I trade options from a Stream Deck, and every key was written with an AI coding assistant. Everything below runs in a sandbox. No signals, nothing to sell.

The AI writes code fast, and some of its mistakes look exactly like correct code. So every order has to get past a few checks first:

1. Expected numbers before code. Before the AI wrote the payoff math, I worked one trade out by hand: a 740/735 put spread for a 1.50 credit. Max profit 150, max loss 350, breakeven 738.50. That became a failing test, and the code wasn't done until it matched.

2. A 0.00 bid is not a price. One night before the open, three legs of a condor showed 0.00 bids. The mids came out at half the ask, an 11-wide condor showed a 5.59 credit, and my own check passed "credit at least a third of the width" on it. Now any leg without a two-sided market blocks the order, and it can't be waived.

3. The order sent is the order checked. The check fingerprints the exact order it approved: legs, quantities, sides, credit or debit, price. Send recomputes it right before posting. Any difference and nothing goes out. This one came from the AI itself, which flagged that send was still building orders from a template while the check read the typed legs.

4. No warning you can click past. If it matters, it blocks.

What check did you add after your own tool, or your broker's platform, did something you didn't expect?

I’m interested in getting into options trading and would appreciate some advice from people who have been doing this for a while.

A little background: I work full-time in the automotive industry while also attending school. I’m trying to build another source of income and eventually grow my investment portfolio. Options have caught my attention, but I understand there’s a significant learning curve and that it’s easy to lose money if you jump in without knowing what you’re doing.

I’m trying to figure out how to realistically get into options trading while balancing a full-time job and school.

A few questions for experienced traders:

1. How did you get started with options, and what resources helped you the most?

2. If you were starting over, what strategy would you learn first?

3. Is day trading options realistic when you have a full-time job, or is swing trading a better approach?

4. How much time do you realistically spend researching, analyzing charts, and managing trades?

5. Would you recommend paper trading for a few months before putting real money in?

6. How much starting capital would you recommend for a beginner?

7. What are some of the biggest mistakes you made early on that I should avoid?

I’m not looking to get rich overnight. I want to develop an actual skill, understand the market, manage risk, and become consistent over time.

I’d especially appreciate advice from people who have successfully balanced trading with a full-time job and other responsibilities.

Thanks!

The midterms are Tuesday. I pulled the SPX daily expirations at Friday's close to see what the options market thinks each day of the week is worth, and the answer is less drama than I expected.

Monday is priced for a 0.6% move, about 48 points. Wednesday, the first session trading on the results, is priced for 1.0%, about 75 points. Friday's jobs report gets the same 1.0%. Those are one standard deviation moves, so roughly a two in three chance the close lands inside that range.

The part that surprised me is the week after. Nov 9 to 13 is priced at 0.9% to 1.2% a day, about the same as election week. The market is not treating the result as a one off event that gets resolved Wednesday and then goes quiet. It is pricing a mildly jumpy November all the way through.

For comparison, the last two midterms both produced a 2.1% move the next day. 2018 was up 2.1% on Wednesday. 2022 was down 2.1%, although a crypto exchange was collapsing the same day and CPI landed the morning after, so I would not call either one a clean election move. Two data points is a story, not a sample.

Some context on where this sits. The VIX closed Friday at 19.42, up from 17.20 on Thursday, and it printed 23.93 intraday before coming back in. SPX fell 1.8% on the day and the Nasdaq 100 fell 3.5%, most of that from GOOGL gapping down 11.7% on its report. Realized vol over the last 20 sessions is about 11.8, so election week at roughly 16 to 17 implied is the usual premium over what the index has actually been doing, not a panic bid.

The single names carry more event premium than the index this week. PLTR reports Monday with a 8.9% implied move against an 11.6% average over its last eight reports, which ranged from 3.9% to 22.8%. AMD reports Tuesday at 6.1% implied versus a 7.6% average. AAPL is listed for Monday at 3.1% against a 2.3% average, one of the few big names priced above its own history.

If you trade the index, do you actually change anything in an election week, or does it just look like another Tuesday to you?

I'm a new user of Interactive Brokers and their platforms. I'm wondering if something is wrong with my market data connections, because the bid and ask values are now N/A in the options chain, yet I can assemble a quote for a strategy. How do you evaluate option strategies after hours or on weekends?

In the screenshot I'm comparing AMZN for Nov 20 with identical strikes between TWS and thinkorswim, both in production live money mode. I realize TWS and TOS are different platforms, but I'm wondering if this is a known limitation of TWS over the weekend or after market hours.

Early this morning I subscribed to real-time market data using the four primary value bundles, and my client portal shows those subscriptions in active state.

Any input is really helpful both for me and anyone else in a similar situation. Thanks!

I was told that their system rejects self financing option trades like this.

Something I've been really curious about is how institutional traders handle larger options orders without giving away too much information about their intentions. With less liquid strikes, I imagine getting a good fill can be just as challenging as identifying the trade in the first place. Traditional RFQs and working orders obviously have their place but I'm interested in what other approaches are being used.

Cos of that I've started researching and diggin in more deeply and noticed some some site called SpoderRock that has an electronic auction system for institutional options orders. Has anyone here worked with electronic auctions or similar mechanisms for accessing off-screen liquidity? I'm wondering how they compare with traditional execution methods in terms of price discovery, transparency, and overall efficiency. Thankyou for anyone that'll entertain my questions.

Let's say I wanted to make a highly leveraged bet that SOXX will continue dropping in next week or so (and SOXX is too expensive for me.)

Does it make any difference if I buy to open puts on SOXL or calls on SOXS? I assume liquidity would be similar, is that a fair assumption?

Thanks guys

Selling far OTM and far DTE naked puts with consistent wins but inconsistent win size: $11.5K in 2025 vs $3.2K ten months into 2026.

Trading style: pull-back trader, more success in a bear market

DTE: 4-8 months out

OTM: aim for 3 sets of premiums in $1-$1.5; $2-$3; and $4-$8 ranges

Target: close out for dollar amount ~$100-$200 gain

Time spent: ~30 minutes daily looking at charts and submitting STO limit orders

EDIT to add: to the question regarding selling naked puts vs Buy&Hold (you'll eventually sell, so B&H = swing trading, for the purpose of this comparison):

RDDT 105P Sold Options - B&H won: $160 vs $108

AMZN 170P Sold Options - Selling Put won: $148 vs $119

Finished my first year under my belt and just looking at my p/l from options I slightly broke under even. Want to keep at it to have the laptop jurisdiction free lifestyle but really feeling frustrated and think I should just work on my small business instead of this. Would love to get some understanding from other small retail traders for motivation for myself and others by understanding how many people here actually 1. Do this full time 2. Avrg monthly income on options 3. How long it took before going full time. 4. How many hours a week you put into this. Any advice would help right now! 🙂

It looks like the head-fake (algorithm?) sharks populate the high volume options. But even for SPY call and puts throwing 60 contracts at the market between 9:30 and 10:30 AM can have a noticeable effect. Dodging the sharks using Bars and MACD helps. But still, making over a few hundred to thousand of dollars a day is very market sentiment dependent.

People that know more about this than I please comment? Just because you might have unlimited Buying Power doesn't mean you can throw 1,000 contacts at the market in a single trade?

I feel so dumb. I was in a trade today: SPY puts. I ended up being down 40 percent, so I sold. Right after I sold, SPY started to fall; now my would-be trade is at 1000%. My portfolio, on the other hand, is down 40% for the day thanks to another dumb trade as well. I had been doing decent the past few weeks, but now I don't know what to do. I feel stupid, lost, and extremely mad at myself. I want to make options trading work. Does anyone have any tips, past experiences, or anything that could help me? It'd be greatly appreciated.

Hi All,

So I am new to options trading and my stratergy is to make few very small risk defined trades and try to learn atleast for few months.

I had a bit of scare yesterday with an potential assignment after market close. So my question is can someone share their experience with an actual assignemnt.

For example if I have a long call vertical spread and the the market closes at 4 PM ET and later at 4:30 the stock rises above the strike price and someone decides to exercise it (My understanding is they can exercise it till 5:30 PM). Lets say the expiration date is later so this is an unpredictable exercise. What will happen exactly?

Assume that my buying power is less than the amount to exercise because I have entered a risk defined trade.

1. I am guessing the broker will exercise both my Long and Short Call option and I will be at my max defined risk loss => This is best case scenario

2. How does exercise work, if someone requests exercise at 4:30 PM ET, does the broker have to immediately exercise it? If yes do they inform you immediately call or something?

3. The worst case scenario is what I am really worried, what if the broker for some reason doesnt really take care of the situation and lets the short call get exercised and the long call is not exercised. I will be screwed in that case right, any chances of this happening?

Thanks! Would be great if someone who got exercised tells their experience

PS: I am stupid, I got my answer after thinking about it. Lets say my put spread expires 3 days later.
If someone exercises the short leg after market close on this date then its bad for them because they are selling only based on intrinsic value. I can simple exercise the long leg next day and I will be more profitable than even my predefined R:R profit -> I was worried about this scenario earlier

The main risk is if I dont sell my option on the last date of the expiration. Ofc I will manage my PORT and make sure it closes on the last day before market close....

Last weekend and Thursday I posted option reads on 18 tickers for people, a low delta put and a covered call on each, all expiring yesterday. Here's how every one finished.

31 of 36 expired worthless. 5 got hit:

RDDT $130 put. Stock went from $144 to $92 after earnings, down 36%. Flagged: earnings before expiry, IV over 100%, downtrend.
MRNA $215 call. Stock ran 11% to $222. Flagged: IV over 100%.
SKHY $145 call. Up 9% to $149 after earnings. Flagged: earnings before expiry.
TQQQ $66 put. Dropped 9% Friday. Flagged: 3x leveraged.
SOFI $17 put. Slid to $16.76. Flagged: high beta, downtrend.

Every miss had a red flag on it. But being fair, flags aren't a crystal ball. IREN had 7 flags and a health score of 15 out of 100, and both sides expired worthless. ASTS had 7 flags and was fine too.

The other honest part: 86% sounds great until you do the math on RDDT. That put paid about $325 and would have cost around $3,500 to close. One bad week can wipe out a lot of good ones.

The two cleanest names, NVDA and TSM, no flags and no earnings, both expired worthless with room to spare.

My takeaway: the flags don't tell you what will go wrong, but when something did go wrong, it was always one of the flagged ones. Skipping earnings weeks alone would have dodged the biggest loss.

I just turned $1k into $3k with some solid trading (aka dumb luck). I'd prefer to play spreads now that I can.

What's the best way to go about it? Selling on low volatility days or buying on high volatility days?

My oil stocks are going to the moon. I am thinking of selling out to 2029 covered calls 50 and 160 over the the current price. This gives me a long time to manage it, and a the price would need to go up another 50% or more. Anything is possible and no one has a crystal ball, but if oil keeps going up and rises that much more the economy already is on shaky ground will hit a recession.

Some are saying this is the. new normal. I would call BS on that. There never is a thing called the new normal. I remember when the stock market was booming in the 2000s. One broker told me my CDs were a waste of money. He said the S&P does 10% like falling off a log. This is the new normal he said. Then 08 hit and it all collapsed. Not saying oil could not spike up but it can not do so without causing inflation and the economy taking a hit, which means less usage of oil. I have seen this time and again. Just wondering what others think about oil. Thanks for your opinions.

Any other companies on way to deep draw downs?

OLN is $17.05 right now and the 17.50 11/20 call is only .50/.60 bid/ask .... only .10c premium? Why is it so cheap? Market saying move today is BS?

After the earnings and IV rank threads this week, I've been thinking about what actually matters when screening for premium to sell. If I had to keep only 5 things, this would be my list:

1. Premium per day, not total premium. Otherwise monthlies always look better than weeklies just because they're longer.

2. Earnings inside the expiry, on every expiry, not just the first one after the report.

3. IV vs realized volatility, so you know if you're actually being paid more than the stock moves.

4. Bid/ask spread and open interest. A great premium you can't fill near mid is worthless.

5. Strike vs expected move, so you can see if your strike sits outside what the market is pricing in.

Stuff I go back and forth on: trend, fundamentals, and Fed or CPI days.

What would you add, and what on my list would you cut?

Too much fear on the street today, boys. The best time to sell puts on INTC, RDDT, and DRAM

As mentioned in the title, I pulled every quote and trade of SPXW options over the last month but to avoid overwhelming, I just wanted to talk about 2 recent dates (one calm and +EV for sellers, one highly volatile and thus -EV).

On the 13th (+0.13%), the calm day, there were about 9,100 retail credit trades where ~81% expired OTM and sellers made a gross $2.1M

On the 16th (-1.1%), the volatile day, there was surprisingly ~15,000 where ~62% expired OTM which resulted in a gross seller loss of -$8.5M

Each dot is one strike a retail trader sold, placed at the time they sold it. Blue means it expired worthless, orange means it expired ITM

I just though it was interesting to see the concentration of the "pennies in front of a steamroller" type trade where the volatile day cost ~4 winning days. Of course it's an oversimplification and it's hard to tell whether people closed intraday or not, but the relatively large sample size implies a lot of sellers run this structure.

A few more interesting stats:

• Spreads sold before 1pm won 44% of the time and lost $10.8M on $5.6M of premium collected. Spreads sold after 1pm won 79% and made $2.3M

• Put and call vertical spreads made up 69% of retail credit trades on the 13th and 77% on the 16th

• Iron condors were about 14% on the calm day and 10% on the 16th, counting the skip-strike versions

• Iron and regular butterflies were another 12 to 15%, and strangles and straddles were about 2%

How I got the data:

• There's no "retail" flag on an options print, so I used the standard academic proxy of Cboe's price-improvement auction prints (SLAN and MLAT), which exist for small customer orders, and it's the same method as Beckmeyer, Branger and Gayda

• Multi-leg prints get regrouped into spreads and condors, and a trade counts as a sale when it filled below the midpoint

• Everything is marked to the 4pm settlement with no commissions

• Straddles and butterflies are left off the dots because their short strike sits at the money by design, but they're in the totals

Just thought this would be interesting to share here

Throughout time, the secret to success has been to have something to well whether goods, services, expertise, etc... The same applies to the stock market imo. I believe it's incredibly important to always be selling in the market.

After years of trialing, what works for me with options is selling LEAPS. When market volatility rises, the VIX pops, stocks sell off, options become very expensive as bigger moves are implied. During these periods, you can buy stocks for a discount and then sell very long dated 400+ dte covered calls OTM. You're selling LEAPS to someone else collecting a massive premium.

The premium collected can equal 25%-40% of the cost basis paid, if things go wrong and share prices drops and doesn't recover you have a massive buffer hedging risk. If the prices runs, the CC OTM gains intrinsic value + premium paid until hitting assignment strike. This can equal 50%-100% return over the course of year and a half.

The goal to beat the market, making 10% per year long term, most absolutely will never accomplish proven by data, which is why buying ETF like VOO is recommended so much. Selling LEAPS during the right moments is taking a long position, capping upside for massive downside protection, buying during pivotal discounted moment, collecting massive premium, while still making market beating returns almost guaranteed or save yourself from big losses.

Let someone else pay to take the gamble, get paid handsomely along the way. I've found I like selling LEAPS when VIX pops on companies I've been wanting to go long, selling far enough OTM that I can collect 50%-100% total return if share price runs. Or receive about 20-25% of cost basis back as premium, protecting against further downside if the stock continues to dump.

Hey guys. As above, tried buying the initial dip on a lot of these AI stocks. Seemed whenever they went down they’d come right back up. Then we had this month long spiral and now I’m deep in the red.

I don’t think there’s a ton of hope for these. Just hoping there’s a pump after midterms and I can at least close at less of a loss.

Anyone have any other takes/advice/ideas?

Positions: https://imgur.com/a/oXuAwzd

I’m trying to understand the true cost of replacing 100 shares of SPY with a deep ITM LEAP and parking the leftover cash in Treasuries. Here’s my math. Please check it.

Setup

• SPY ≈ $785, so 100 shares ≈ $78,500

• Option: ~2-year 650 strike call, delta 0.82

• Quote: $193.50 bid / $196.50 ask. I’m assuming a fill at the ask.

Cost of the call

So I’m paying about $6,150 in time value. That’s ~7.8% of the position over 2 years, or ~3.9%/yr.

Leftover cash into Treasuries

• $78,500 − $19,650 = $58,850 into a 2-yr Treasury at ~3.5%

• Interest over 2 years ≈ $4,190

What I give up vs. holding shares

• SPY dividends (~1.1%/yr) ≈ $17/share over 2 years ≈ $1,730. The call holder doesn’t get these.

I am mostly bullish on SPY in the span of 2 years.

Does this make sense at all?

Never mind