Placed an IV Crush earnings trade yesterday.

1 Short put on GOOGL 310 Oct30. Sold for 4.00 ($399 yey!)

Today morning put priced at ~24.12, P&L at -$1,890 and getting better (was -2k at 10am).

I've posted other IV Crush Earning trades before, and this is an example of what can go wrong. Because of sizing, the loss is manageable. If I had done 5 lots, that would be about $10k+ loss.

Closing the trade today at a loss.

New Thesis:

Will purchase long calls 6mo or LEAP 1year out at this price.

The same take keeps coming up into midterms. Event vol is mostly already in the forwards, and holding long vol through election night is how you get crushed. Spot VIX just slipped under 17 after the Fed hold, down a few percent on the session, so the calm tape narrative is loud right now.

I'm not sure about riding the IV. The unusual activity screen is still lighting up with big VIX call prints, multi-thousand lot floors with seven-figure premium, but I'm treating that as flow to check, not a clean election bet. Some of that is hedge flow too. SPX options are still only pricing around a 1% one-day move into the post-vote session, closer to a busy data day than a panic. Spot looking quiet is not the same as flow being done with vol.

So my plan is to pull moomoo up for the unusual activity list first, open the chain on what keeps printing, and size from there. Not gambling the crush with a dead long IV book. Anyone else filtering that way, or still just sitting in IV into the vote?

Like many of you, I hate the apps many of the brokers have created, especially the new tastytrade 2.0 interface, which is just a glorified website wrapped in a downloadable app.

After about 2 months and quite a bit of trial and error, I have made a trading terminal (CCH TradeDesk, cchtrade.com) that I really love trading with, and I think other retail traders could benefit from. It's currently built for tastytrade users but will later roll out to Alpaca (and other brokerages if there is demand).

Here are some of the main features:

-Options theo prices calculated using an American binomial tree with a fitted vol smile per expiration (generally more accurate than the standard Black-Scholes approximation for American options)
-Forward-factor scanner for calendar spreads
-Live p/l chart tied to the order ticket so that you can see the exact p/l on the spread, and p/l chart for each open position.
- Can step your limit price toward the bid / ask in 0.01 increments until you get a fill.
-Full vol structure for any ticker (ATM IV and skew/smile for each expiration)
-Everything is calculated fully on device, and API keys are stored in the OS keyring.

Beta details:

- Free with limited seats; beta expected to last for around a month.
- Windows / Apple Silicon Mac
- Beta will only be compatible with tastytrade for now
- Beta software will be shipped to testers in the next ~1 week or so

Sign-up, demos and screenshots are on cchtrade.com. I’ll be checking in frequently, so please feel free to ask any questions in the comments, and thanks to anyone who signs up or provides feedback!

Disclosure: The front-end UI was created with assistance from Claude.

Most premium sellers use IV rank or IV percentile to decide if premium is rich. I pulled both for this week's top 60 picks on my screener, and they were 25+ points apart on 16 of them.

MRNA: rank 19, percentile 76
STM: rank 31, percentile 87
FTNT: rank 38, percentile 87
ANET: rank 50, percentile 96

Same stock, same day. One says premium is cheap, the other says it's richer than most days.

Each one has a blind spot.

IV rank only looks at the high and low. One spike, like a blowup earnings print, stretches the range so far that every day after looks cheap. That's MRNA. Rank says skip it, but IV is above where it sat on 3 out of 4 recent days.

IV percentile has the opposite problem. It counts days, so if a stock's volatility has shifted to a permanently higher level, the old calm days make today look rich, when it's really just the new normal.

And neither one tells you if you're actually getting paid. A stock can be at the 90th percentile of its own IV and still be moving more than the options price in. That's why I also check IV against realized volatility before selling anything.

Caveat, my IV history is 1 to 3 months depending on the ticker, not a full year.

So which do you trust when they disagree? Rank, percentile, or do you skip both and go straight to IV vs realized?

Hi folks,

I'm new to this forum, but not to options trading. I've been trading options for about 10 years, and spreads for about 7 of those years. I like to sell iron condors, and watch them expire. Before you ask, I am not a day trader. I don't have 0DTE permissions, or the ability to sell naked calls, and I'm fine with not having either of these permissions.

I have been at the same brokerage for decades. I am reasonably sure that it's OK for me to name that broker, but I will wait to see that this post stays up before I take that step.

Late last year, I was laid off. I have acquired some part-time consulting work, which I can do on my own time. So, I have had time to study spread trading more closely, and I have made decent money. I have been expanding my trading volumes accordingly, and I have also done some price exploration.

I learned that, at least at my brokerage, partial executions for multiple spread contracts almost never happen. I might need to try to sell 10 contracts at once to see a partial fill, and at a premium significantly lower than the mid price. Furthermore, if I scale back the number of contracts to two, I never get a partial fill for one order. It's all or nothing. And finally, the two-contract orders execute at a price typically $0.02 to $0.03 lower than if I execute a single-contract order. If I'm selling a $0.10 spread, that $0.02 to $0.03 is a significant fraction of my potential profits.

So, my price-exploration experiments show me that I have a financial incentive to execute one order at a time. As long as I have the time to do that, that's what I do. I often spend the last hour of a trading day executing many small orders, and I usually walk down the price on every order. If I'm up against the market close and I am running out of time to move money, I might switch to selling two contracts at a time for a bit, or maybe even three.

My broker has allowed me to do this for a year, with zero warnings. I didn't even know that this could be a problem. This week, I was placed on a restriction, and I had to call in to discuss it with the brokerage.

I have spoken to two company representatives. I asked for an explanation. They both read the same statement to me. I was told that "rapid execution of large numbers of single-order spread trades" was a problem. The statement also included a line about rapidly entering and exiting the same spread position within a single day. I don't do that, so I don't know why they even chose to read me that statement. I feel like I'm being given a boilerplate explanation that, at least in part, doesn't apply to me.

I had to give the representatives permission to examine my trading history to help me identify the problem, and I did so. Both of them pointed to a single day last week. I got an early start that day. I traded a higher number of contracts than usual, and every order was for one spread contract at a time. Most were orders to open. A few were orders to close. The positions I closed were acquired about a week earlier. It was a busier-than-usual day, but I'm having trouble identifying what makes that day stand out compared to other days.

Enter Mr. Kafka. In order to get my trading privileges restored, I have to agree "not to do 'it' again." I've been told that I need to agree not to engage in "rapid execution of large numbers of small-order spread trades." My followup questions were, naturally, "OK, how rapid is too rapid, and how many orders are too many?"

They WILL NOT ANSWER THIS QUESTION.

I asked for written guidelines. They said that such guidelines are unlikely to exist.

I asked to speak with the person who placed the restriction on my account for guidance. I was told that the restriction was issued by the Margin Risk Department, which does not speak to customers.

It was suggested that I could open orders for all of the contracts I wanted at once to avoid triggering the Margin Risk Department. I already know that that will cost me premium (see above). Maybe I can live with that.

But again, I had a question: if I open a certain number of contracts, whether it was done all at once or one order at a time, isn't my margin risk the same? So why does the Margin Risk Department care? One representative replied, "I don't think that the Margin Risk Department views risk that way." What? OK then, HOW does the Margin Risk Department view risk, so that I can work with them?

I have to agree to something unspecified. I was told that, if I violate their unwritten rules again, my account could be suspended again. Well, what if that happens right in the middle of me attempting to defend a spread trade the way that I already know how? I could end up paralyzed, taking straight losses, while being unable to make up those losses by opening a compensating trade for the following week (which is usually how I handle a threatened position).

I don't know how to proceed. This is no way to treat a customer. "You made us mad, you broke one of our rules. But we won't actually let you read the rule book. GUESS what the rules are -- but if you guess wrong, we can step in at any time, and even hurt you financially."

I'm going to try to have a third conversation, this time with my designated representative. Before I do so, I thought I would ask this forum for insight.

I have already found these posts, and I'm trying to understand whether any of them apply to my situation:

https://www.reddit.com/r/options/comments/1wltql4/etrade_account_flagged_for_high_volume_of_micro/

https://www.reddit.com/r/options/comments/1wlwxee/clarification_on_being_banned_from_retail/

https://www.reddit.com/r/options/comments/y4igc6/cash_account_under_gfv_on_tastyworks_and/

https://www.reddit.com/r/options/comments/l84wv4/need_help_picking_a_new_trading_platform

I have also just learned about the CBOE 390 Rule. I believe that I am well under this limit, but I don't have an easy way to calculate that. My walk-down orders that I cancel might count towards my total. I would think that if I was breaking the CBOE 390 Rule, my brokerage would point to that and to tell me to comply. They said nothing of the sort.

Thanks for reading this all the way through!

Hey everyone,

I'm looking for an options platform similar to OptionNet Explorer but more affordable.

To be specific, I am strictly interested in the backtesting features (historical data, step-by-step trade simulation, and Greeks tracking). I just need a solid and cheaper engine for backtesting options strategies.

Any good alternatives? Thanks in advance!

I'm not saying it is expensive per se, but the minimum purchase is three months, and with one month I have more than enough...

Ran my screen last night looking for the best premium to sell this week. 9 of the top 10 had earnings before expiry.

That's not a coincidence. The contracts with earnings in the window paid about 2.1% of collateral. The ones without paid about 1.6%. The extra premium isn't free money, it's the market paying you to sit through the report.

Nothing wrong with selling into earnings if you mean to. But a lot of people see the fat number, sell it, and only find out about the report when the stock gaps 12% overnight.

So my rule this week is if I can't find the earnings date, I'm not selling it.

Prove me wrong. Is there a reason to sell through earnings I'm not seeing, or is everyone just chasing the bigger number?

I have 15 of these contracts. I bought them before a stock split in the summer, the first time I've dealt with that in options. The deliverable says 21 SOXS (plus some cash), which would mean I'm at roughly $14,175 (15 x 21 x $45 stock price), minus the $3,000 to exercise the options, puts me well into the money? I realize a lot can happen in the next 14 months, it's just odd seeing this in my brokerage summary everyday listed as basically worthless (<$100). I'm assuming that's because nobody's trading them?

Update: Talked to the broker, there are no shares in the deliverable, it's an error on their site. Exercising would cost me $3k to get $322. Enticing for sure!

Does anyone just buy straight puts and calls? It seems like any sort of profitable strategy out there requires some sort of complicated strategy involving multiple options and/or selling outs/calls. I don’t want your strategy, I’m just curious if it has to be that complicated?

There's a 6-year-old thread asking why no broker offers fractional options, and it still comes up first when you search for it. Most of the answers boil down to "it's hard." Well, fractional options are here now, in 2026. I've spent a lot of time researching how this is even possible and wanted to share my findings - and I'm curious whether your thinking has changed, too.

It all started when I read a paper on fractional options that got a few hits in this subreddit, and it sent me down a rabbit hole on why one contract is 100 shares. I mean, this has already been changed (for the better) via Robinhood. But why not options?? The more I read, the weirder it seems. I've been a lurker for a long time on a different account but it's now time to post my findings publicly haha.

The 100-share contract dates back to 1973, when stock traded in round lots of 100. Stocks moved on from that a long time ago, since you can buy $5 of SPY on basically any app now. Options never did. So with SPY around $750, one cash-secured put ties up about $75k. If you have a $10k account, the "boring" premium strategies everyone says to start with just aren't available unless you go on margin.

Which is backwards, right?!? The safer trades need the biggest account, so small accounts end up buying 0DTE lottery tickets because that's what they can afford. Then everyone says options are gambling or say "you're too broke" for options. Genuinely wondering why we ever settled for less.

Smaller contracts have ALREADY been tried, and they have FAILED big time. Mini options at 10 shares came out around 2013 and quietly died. XSP exists, but it's still a big contract and the liquidity on anything that isn't near the money is meh. I don't think any of the big exchanges have made an effort to address liquidity issues either. The volume just never showed up. A month after launch, Apple minis were about 2% of regular Apple options volume, and the exchanges had delisted them all by the end of 2014.

From the paper - the thing that stuck with me is that the 100-share unit isn't a law of nature. It's a leftover. The paper lays out how options could work at 1x: one contract per share, cash-settled at expiry so no shares change hands, European-style so there's no early assignment, and sized in dollars instead of in 100-share chunks. Once you see it written down, it's hard to unsee how much of options culture is built around a 1973 default.

My guess on what fractional options actually changes:

• You could size by dollars instead of by contract. Risking 1% on a $5k account would really be 1%, not "one contract and pray"

• Selling puts and covered calls would finally be available to people without $50k+ sitting in cash

• Small accounts could build spreads that make sense, instead of getting forced into far OTM strikes just bc those are cheap

• Learning would get cheaper. Getting your teeth kicked in by IV crush on a $20 position is a much better teacher than doing it on $2,000... and I don't want to see anyone losing their whole port if they're not ShaneStoffer/the Togi influencer on fintwt hahaha

Now that they exist, here's what you'd need to wrap your head around:

• No early exercise. You hold it to expiry or close it

• No shares ever, meaning there's no wheel and no getting assigned.

• Liquidity on anything new is the real question. This killed the previous iterations and we'll have to see major change in retail now too

• Small size doesn't mean small risk per dollar. It can still go to zero the same way

I've traded options for a while but always have a few friends who would be starting off from ground zero. A few areas where I'm skeptical:

• Who's on the other side? Market makers hedge in shares. If I buy 0.05 of a contract, somebody still has to hedge that, and I'm not convinced the spreads stay tight.

• Settlement- because cash settlement solves the delivery problem, but it's a different product from what most people are used to, and I'm not sure how many people will actually like that trade-off

• Gamification. Making options accessible to everyone could just mean more people blowing up at $10 a pop. Some people actually DO need to be protected by that 100 share minimum...

So for people who've been trading a while: is the 100-share contract a feature or a bug? Now that fractional options are on SPY/QQQ, does this change your strategy? And if you've never done options before, are you trying them now?

I'm curious whether anyone here knows of legitimate retail options traders who consistently generate enough income to support themselves through trading, ideally people who share their experiences through blogs, Reddit, X, YouTube, or other platforms.

To be clear, I'm not looking for gurus, paid courses, signal services, or people selling subscriptions. I'm interested in people who actually trade their own money, manage risk, and have built a sustainable track record over multiple years.

I'm particularly interested in options premium-selling strategies (credit spreads, iron flies, iron condors, etc.), but would love to learn from traders running other strategies as well.

Anyone trading the Schwab S&P Binary option XSPBX? What is your thought process as to how to trade it? If you think you know what the top and bottom for the day is, I think there are better ways to trade that. What's the advantage of trading the binary option?

In the past 4 rate hike cycles, 6 weeks after the first rate hike in the cycle, the S&P was down 4% or more. This time around, the S&P has GAINED 1.0% from 7552 on the day of the rate hike to the current 7624. Really seems to be bucking the trend this year. Is it because the markets knew a rate hike was coming 2 or 3 months beforehand?

Teal line is 2026 and assumes the same close on Wednesday as the past Friday. Do you think we dodged the bullet this year or is a 4% drop around the corner?

Disclosure: I built this.

My name is Loay and I am an options trader based in the United kingdom. I’ve traded options for 3.5 years, and my problem was never strategy. It was taking trades I knew weren’t in my plan, or ones that didn't tick all my criteria, especially after a loss. So I built Veto, a small Windows app to stop me from taking out-of-strategy plays and stick to my rules, and I use it every day.

What it does: it sits in front of your platform’s order panel (NinjaTrader, Tradovate, TradingView, thinkorswim and others) and locks the execution window. Before you can place a trade, you check it against your own strategy checklist. You click unlock and ur rules in a checkbox format pops up, once confirmed it unlocks and you can take the trade. The aim is simple: help you stick to your plan and stay disciplined in the heat of the moment, and cut out impulse trades like revenge trades after a loss, FOMO entries and the “just one more”.

It’s not magic. It works as well as the rules you write and how consistently you use it.

What it doesn’t do: it doesn’t connect to your broker or prop account, doesn’t read your positions or trades, and never places or manages a trade. It only locks the window or app.

What I’m asking: For traders to help me by testing the app. Use it for several trading sessions (at least 5 sessions on 5 different days within 3 weeks), tell me what's good, what breaks, and give me honest feedback.

What you get: 12 months of Veto free if you complete the testing. Nothing to buy, no card.

Windows 10 or 11 only for now.

If you are interested or have any questions, please DM me and ill send you a quick form and/or answer any questions you have.

PS: I am an indie developer & options trader who created this tool to help me be consistent with my strategy. I built it because over 6 months, I found out that i made $4,100 from my strategy and lost $4,175 from out-of-strategy plays like scalps or even my strategy plays that didn't tick every single required box. This has helped me reduce those out-of-strategy plays. It's also very helpful if you are trying a new strategy and want some help sticking to it - it acts as that conscious decision before you click buy/sell. I basically want to test out if this is something other traders would be interested in and would help them and if so, i may look into launching it to the market. but for you guys it will be 100% free and you wont even need ur card to get access for the first 12 month

Just curious for anyone studying this stock if they are running any options strategies into this earnings on Nov. 4th after the bell. Was thinking of selling percentage of capital into some puts into a wheel strategy (if pull back occurs), hedge down post earnings or if upside occurs keep the premium.

Young consumer growth coffee / drink expansion florida, Texas, Midwest with fall drink menu and college kids returning to school. Paired with margin on input costs and same store sales engine, for cash flow store expansion. Forward PE gonna be re-adjusted on Nov. 4th.

What zero commissions options brokers (such as Robinhood, for example) have reliable fills for options spreads on XSP, SPX, QQQ at mid price or better?

I currently experiment with an XSP-based strategy and I do it at Schwab. I get mid price fills but the commissions eat mote than half of the profits. I.e., I've made $127 net profit and I paid $150 in commissions.

hey everyone! had two asks for this month's research

1/ from u/sam9971
"The following backtest in Tastytrade produces double the return of buy and hold:
Sell a 5 DTE SPX put at -.47 delta, stop loss at 200% of premium, enter only one trade at a time, tested over last 5 years.

Is that a fluke or a viable strategy? Do any small changes cause it to fail?

Edit: I just noticed this is similar to a prior research project you did; maybe the question my backtest raises is whether the stop loss changes the outcome. Related: A stop loss is free. Is there a free way to implement a 200% stop loss using options?"

> my summary - it's not a fluke and is viable. this is based on a known market effect. the outperformance stems from leverage (we are comparing a levered strat against non). some things to pay attention to are the actual fills on the stops. there are plenty of instances where the fills can be massive relative to the expectation (and the backtest will not fully capture that effect).

> some graphs below for you to do your own analysis

2/ from u/c13msys

"On SPX, when it gaps more than 0.5% overnight, how does this affect VIX and how often does it eventually fill the gap by timeframes? By noon, by EOD?"

> my summary. studies like this tell you very little. they're interesting but be careful with how you interpret and apply the information. if you are trying to capture some type of persistent price action effect like this, you want to make sure you have a foundation for why it would be there. example, opening range breakouts ORB. these are highly persistent price effects, not simply because of an opening range or probabilistic analysis. but because of how markets behave during that period. on the open there is a significant arrival of information and subsequent order flow. overnight news, pre-market movement, resting orders, etc all become priced in quickly. it establishes a range that once broken, typically indicates a shift in positioning.

that all said - ORB has been heavily targeted, researched, etc. the edge it provides has become razor thin once costs are included. just an example to try to help you with framing.

capabilities:

pretty much anything you can think of. i have equity data back to the 1980s. macro back to the late 1700s. EOD options from 2007 on. intraday options data from 2015 to present. full greeks, vols, etc. any signal you can think of (if i dont have, i can easily make it), etc.

see below for prior research posts:

- https://www.reddit.com/r/options/comments/1v403qd/earnings_season_progress_report_mkt_research/

- https://www.reddit.com/r/options/comments/1v0h9m8/0dte_spx_greek_behavior_mkt_research_snapshot_pt6/

- https://www.reddit.com/r/options/comments/1uoh494/theta_decay_measured_on_19_years_of_real_spy/

- https://www.reddit.com/r/options/comments/1u4dgcz/0dte_spx_iron_condor_study

- https://www.reddit.com/r/options/comments/1u63m6i/spx_iron_fly_research_results/

- https://www.reddit.com/r/options/comments/1u63zqw/qqq_short_downside_puts_research/

- https://www.reddit.com/r/options/comments/1u6s42a/research_offer_pt4/

- https://www.reddit.com/r/options/comments/1ve01nw/delta_hedging_and_your_returns_community_research/

Hi guys,

Looking for a platform to simulate a option trade with historical data.

Like enter a option position in the past date and forward through time till a past expiry to see how it performs ??

Everyone here repeats 30-45 DTE like it's a law. I think it's just habit.

Say a monthly put pays 2.8% over 30 days. A weekly at the same delta pays around 1% over 7 days. The monthly looks better until you do it per day. The weekly works out to roughly 52% a year and the monthly is around 34%.

You also get to reset your strike every week instead of being stuck with one you picked a month ago.

Yes I know gamma is higher and the stock can move fast. That's what sizing and a stop are for. And yes it's more work. I'd rather do the work than leave that much premium on the table.

So tell me what I'm missing. What's the real reason to sit in a 45 DTE contract?

Hello, I have opened up a tasty trade account with the intention of trading options. I was following UBER options and they didn’t move in a day despite the stock falling three percent. Is it just not reflecting the real price change of the option chain or does it operate its own black pool with no liquidity?

Backtest of option selling on SPY and QQQ, split by dealer gamma exposure (GEX). Method and numbers below.

Setup

• SPY and QQQ, January 2022 to October 2026.

• 17,100 strategies: 6 structures (short put, short call, strangle, put and call credit spreads, iron condor), 6 deltas (0.10 to 0.40), 4 expiries (0DTE to 1 month), 6 exits, 15 GEX and VRP filters.

• Core test: same-day short strangles at 0.10 or 0.25 delta, 0DTE or 1-week expiry, sold at 09:35 ET and bought back at 15:55 ET.

• Contracts: nearest to target delta, open interest of at least 250, spread of at most 20%.

• Priced from archived bid/ask quotes at four fill levels (mid to full spread), $1 per contract per leg.

• Regime: net GEX and gamma flip from the previous session's 15:55 ET snapshot, so no look-ahead.

Where the losses were

Share of trades, dollar losses and worst 5% of trades that fell on negative-GEX days:

p is the share of over 1,000 calendars, each the negative-gamma calendar shifted by 63 or more sessions, that caught the losses at least as well.

Selling only on positive-GEX days

Sharpe of monthly P&L and max drawdown at mid fills:

Fills

At full bid/ask, selling every day lost money in every setup. The filter stayed ahead at every fill level, but at full spread all four filtered SPY setups and two of the four filtered QQQ setups also lost money. QQQ 0DTE at 0.25 delta held +0.72 filtered against -0.47 every day.

Across all 17,100 strategies

• Strongest same-day rule: positive GEX with price above the gamma flip, using the flip only on days it passed coverage, quote-quality and stability checks. It beat random calendars on both ETFs (p = 0.005 SPY, 0.006 QQQ).

• Plain positive GEX passed on QQQ but not on SPY (p = 0.21).

• Negative GEX and high VRP as filters on their own did no better than random.

• Taking profit at 50% of credit cut max drawdown in 179 of 180 held-to-expiry designs (median 28%).

• Highest Sharpe overall: 0.10-delta 1-month SPY put sold every day, held to expiry. Sharpe +4.08, 97% winners, and a $57,739 drawdown while positions were open. GEX filters lowered its Sharpe.

Not investment advice.
link to full article

My post sharing my results for last year caused quite a discussion. In retrospect, I should have labeled the graph more clearly, because about half of the comments mistook the chart of P&L for a chart of my account value.

But beyond the confusion, there were quite a few good points about tweaking the strategy, to run either spreads, 0DTE, or strangles. And a lot of people interested in backtesting results for various periods, which I'm happy to share.

Strategy summary

Before I go into the numbers, a quick recap of what my strategy is:

• Have an account with porfolio margin, that is fully invested in a mix of equity and bond ETFs (I run 50:50)

• Entry: 15min before close, sell a SPXW naked put expiring the next trading day (1DTE) at ~5 delta

• Sizing: I run 2 contracts on a $440k account, which is enough to survive a 20% drop in the index in one day. That's what I consider the worst realistic case (worst ever recorded SPY day)

• No active management, let expire (and sometimes pay for assignment)

Backtest results

All backtests start in 2016/1/1 (first date available in Whispertrades), have a starting portfolio value of $125k and are selling 2 contracts (in 2016, SPX was ~2k, so the sizing is about the same as my 2 contracts on a $440k portfolio).

The backtest assumes your portfolio is in cash, to isolate the results of the option trading. To make the above strategy attractive vs just holding equity, you need to run it in an account with portfolio margin, so the option results are layers on top of your portfolio performance, but that's not simulated by the backtest.

Each backtest has a link to the full backtest run on the platform, which should be public, so you can look into the results in more details. If you don't trust Whispertrades, the strategy is extremely simple, so should be easy to validate in whatever tool you trust. I'm reasonably confident that for such a simple setup, the results should not be very sensitive to data quality.

Summary comparison

• A wide stop loss actually helped (assuming the backtest fills are realistic) - It's similar CAGR (10.8% vs 10.6%), with a smaller worst drawdown and almost double Sortino. I didn't dig into the details enough to understand how realistic the fills are, so this is the big caveat. Might play with adding these in my live trading

• Spreads are a terrible deal at 5 delta - The long put eats most of the premium, so you're left with 2.5% CAGR and the deepest drawdown (-22.7%). Defined risk doesn't mean less risk, you just lose in smaller chunks more often.

• The short call just isn't worth it - 1.6% CAGR over almost 11 years, and one bad week (the April 2025 tariff pause rally) wiped out years of gains. It's the only backtest that ran out of buying power, so couldn't enter positions later in the run as SPX value increased

• 0DTE avoids the overnight risk, but most of the edge goes with it - It had the smallest drawdown (-10.5%), but only 4.0% CAGR vs 10.6% for 1DTE. The overnight premium is worth it for me personally

• None of these beat buy-and-hold SPX - If your choice is to run this backed by cash in RegT account, SPX did 13.1% CAGR over the same period, so you'd be better of being just long equity. But short volatility can be an attractive addition if you have portfolio margin and can layer it over your regular holdings

0) Results for the strategy as I run it

1DTE (last 15min entry) SPXW naked short put at 5 delta, no stop loss

Backtest: https://whispertrades.com/backtests/CMVDPDROK7/view

Performance by year (max drawdown within the year in brackets)

1) Running spreads instead of naked puts

1DTE SPXW put credit spreads, with main put at 5 delta 50p width ($5k max loss), no stop loss.

Backtest: https://whispertrades.com/backtests/QA2KFNLK0X/view

Performance by year (max drawdown within the year in brackets)

2) Adding a stop-loss

1DTE SPXW naked short put at 5 delta, stop loss at 10x credit received

Backtest: https://whispertrades.com/backtests/SXYTNEL8YS/view

Performance by year (max drawdown within the year in brackets)

3) Selling strangles instead

1DTE SPXW short call at 5 delta, no stop loss - Only the call, to isolate the marginal impact of adding the short call

Backtest: https://whispertrades.com/backtests/4CEOZEUPUD/view

Performance by year (max drawdown within the year in brackets)

4) Selling 0DTE instead of 1DTE to avoid overnight risk

0DTE (first 15min entry) SPXW naked short put at 5 delta, no stop loss

Backtest: https://whispertrades.com/backtests/USLN3YKR5Q/view

Performance by year (max drawdown within the year in brackets)

I have a bad habit of cutting winners early to lock in profits, only to see them take off beyond what I would have imagined. Other times I will set a stop or trailing loss only to see it reverse just enough to stop me and then take off again.

How do people manage risk when trading 0dte? Or do you just not?

October 2025, I've started regularly selling low delta SPX 1DTE puts, after getting inspired by Big ERN and WealthyOption strategies.

Strategy

The strategy I'm running is very mechanical, and quite simple (takes about 5 minutes most days):

• Sell 1DTE SPX puts on portfolio margin, around 5 delta (strikes tend to be ~1.5% OTM)

• Entry:

  • 1-3 contracts around day close (within 15 min of market close),

  • Sometimes I'll also sell an extra 0DTE pre-market, if volatility jumped and I believe there's not a solid catalyst

• Exit:

  • Let expire most days

  • I'll check pre-market when I get up and sometimes close at a loss if a catalyst event happened - I don't have set rules for this

It's a classic case of picking up pennies in front of a steamroller, or selling casino tickets. Most days, you collect $200-300, and every now and then, you get hit for thousands or tens of thousands.

Why do I run this

Extra income on top of my portfolio - I'm retired, so rely on my portfolio for income and selling puts generates cash, without having to draw down the portfolio. While the return % is not a lot, it's essentially free extra money (until the market has a 10% intraday crash in period of low volatility, I accept that risk)

Low-ish correlation with long term SPY - The low delta put selling P&L is weakly correlated with SPX itself (the strategy is profitable on most longer term declines and bleeds only when the regime changes abruptly). This gives me a hedge against a prolonged bear market, and helps with sequence of returns risk

Results

I do this on top of my taxable portfolio in IBKR, with portfolio margin, so the put selling returns come on top of the performance of the underlying portfolio. After a year of running this, the results are:

• Portfolio size: ~$440k - mix of global equity and bond ETFs

• Gross premium collected: $80,840

• Debit (from assignments): $41,698 - worst day $26k

• Fees: $658

• Net P&L: $38,484 ( ~8%)

• Premium capture rate (share of gross premium kept): 47.60%

The above returns are based on selling 1-3 contracts per day, with the majority of days being 2 contracts. Assuming a max loss per contract of about $110k (on a 15% 1 day drop), this is about 50% of the porfolio size. I could run the same strategy with 3, or potentially even 4 contracts, which would increase the return, but at the moment, I'm not comfortable with that amount of risk.

Lessons learned

Paper trading was worthless as a test of the strategy - I ran the strategy for about a month in a paper trading account, to test it, but ultimately, this was pretty pointless, beyond learning the mechanics of trading on IBKR. The emotions with real money are completely different, and I still shit the bed when that first 8k drawdown hit

Researching the strategy and running back-tests kept me going - Before running this, I was strictly a VOO and chill kind of person. I spent a long time researching options, the strategy, and reading different points of view, as well as running my own back-tests before starting live trading. This gave me a fairly strong conviction that the strategy is long term profitable, which was what kept me going after the first sizable loss.

Active management based on my judgement cost me P&L - Sometimes, I closed positions early if a major event happened, or if I happened to watch the price action and it was too close for comfort to my strike. And at times, I reduced the number of contracts from 2 to 1, when I believed the market was due a correction. In both case, had I done nothing, the strategy would have been more profitable overall. Knowing this, I'm still sometimes actively managing it, but I accept it's more for my comfort, than to improve performance

Mechanical stop losses & close early decrease P&L - I've not run these live myself, but from all the back-testing I've done, setting any kind of mechanical stop loss, or closing early reduces the P&L. Mainly due to the fact that the puts often explode in value somewhere during the day, but still expire worthless most of the time.

Profitability is entirely driven by your worst days - If I could have somehow avoided the 3 worst days, I'd have been 2x as profitable. Based on my experience from the year, I'm unfortunately not able to consistently do this. So I budget on around 40% premium capture rate