money puts protect from the first dollar down but cost several times more than 5% to 10% out-of-the-money puts. Pick a few strikes from the option chain above and compare max loss, breakeven, and probability of profit side by side, and use the view-date slider to see how protection erodes near expiration.