A bull put spread sells one put and buys a lower one in the same expiry, so the worst case is capped at the width of the spread minus the credit received. This screener ranks candidates on what the trade is actually worth: the credit against the capital genuinely at risk, the probability of profit implied by the short delta, and whether the quotes can support the price at all.
You sell a put at one strike and buy another put at a lower strike in the same expiry. The sold put brings in more than the bought put costs, so the position opens for a net credit. The bought put is insurance: it is what turns an open-ended obligation into a known maximum loss.
If the stock finishes above the short strike, both puts expire worthless and the credit is the profit. If it finishes below the long strike, the spread is worth its full width and the loss is that width minus the credit received. Between the two, the result slides between those outcomes, with breakeven at the short strike minus the credit.
A credit of $1.00 on a 5-point spread risks $400 to make $100 — a 25% return on risk. The same $1.00 credit on a 10-point spread risks $900 for the same $100, which is 11%. The raw credit is identical and the trades are not comparable, which is why this screener ranks on return on risk rather than on premium collected.
Annualised return puts different expiries on one scale, the same way it does for cash-secured puts. It is a rate, not a forecast: it does not assume the trade repeats twelve times a year.
Open interest and bid/ask quality are applied first. A spread quoted between two stale prices can show a spectacular return on risk, because the midpoint of a quote nobody is making is a number rather than a price. Filtering after ranking would put exactly those rows at the top.
Each row also carries the exit levels the position would be managed to — a profit target, a stop expressed as a multiple of the credit, and a time-based exit in days to expiry — so the plan for getting out exists before the trade is entered rather than after it moves.
The width of the spread minus the credit, multiplied by 100 per contract. A 5-point spread opened for $1.00 has a maximum loss of $400. That figure is known at entry and does not change, which is the main reason to use a spread rather than a naked put.
The credit received divided by the maximum loss — what you stand to make against what you stand to lose. It is the fair way to compare spreads of different widths, because a larger width ties up more capital for the same premium.
It has a defined worst case, which a cash-secured put does not — a put on a stock that goes to zero loses the full strike. But it is not strictly better: the long leg costs money, so the credit is smaller, and you cannot be assigned shares you wanted to own. They are different trades, not better and worse versions of one.