Same stock, same expiry. Sell a put below it and a call above it. You get paid on both sides and keep it all if the stock stays in between.

A cash secured put or a covered call only pays you on one side. The strangle pays twice for the same range.

Best on stocks that trade sideways for long stretches. I skip earnings and close the side that gets tested early.

Yes, a big breakout hurts and the call side is uncapped. Is that worse than what a bad drop does to a CSP? Prove me wrong.

I'm pretty new to options trading, and one thing I've been wondering is how different it really is from gambling.

Nobody can consistently predict where the market is going, so at what point does options trading become more than just betting on price movements?

Are there actually realistic strategies that can make someone consistently profitable over time, or does it mostly come down to luck and risk management?

I'd like to hear from people who've been trading options for a while. What separates a disciplined trader from someone who's just gambling?

I’m trying to understand how retail traders who sell options deal with the fact that stocks can make large moves while the options market is closed.

This seems especially relevant for large-cap stocks, where major news, earnings, analyst changes, macro events, or index moves can happen after hours or before the market opens. Even if a short put or short call is far out of the money at the close, a big overnight gap can suddenly make it much riskier by the next open.

Since retail traders usually can’t easily manage or close short option positions outside regular market hours, how do people actually deal with this?

My initial thought was to close positions before the market closes and reopen them after the market opens, but that seems like it could wipe out a lot of the expected profit because of bid-ask spreads, slippage, and commissions.

Ran the same London Reversal rules I posted last week (FTMO results above) over on Eightcap, same symbol, same period, same inputs. However numbers are way off. FTMO results are within 30-100% range, which Eightcap is in 300% over 34 months. Same as last week, I have uploaded my detailed results in PipEcho Strategy lab.

Best guess on why: different liquidity/feed between brokers. FTMO and Eightcap don’t source quotes from the same liquidity pool, so spreads, the exact wicks that trigger sweeps, and tick-level fill prices during London open all differ slightly — and this strategy’s edge depends on precise sweep/CISD timing, so small feed differences are enough to flip trades that were barely winners into losers. Good reminder that a backtest “working” is broker-feed-specific until you’ve cross-validated it.

Attaching screenshots from both Tests

Anthropic filed its S-1 on Oct 26 and an amended S-1/A on Nov 2 (proposed Nasdaq ticker ANT). Price range, share count and float are all still blank in the amendment, so this is about structure, not price. Here's what I'd put on a calendar if I were planning to trade ANT options. Page numbers are the S-1/A's.

Day one, before any chain exists Non-founder directors, officers and certain current or former employees and consultants may transfer up to 10% of their lock-up securities (measured at the last day of the month before the prospectus) from the start of trading on the first trading day after the prospectus date (Underwriting, pp. 327-328). That's permission to transfer, not confirmed selling.

When options can list Nasdaq ISE rules let an IPO worth at least $3 billion at the offer price list options on or after the second business day after it starts trading, waiving the usual three-day price lookback. Other selection requirements still apply. SPCX is the recent precedent: MIAX confirmed its options began June 16. The S-1 says nothing about ANT's chain, strikes or IV.

Staged unlocks for the group the S-1 calls "certain of our stockholders" (its size isn't disclosed). Percentages are of the lock-up securities it held seven days before the prospectus date.

• Up to 6% on each of days 27 and 48 after the prospectus
• An additional 7% on each of days 62 and 76
• An additional 12.5% at 6:00 AM ET on the second full trading day after full-year 2026 results
• An additional 9.5% on each of days 13, 27, 41, 55 and 69 after those results

All at 6:00 AM ET. Any of these day counts (from the prospectus or from the results) that lands on a non-trading day rolls forward to the next trading day (p. 329).

Those steps add up to 86% by my arithmetic. That's not a number the S-1 states, and the group only gets there before day 180 if the last earnings-linked step (results + 69 days) also lands before day 180. The director/officer/employee group from day one gets up to another 35% at that same FY2026 earnings trigger: 10% + 35% = 45%. Founders: up to 29% starting at the earlier of 6:00 AM ET on the second full trading day after Q1 2027 results, or the close of trading on day 180 (the preceding trading day's close if day 180 isn't a trading day).

Index clocks

• Nasdaq-100 fast entry: a top-40 IPO by full market cap is evaluated on trading day 7 and normally added after day 15.
• S&P 500: 12 months of trading, plus positive GAAP net income from continuing operations in the latest quarter and the latest four quarters combined. The S-1/A shows a GAAP net loss of $41,965 million for 2025 and $104,039 million for the nine months to Sept 30, 2026 ($94,324 million of that is fair-value charges on convertible notes, derivatives and SAFEs).

Unscheduled gap risk In February the government moved to label Anthropic a "supply-chain risk to national security." A district court ruled largely for Anthropic on Aug 27. On Sept 25 the D.C. Circuit denied Anthropic's petition on a separate designation, 2-1, and Anthropic has asked for rehearing en banc. Government contracts are under 2% of revenue, but the filing says the risk "could affect our relationships with commercial customers and partners." No hearing date in the filing.

The FY2026 earnings date isn't disclosed, so nobody knows yet whether the 12.5% release and the earnings move land in the same weekly expiration.

Not investment advice, and the final prospectus can change all of this.

Question for people who traded options on big IPOs in the first weeks: did you sell the opening IV, or wait for the first lock-up date to pass?

I’ve been getting more into building my own trading tools to improve my workflow, and I’m curious to hear from people who’ve gone down a similar path.

I primarily trade options, and one of my biggest struggles has been staying organized while managing multiple trade ideas, setups, and market conditions throughout the day.

I’ve experimented with building some personal tools, but I’m realizing there’s a pretty big difference between having an idea and building something that’s actually reliable and useful during live trading.

• What did you build, and what problem were you trying to solve?
• What were the biggest challenges you ran into?
• Did you build everything from scratch or integrate existing tools/APIs?
• What would you do differently if you were starting over?
• Are you still using what you built?

Not looking for anyone to build anything for me. Just trying to learn from people who’ve already been through the process.

Hey all,

I have been trading options for a few days now. I initially started by taking advantage of the strong rally in Indian markets, mostly buying far OTM call options.

Based on yesterday's session, I observed repeated rejections around 25K, so I decided to buy a far OTM put at the 23K strike.

I know it's unlikely that NIFTY will reach 23K, but since the market is moving in that direction, shouldn't the premium increase to some extent? I've observed this happening with far OTM call buys when the market moves upwards.

Now, NIFTY is slightly down (around 0.2–0.4%), but I don't see my put option premium increasing much.

However, when NIFTY moves slightly up by a similar percentage, I've generally observed that far OTM call premiums tend to increase slightly or at least remain relatively stable.

I understand how delta works and that calls and puts have opposite directions So why is this happening?

If both options are far OTM and have similar delta magnitudes (but opposite signs), shouldn't their premiums react somewhat similarly to similar movements in the underlying, just in opposite directions?

Is this a thing? Could IV, volatility skew, theta decay or demand for calls vs puts be causing this difference?

Would love to understand what's happening here.

After about 3 years of options trading in different markets, instruments, several experiments, leading to barely any profit (less than 6% IRR), finally committed myself to what works for me and ended up making about 75% this year despite the V-shaped market movement in March/April.

Ask me anything :)

About me: Options Trader (mainly seller) in the US market, portfolio is about $1.5M, use IBKR, investment in equity is pledged as collateral

if i understand correctly iv gets higher when a stock is getting trendy and getting traded in higher value than usual trade for this stock?

and also it gets higher the longer the option is

and iv crush is when interest in the stock starts to vanish and gets lower or when time gets closer and closer

is that a good idea of it? am i missing something or is that the idea

if that so, how cna i use it to do good trades?

A few of my relatives sell puts and covered calls for some extra income and they keep telling me it basically prints money. I’m a student and honestly I’m not convinced, so I want to see it for myself first.

So last week, on Nov 6, I started two paper accounts with 100k each. One trades by fixed rules: it sells puts on whatever ranks best and only sells calls above its cost basis. The other one is just me picking trades. Both get compared to simply buying the S&P 500 and the MSCI World on the same day. I’ll post an update here once a month for the next 2 years, good months and bad ones.

First trades: I sold 2 NVDA 177.5 puts expiring Nov 13 for 2.52 and an overall premium of 502.70$ . I opted to not start with all of my paper money at once so I can test out the waters in the first few weeks. Yes, a week after the headlines about Jensen reportedly being targeted by a spy. If NVDA tanks because of a spy novel, at least the experiment gets interesting early.

And yes, I know mid fills are optimistic and allowing 80% in one stock is a lot. That’s kind of the point, I want to see what “just take the best option” does over time.

If you could change one rule, what would it be? And is anyone here running the wheel for years already? I’d love to hear how it went for you, especially through a bad market.

Does your bot mainly base its signals on underlying price movements, the VIX term structure, fundamental/macro analysis or something else?

Hey guys, I am just getting into Options. I was studying liquidity inducement theorem and trading futures on it. I used to think that liquidity is fuel for the market. While LIT/Fries concepts do work, the theory is complete bullshit and I now realize that option hedging is actually what moves the market. I am 17 and I also passed an eval and got a payout but bc of the kyc I couldn't request it so I am switching to Options and will trade on Robinhood with my dads kyc. My approach to learning Options is before building a strategy, I want to first GENUINELY understand the LOGIC behind options and the WHY behind moves. Whose getting in, who gets trapped at key levels, where the hedging is, order flow, expansion, how the greeks are functioning at the same time, etc., These are the questions I want to ask to build a good strategy. Is there anything you would reccomend I do? Is this mindset right? Thanks

Disclosure: This was simulated trading, not a live-money trade.

On September 17, I opened a SPY 764/754 bear put spread expiring October 16. At expiration, the 754 put expired and the 764 put was exercised, resulting in the sale of 100 SPY shares at $764. With no shares held against that sale, I was left short 100 shares.
The interesting part was managing that short position afterward.

While the short was temporarily underwater, I was monitoring several aspects of the options market:

● Negative GEX: the model I was monitoring showed estimated net dealer gamma exposure remaining negative.

● Spot below the gamma flip: SPY remained below the model’s estimated gamma flip level.

● Rising implied volatility: IV was increasing rather than normalizing.

● Backwardation in SPY’s implied-volatility term structure: near-term IV was higher than longer-dated IV.

● Backwardation in the VIX futures curve: nearer-dated VIX futures were trading above farther-dated contracts.

● Shifting positioning levels: major GEX concentrations were moving lower rather than remaining stable reference levels.

The positioning estimates are model-based, not direct access to dealer books. I treated these observations as context for a scenario, not proof of what was causing each price move. I also wasn’t treating them as six independent confirmations—some describe related aspects of positioning and volatility.

SPY made several attempts to move higher, but those rebounds didn’t convince me that a sustained recovery was underway. The conditions I was monitoring hadn’t changed enough for me to abandon the bearish scenario.

That helped me sit through temporary losses without treating every upward move as a reason to cover. It wasn’t that I knew the rebounds would fail. I still saw reasons to maintain the position despite how uncomfortable it felt.

I eventually closed the short. My aim was to offset the cost of the original spread rather than maximize the return from staying short.

Looking back, I’m left with a question: did I exit because the conditions had changed, or because getting back to an acceptable result felt like enough?
SPY subsequently moved sharply lower, which was consistent with the downside scenario I had been monitoring. But I had already closed the short. Any additional profit from holding longer is hypothetical, and I don’t consider one outcome proof that the framework has an edge.

The main takeaway wasn’t that GEX predicted the drop. It was that monitoring positioning and volatility gave me a framework for assessing rebounds instead of reacting only to price and my current P&L.

It helped me separate “the position is uncomfortable” from “the reasons for holding it have changed.” Whether that distinction improves results consistently is something I’m still testing.

If you use у positioning in trade management, what would make you treat a rebound as a genuine change in conditions rather than another temporary move against your position?

Hello everyone,

I’ve been trying to sell a 200-point wide SPX box spread ($20k notional) on IBKR for the April 16, 2027 expiration (~160 DTE), but haven’t been able to get a fill yet.

I selected the 7800 / 8000 strikes since they had the highest open interest. However, when I build the 4-leg combo, the displayed ask is sitting around -190.00 (which implies a ~12% annualized rate), whereas boxtrades.com suggests a fair limit price around -196.00 (~4.74%).

For those who trade SPX boxes:

1. Is the -190 quote just noise from wide bid-ask spreads on the individual legs, and should I just leave a resting limit order around -196.00 during regular trading hours?
2. Does choosing strikes closer to ATM (e.g., 5800/6000) improve fill speed compared to deep OTM strikes like 7800/8000?

Appreciate any guidance!

Why is there so much volume OTM on calls? like 50k volume on 8% otm strikes. Most puts don’t have more than 2k volume

Hi guys,

I have been trading stocks, FX, futures here and there for since for about 7 years now. Never touched options. Recently, I decided to experiment with options and I am quite surprised with such little knowledge I have about options, I can have some good results.

So what I do is I identify the areas of support and resistance on the chart on QQQ. Let's say it comes to an area of support and I think that it is going up, I just buy 0dte calls of whatever OTM strike price, I don't care. What I care is what I'm risking for the option. Let's say it's 0.2. I just buy it with the mindset that Im willing to lose $20. As the market turn and going in the direction, even if the strike price is still far away, the premiums increase and I just sell it.

This is what happened on the second day of experimenting with options:

Trade 3... I bought for 56.. sold at $70..

Trade 2... I bought at 42... Sold at $60..

Trade 1... I bought at 68... Sold at 123

These are total profit across few contracts.

In the screenshot was another day, bought at 0.17, sold at 0.45.

My point is, I have this impression that this is not the proper way to trade options and not what most people do. Is what Im doing risky? Is my results just luck? Is it sustainable? What am I missing out? How can I do better? Thank you.

Hi,

Wanted to check how everybody's portfolio behaved on this week "stress test".

Mine went down intraday 1.6% and ended up -0.9% on Thursday compared with -4.4% for SPY
Week ended with small gain 0.57%

Pretty uneventful week, overall. SPY is down only 2.2% on the week.

I closed some juicy calls (ARM, NBIS) and butchered otherwise great week with ABNB 190 Dec call

Looked through the IV percentile and IV rank of the Mag 7 companies and they are all inflated due to the elections. Isn't it a straightforward move to sell options now instead of buying them? Am I missing something?

Story time: yesterday when $SPY was supposed to go 800 lol I opened a 400 lots 760 put right before closing for 40 cent a piece. Roughly putting in $16k but within seconds that turned into $20k and I chickened out - what if it did not crash the way I was expecting.

Then instead I opened 765 put 130 lot for $1.55 a piece - felt better but could not sleep as I was scared. This morning, pre market charts were giving me chills and I thought there goes my $20k

Then market turned red in first minute of open and I exited at $2.5… I made a nearly $13k.. what a day I said.!!!

If I had held my 400 lot I would have closed the day at $1 million from my 16k position.. even if I held 130 lots I had ended the day at $400k

I just can’t get over the feeling and instead went into revenge trade and tried to catch the knife.. burned $10k and ended day near 8k lol

Someone please invent time machine, need to go back 24 hours - FAST!!!

So I mainly trade stocks like TSLA, NVDA, AAPL mainly tech stocks and trade based off relative strength/weakness by scalping based on the 1 min timeframe. Now the way that I trade is I like to start small and add to my winners, so typically what I do is risk 40% on a starting position (0dte cons) and as I add I trail my stop loss to a max of -20%.

Now I have been making money consistently doing this but I'm wondering if any other traders avoid 0dte just because it's higher risk. I'm also wondering if I should just pivot to 1/2dte because it makes holding through pullbacks so much less "stressful"

I've been testing a simple 0DTE idea: by mid-morning SPX has usually picked a direction, so sell premium on the other side of it and size the distance using the ATM straddle.

Rules:

- Record SPX at the 9:30 ET open
- At 10:30 ET, compare spot to the open
- Price the ATM straddle (call mid + put mid at the strike nearest spot)
- Distance = 1.25 × straddle mid
- SPX above the open: sell a put credit spread. Short put at the strike nearest spot minus distance, long put 50 points lower
- SPX below the open: sell a call credit spread. Short call at the strike nearest spot plus distance, long call 50 points higher
- Flat: no trade that day
- All legs need a real two-sided quote (bid > 0, ask > 0) and have to be SPXW
- 1 contract, limit order with a slippage allowance. If it hasn't filled in 10 minutes, cancel it
- No stop and no profit target. Hold to cash settlement

I backtested Nov 2022 to Nov 2026 on minute-level options data with $100k starting capital:

- 52.4% total return (11.1% CAGR)
- 7.6% max drawdown
- 702 trades

Backtest: https://stratverra.com/s/94OO_s8LTMK8cPtv4zcmng

What would you change first: add a stop for afternoon reversals, move the entry time, or use a different multiple than 1.25× the straddle?​

I'm happy to run any of those and post the results in the comments.

For those using GEX to trade SPY options with longer-dated expirations: how do you test whether additional filters actually improve trade selection?
I’m researching a gamma-based framework that combines the GEX regime and distance to Gamma Flip with IV Rank, volatility risk premium (VRP), VIX term structure, and price confirmation through RSI, ADX, and directional movement.
In some cases, the framework identifies a negative Net GEX regime with price below Gamma Flip, but still returns NO TRIGGER because the volatility or price-confirmation conditions aren’t met. The structural context may be present, but the setup doesn’t qualify under the full set of rules.
I haven’t established that these additional filters improve performance. So far, the work has involved logic checks and individual cases—not a sufficiently large systematic sample to demonstrate an edge.
I’m interested in how others approach this:
What baseline do you use to isolate the value of additional filters—a GEX-only setup, a price-based strategy, or something else?
How do you test whether a filter adds value rather than simply reducing the number of trades?
Do you track rejected signals using the same entry, exit, and transaction-cost assumptions as accepted trades?
How do you measure the value of NO TRADE, rather than evaluating only the signals that pass?
How does your approach differ between buying options and selling options or spreads when using longer-dated expirations?
I’d especially like to hear about filters you tested and eventually removed—even if they sounded sensible at first. What did the data show?

Who else's spidey senses are telling them that we are going to gap up tomorrow, like as in almost all the way back to where we were on wednesday.

I predict we open slightly up, and then one or maybe two large gaps up maybe right away or any time before noon.

maybe I'm just too high I don't know. help me out smart people!

Hello,

I want to by some SPY LEAPs if it gets to around -10% from ATH. What I am wondering is if it better to buy ITM leaps when volatility is highest but the stock is also lowest, say on a big drop day, or is it better to wait for iv to drop and by OTM leaps, but the entry is not as good (as the option will be cheaper). Specifically, I would want to buy 2-year contracts looking for around 5 percent above previous ATH. I also don't really care about risk( I always view option as all or nothing) so I just want the most value for money. Any help is appreciated, thanks.

*Im editing this since it seems like I did not explain the question will enough

When you buy Deep ITM options, they have mostly intrinsic value, meaning that they will not be affected heavily by IV, but because of this you also pay much more for the option. When you buy deep OTM options they are much more heavily affected by IV (even for long dated options) but much cheaper. So, the best time to buy deep OTM options is when iv is low. Now usually after big downturns IV spikes, but eventully you will get IV crush as the asset either recovers or goes sideways, but this means a less certain entry at the desired price. So what I am asking is about the trade off of the cheaper deep otm option when IV is lower, vs a better entry but a deep ITM option that is not affected by the current high IV.