SCI Cash-Secured Put Strategy
SCI (Service Corporation International), in the Consumer Cyclical sector, (Personal Products & Services industry), listed on NYSE.
Service Corporation International provides deathcare products and services in the United States and Canada. The company operates through Funeral and Cemetery segments. Its funeral service and cemetery operations comprise funeral service locations, cemeteries, funeral service/cemetery combination locations, crematoria, and other businesses. The company also provides professional services related to funerals and cremations, including the use of funeral facilities and motor vehicles; arranging and directing services; and removal, preparation, embalming, cremation, memorialization, and travel protection, as well as catering services. In addition, it offers funeral merchandise, including burial caskets and related accessories, urns and other cremation receptacles, outer burial containers, flowers, online and video tributes, stationery products, casket and cremation memorialization products, and other ancillary merchandise. Further, the company's cemeteries provide cemetery property interment rights, such as developed lots, lawn crypts, mausoleum spaces, niches, and other cremation memorialization and interment options; and sells cemetery merchandise and services, including memorial markers and bases, outer burial containers, flowers and floral placements, graveside services, merchandise installations, and interments, as well as offers preneed cemetery merchandise and services.
SCI (Service Corporation International) trades in the Consumer Cyclical sector, specifically Personal Products & Services, with a market capitalization of approximately $10.70B, a trailing P/E of 17.19, a beta of 0.89 versus the broader market, a 52-week range of 74.99-88.67, average daily share volume of 1.2M, a public-listing history dating back to 1980, approximately 25K full-time employees. These structural characteristics shape how SCI stock options price implied volatility around earnings windows, capital events, and macro-driven sector rotations.
A beta of 0.89 places SCI roughly in line with broader market moves, so the strategy payoff and realized volatility track the index-equivalent baseline. SCI pays a dividend, which adjusts put-call parity and shifts the ex-dividend pricing across the listed chain.
What is a cash-secured put on SCI?
A cash-secured put sells an out-of-the-money put while holding cash equal to the strike-times-100 obligation, keeping the premium when the underlying stays above the strike.
Current SCI snapshot
As of May 15, 2026, spot at $77.56, ATM IV 25.70%, IV rank 33.86%, expected move 7.37%. The cash-secured put on SCI below is built from the same end-of-day chain, with strikes snapped to listed contracts and premiums pulled from the bid/ask midpoint at a 34-day expiry.
Why this cash-secured put structure on SCI specifically: SCI IV at 25.70% is mid-range versus its 1-year history, so the credit collected on a SCI cash-secured put sits in line with its long-run distribution, with a market-implied 1-standard-deviation move of approximately 7.37% (roughly $5.71 on the underlying). The 34-day window matched to the front-month expiry keeps theta exposure bounded while still capturing the post-snapshot move; longer-dated SCI expiries trade a higher absolute premium for lower per-day decay. Position sizing on SCI should anchor to the underlying notional of $77.56 per share and to the trader's directional view on SCI stock.
SCI cash-secured put setup
The SCI cash-secured put below is built from the end-of-day chain, with each option leg priced at the bid/ask midpoint of its listed strike. With SCI near $77.56, the first option leg uses a $72.50 strike; additional legs (when the strategy has them) anchor to spot-relative offsets. Premiums come from the bid/ask midpoint on the listed SCI chain at a 34-day expiry; the cross-strike IV skew is reflected directly in the per-leg values rather than approximated. Quantity sizing assumes one contract per option leg (or 100 SCI shares for the stock leg in covered calls and collars).
| Action | Type | Strike / Basis | Premium (est) |
|---|---|---|---|
| Sell 1 | Put | $72.50 | $0.83 |
SCI cash-secured put risk and reward
- Net Premium / Debit
- +$82.50
- Max Profit (per contract)
- $82.50
- Max Loss (per contract)
- -$7,166.50
- Breakeven(s)
- $71.68
- Risk / Reward Ratio
- 0.012
Max profit equals premium times 100; max loss equals strike minus premium times 100 (at zero, assuming assignment). Breakeven is strike minus premium.
SCI cash-secured put payoff curve
Modeled P&L at expiration across a range of underlying prices for the cash-secured put on SCI. Each row is one sampled price point from the computed payoff curve; the full curve uses 200 price points internally before being summarized into 10 rows here.
| Underlying Price | % From Spot | P&L at Expiration |
|---|---|---|
| $0.01 | -100.0% | -$7,166.50 |
| $17.16 | -77.9% | -$5,451.72 |
| $34.31 | -55.8% | -$3,736.93 |
| $51.45 | -33.7% | -$2,022.15 |
| $68.60 | -11.6% | -$307.36 |
| $85.75 | +10.6% | +$82.50 |
| $102.90 | +32.7% | +$82.50 |
| $120.04 | +54.8% | +$82.50 |
| $137.19 | +76.9% | +$82.50 |
| $154.34 | +99.0% | +$82.50 |
When traders use cash-secured put on SCI
Cash-secured puts on SCI earn premium while a trader waits to acquire SCI stock at a target strike below the current quote; most attractive when IV is rich and the trader is comfortable owning SCI.
SCI thesis for this cash-secured put
The market-implied 1-standard-deviation range for SCI extends from approximately $71.85 on the downside to $83.27 on the upside. A SCI cash-secured put lets a trader earn premium while waiting to acquire SCI at the strike price; the strategy is most attractive when the trader is comfortable holding the underlying at that level and IV is rich enough to compensate for the assignment risk. Current SCI IV rank near 33.86% is mid-range against its 1-year distribution, so the IV signal is neutral; the cash-secured put thesis on SCI should anchor more to the directional view and the expected-move geometry. As a Consumer Cyclical name, SCI options can move on sector-level news flow (peer earnings, regulatory updates, industry-specific macro data) in addition to SCI-specific events.
SCI cash-secured put positions are structurally neutral to slightly bullish; the modeled P&L assumes European-style exercise at expiration and ignores early assignment, transaction costs, dividends paid before expiry on the stock leg (when present), and the bid-ask spread on the listed chain. SCI positions also carry Consumer Cyclical sector concentration risk; news flow inside the sector (peer earnings, regulatory shifts, supply-chain headlines) can move SCI alongside the broader basket even when SCI-specific fundamentals are unchanged. Short-premium structures like a cash-secured put on SCI carry tail risk when realized volatility exceeds the implied move; review historical SCI earnings reactions and macro stress periods before sizing. Always rebuild the position from current SCI chain quotes before placing a trade.
Frequently asked questions
- What is a cash-secured put on SCI?
- A cash-secured put on SCI is the cash-secured put strategy applied to SCI (stock). The strategy is structurally neutral to slightly bullish: A cash-secured put sells an out-of-the-money put while holding cash equal to the strike-times-100 obligation, keeping the premium when the underlying stays above the strike. With SCI stock trading near $77.56, the strikes shown on this page are snapped to the nearest listed SCI chain strike and the premiums come straight from the end-of-day bid/ask midpoint.
- How are SCI cash-secured put max profit and max loss calculated?
- Max profit equals premium times 100; max loss equals strike minus premium times 100 (at zero, assuming assignment). Breakeven is strike minus premium. For the SCI cash-secured put priced from the end-of-day chain at a 30-day expiry (ATM IV 25.70%), the computed maximum profit is $82.50 per contract and the computed maximum loss is -$7,166.50 per contract. Live intraday quotes will differ as the chain moves through the trading session.
- What is the breakeven for a SCI cash-secured put?
- The breakeven for the SCI cash-secured put priced on this page is roughly $71.68 at expiration, derived from end-of-day chain premiums. Breakeven is the underlying price at which the strategy's P&L crosses zero ignoring transaction costs and assignment risk. The current SCI market-implied 1-standard-deviation expected move is approximately 7.37%; if the move sits well outside the breakeven distance, the structure's risk-reward becomes correspondingly tighter.
- When should you consider a cash-secured put on SCI?
- Cash-secured puts on SCI earn premium while a trader waits to acquire SCI stock at a target strike below the current quote; most attractive when IV is rich and the trader is comfortable owning SCI.
- How does current SCI implied volatility affect this cash-secured put?
- SCI ATM IV is at 25.70% with IV rank near 33.86%, which is mid-range against its 1-year history. Strategy selection depends more on directional thesis and expected move than on a strong IV signal.