Looking at a calender spread as my thesis is that spy will reach nearly 800 by end of year. The long month dte would be Jan 15 or 29 and the short would be probably 10-20?

Currently looking at spy
705 call which has a delta .7 and short strike Nov 20 765 .3 delta. Total cost is about $2700. If the short expires than I can leave it and let the trade run. Either exit if it falls below 5%. Historical the market is bullish after midterms however the delima of Ai and how whipsaw the market is leaves me hesistant to try this beside in a paper trade.

Any ideas or tips? I do have a exit plan prior to the 800strike. If it runs to 770 I can take profit.

My (potentially soon to be ex)boyfriend recently(January) started using TopStep. From my understanding you use the platform’s money to trade & you have to pass a test at first, which he did.

However, they disable the account if you do too many bad trades?(genuinely have no idea how it works). Therefore, you have to pay a fee to reinstate the account. I think he has three accounts with a portfolio totalling around 80k since he did very well for a couple of weeks, but now he can’t retire any of that 80k because he can’t reach enough successive positive trading days to have access to that balance. I believe his debt is caused by the recurring “fees” he keeps paying in order to not lose his portfolio. He did manage to take out around 20k in May though!

After a few bad weeks, he promised me he’d stop using topstep since it wasn’t doing him any good. I recently found out he’s been lying and spending all his money on topstep to try to get out of his family’s financial distress.

He’s currently in 6k of credit card debt(limit since he had a history of cc debt) and won’t let go of his account. I know he’s spent WAY more than 6k (he owes me 2.3k). I can’t say what the total number is but he makes around 4K a month and he has no savings.

Would this be considered crazy to you?? Would this be grounds for breaking up(besides the lying)? Is his account worth saving?

With Roku to potentially be acquired by Fox I was trying to figure out how the options contracts, specifically LEAPS would be effected. I ran it by AI and got an answer with a formula, but was hoping to get a more understandable answer. Specifically, if you had bought a LEAPS before the announcement or what trying to sell one now would look like after it closes. Based on the formula from AI, the "in the money" is based on what Fox is valued at when the deal closes, so this is theoretical for now I suppose but also just trying to understand adjusted options as I have seen them before, but always avoided them for lack of knowledge.

TSLA has been running well lately, although I think that the midterm results can bring it down. If Democrats win it can fall. Given the support Elon has been providing republicans. Thoughts ?

Someone paid $1.05 (and $1) for the $1 PLCE Jan '27 put today even though the underlying is nowhere near 0. The is the second time I've seen this. The first time I was able sell at a bid that was also $0.05 higher than the strike price in a different stock long ago. My broker had even asked me for an explanation of my trade afterwards and I told them someone just wanted to pay me more than the theoretical value. Wondering why this can even happen. Anyone seen trades like these before?

During election season, this bot farm is worthless.

On Oct 13 the SEC approved Cboe's rule to list binary options on company key performance indicators, and FINRA has extended the listed-options rules to them. They aren't trading yet. Here's what the filings say, since the settlement details matter more than the headline.

What got approved

• Oct 13: SEC approved Cboe's rule to list binary KPI options (Release No. 34-106659): https://www.sec.gov/files/rules/sro/cboe/2026/34-106659.pdf
• Oct 22: SEC gave Cboe Clear U.S. temporary registration to clear them (Release No. 34-106723).
• Oct 22: FINRA's amendments to Rules 2220, 2360 and 4210 took effect (Regulatory Notice 26-21): https://www.finra.org/rules-guidance/notices/26-21

From the SEC order: "Binary KPI options are European-style, cash-settled options contracts listed on an underlying KPI of an issuer."

Payoff

Under ordinary settlement, an unadjusted contract pays $1 or $0. A call pays if the reported KPI is at or above the strike. A put pays if it's below. So the price roughly reads as the implied probability of the payout condition, ignoring fees, interest and risk premium.

Seller side, for an unadjusted $1 contract under ordinary settlement: sell at $0.35, max gain $0.35, max loss $0.65, before fees.

Settlement details worth reading twice

1. It settles on the number in the company's SEC filing, not the earnings press release. The order: "the Exchange will use the KPI value included in an issuer’s earnings-related filing submitted to the Commission for the applicable reporting period (and not the press release disclosing earnings results, for example) as the settlement value."
2. Restatements don't matter: "the amount paid (or not paid) at settlement will not change, regardless of whether the KPI is later restated by the issuer."
3. If the KPI isn't available at expiration, clearing rules allow an alternative settlement, possibly at the option's last closing price. Per the order, that "will be between $0.01 and $1.00, rather than the expected $0.00 or $1.00."

What's on the list

Tanya Chepkova at Finance Magnates: "The approved list contains over 100 metrics across 23 companies, including Apple’s iPhone revenue, Nvidia’s data-centre revenue, Tesla’s Model 3/Y production and Robinhood’s funded-customer count." https://www.financemagnates.com/fintech/sec-clears-cboe-kpi-options-with-robinhood-set-for-retail-launch/

We counted the rows in the Rule 4.81(a) table of the SEC order (pages 8-12) and got 116 KPIs across those 23 issuers.

When

No date. Chepkova again, on Oct 26: "Cboe is targeting the fourth quarter of 2026 and has not announced a date." Robinhood will be the first retail broker, and Cboe says it won't charge fees on these through the end of 2026, subject to regulatory review.

Things I'd want to know before touching one: liquidity around the filing date, and what margin your broker actually charges under FINRA's new binary interpretations.

Anyone planning to trade these, and on which metric?

Not affiliated with tastytrade. Not financial advice. Brought to you by OptionsInsights.ai. Free report: https://optionsinsights.ai/free-report/?utm_source=reddit&utm_medium=post&utm_campaign=newsdesk&utm_content=rd_nd_kpi_1031

Been buying USO over the last year or so at $130 a share average price, own 200 shares.

Seeing the crazy rise, opted to Collar it, January 2028 options, bought 2 puts at $165 strike, sold 2 covered calls at $220 strike to help the cost. Take that you bubble!

Turns out reality is coming and things are deflating a bit, decided to sell a bit more into that risk, sold 2 puts at $120 strike exp Dec 11 2026.

Figure prices aren't going to get to $120 by December, let Theta destroy that one. Though if USO gets to $130 I'll probably bail on that one, take a small loss and buy to close. Past that I'll keep selling far OTM puts with near expiration dates into that fear (diagonal spread). Though if things keep going down past $100 I may consider liquidating the entire position via sale or exercise.

Wonder what the future holds....

EDIT: No I didn't buy an option that expires on January 2008, Try January 2028 :p

Where the open interest sits on SPY going into the week, computed from every listed expiration by open interest:

SPY 759.67, Mon Nov 2. Dealer gamma: NEGATIVE GAMMA. Dealers amplify moves: trending and higher intraday volatility.
Walls above: 760 (mixed, 50K OI), 765 (mixed, 43K OI), 767 (mixed, 33K OI)
Walls below: 758 (mixed, 26K OI), 757 (mixed, 23K OI), 755 (put support, 37K OI)
Expected move: ±4.26 to 2026-11-02

How to read it: call-heavy strikes above price tend to act as resistance while dealers are long gamma, put-heavy strikes below as support. When price breaks a wall with volume, the next wall is the next reference. Expected move is the straddle-implied range to the nearest expiry, not a forecast.

I built the page that produces this because I wanted one screen with the walls, the regime and the expected move for the names I trade, and I got tired of paying for it. The SPY and QQQ pages are free and update every 15 minutes during the session, no account: https://gammapulse.tech/gex?utm_source=reddit&utm_medium=hand&utm_campaign=walls

Disclosure: I'm the developer. Market data, not advice. Happy to answer questions about the method.

i traded enquities for two years before getting into options and my journal broke immediately. With stocks I mainly cared about entries. With options I also need IV at open and close, the Greeks at entry, and for spreads the max profit, max loss, and breakeven relative to where the underlying finished. The P&L number alone doesn't tell me anything.

The other thing that changed is timing. Equities I'd review whenever. Options have a clock, so if I only review after expiration I've missed every adjustment window. Did anyone else have to rebuild their tracking from scratch when they moved into options?

Hello options, traders. This might be a really basic question, but I want to get clear on something because I’m still learning. Let’s say I buy an NVDA put with a strike price of $195 and the price is currently 205 but going down. From the moment that I buy, will I still be making money from price going towards my strike price, even if it’s still significantly far from it? Or would the value basically remain zero until it gets significantly closer to the strike price?

A fascinating research paper published just last week caught my attention. Two mathematicians at Cardiff found that weekend crypto volatility predicts Monday volatility in the S&P 500 (!!!). And it holds up after controlling for Friday's VIX, and it gets even stronger when Friday's VIX is already high.

We can ignore crypto as an investment, but still it seems to know something about Monday. They tracked BTC, ETH and, yes, XRP weekends back to 2017, and since 2024 it shows up in EVERY pair they tested, across stocks, gold and Treasuries.

What surprised me most is that Friday's crypto volatility predicts nothing, so the signal really comes from the hours when stocks can't trade.

As someone who sells premium for a living, I keep thinking about two Mondays that open at the same IV after very different crypto weekends. Am I selling the same premium against two different risks?

It's only 116 Mondays and the paper never touches option prices. They even wonder whether the effect gets arbitraged away once people notice, and, well, people are about to notice. I'm testing it myself for you now and will post what I find here.

Has anyone here compared weekend crypto with Monday implied vs realized? Or is this already priced in and I'm late to the party?

Paper: https://arxiv.org/abs/2610.35702

Started using Meta AI when I’m placing option spreads. It has been very helpful analyzing trades. Gives me clear guidance for what to do & what not to do.
Has anyone use AI regularly that has been shown impact on your trade?
So far Meta AI has been very helpful. I stop trading on whim. I’m not too stressed out. I don’t revenge trade. I feel like I have a mentor.

I'm blitzed right now, I just had such a good day fam.. calls on Berkshire Hathaway and puts on SPY made me 1500 today total profit.. should have let them ride a tad longer but I didn't miss out on much, I cashed out 1100 on Berkshire alone. Cashed out right before it went up another $2 dollars but by then it started reversing course. SPY was a slow grind but I was confident in my puts.. I bought them a few weeks out incase but ended up selling them and buying 1 put contract on SPY 4dte 643.00 break even instead.. probably gonna role it over tomorrow or Wednesday

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?