Let's Trade Options

Not looking good for any kind of bear action. If CPI comes in tame tomorrow stocks will reach for new ath's....

CPI hot and /ES dropped but immediately bought on the cash open. Trump expected to announce new tariffs today and that might push down on stocks for a minute. Powell on the hill again and he has been consistently dovish, regardless of sticky inflation. Very hard to catch bear moves as the indices are still floating on AI megacap frenzy. I need SPX to 5950 to make good money on the put dagvert.

60 pt CPI drop completely bought back. btfd all you really need to know to trade the permabull market. Trump to announce new tariffs tomorrow but I doubt markets will do more than shrug. I am abandoning bear fantasies....

Forgive the delayed response, I had a bilateral hip replacement 2 days after I wrote that. I wrote that knowing I'll be home for a while, first 2 weeks are hard though and I wasn't thinking about trading much.

As far as my options trading, nothing exciting. I usually sell strangles or IC 45 days out. I play around with 0DTE but only on Fridays and tend to do that in simulated trades because of the gamma risk.

what's your poison on the ICs/strangles?

Trade the ES. Short strikes are usually between 16 and 20 Deltas, if IC the long strikes around 5 deltas.

Cool. Hey I wish you a speedy recovery. It's amazing the things the surgeons can do now - I hope it works out perfectly.

I have never sold myself on the ICs, usually do fine when trading them and then give it back on big move fuckups. So I have settled into trading defined risk strats with better risk/reward. A variety of spreads on a 1-4 week cycle. Often bi-directional. Works pretty well, but I have good streaks and bad.

I've been modeling and dabbling the 0dte SPX trades. If I could get good at those I could see doing those on the regular. Probably credit spreads (not ICs) entered after big exhausting moves seems to be something that usually works, but those opps don't occur every day. Just as well, because I like not-trading.

Feel free to post/narrate some trades if you like. OK if you don't also. Cheers....

Thank you for the well wishes. Yes, it is amazing what they can do. I was literally up and walking within 24 hours, albeit with a walker but still.
Only since last summer have I been serious about options. I sell about 45 DTE so the last trade I closed was in December, my surgery was originally scheduled for January and I didn't want any open trades. I'm due to get into something soon so I'll definitely post a screenshot and say what I'm doing. If the trade goes awry I'll post how I manage it.

The 0DTE thing seems to work good with strangles and IC on Fridays after 10 am New York time/after any economic reports and hold till around noon. It's basically like not much is happening and just let the theta decay. But, like I said, I do those with "paper money" cause in reality I don't like the gamma risk.

interesting backtest re: early day vs late day entries for 0dte ICs

My general approach is to enter after large moves and after the first third or half of the day, and only in the direction of that move. The premise is those moves will reverse or flatline exhausted. Of course some moves will be strong thru the day, but I can take the first hours of the day to assess the macro conditions that might effect that. Even so, I just don't like the risk/reward, so I will probably never be a 0dte scalper.

bot for 5c today

added Feb28/Mar3 SPX 5925/5900 diagonal puts for 30c, in the ratio shown. Will look to get some cash early next week.

I never actually posted anything but comments on FF so forgive me if my pics are bad. This is a Friday 0DTE naked straddle SIMULATED, I would never do this with real money but it's fun to fool around when there's no risk. Blue lines are my short strikes and red my breakevens. If all stays quiet I'll close this out around noon with anywhere between 25 and 50% of credit received. Markets usually stay quiet on Fridays after news announcements, main thing that could tank this trade is tentative President Trump speech. Love him or hate him, one thing I think everyone can agree on is he has a tendency to shake things up to say the least. Again, I would never do this with real $$

So, like I said, I was looking to keep between 25% to 50% of credit received. Even though this is paper trading I still manage like if it were real money. 71 bucks and change minus $6 for commission is about $65 and change- about 25%. Price was still well within my strikes and I would've left it on longer if I didn't see a tentative Trump speech on the calendar.
Definitely not worth the risk for $71 bucks so my 0DTE things will be simulated

right...the low risk/reward is the dealbreaker, for me. I don't want to be managing trades for hours every day & have better ways to deploy bp

Friday drop to the 50 dma & we'll see if there's more below. I doubt it. Would like to see 5950 hold for the week, though.

Ok, got a feeling I'm gonna get my A$$ handed to me on this one. I was itching to do something aside from paper trading. This is the first live trade I've put on since the orange man took office. When sleepy Joe was in things were quiet and my trades hit most of the time. I'm looking to be out of this by 3/21 with 50% of the credit received. We shall see.

one of the most popular 0dte trade ideas aired out on tasty has been the straddle swap - they are selling 0dte SPX straddles, but to get past the big bp hit, they are also buying 30dte wings, out at 30 delta (I think 30 delta, I need to find the vid & review & insert it here). It makes a 30-day wide diagonal, rinse/repeat every day or maybe keep the original 30dte wings and keep selling against them.

I never liked it - the spread on the resulting diagonal is still too wide,.

I have been modeling a similar trade, but only going out 7dte for the wings. My approach would be to not sell straddles but to sell 0dte strikes about 100pts away from the SPX price at about 1hr into the day, and then the long strikes would be no more than 100 pts away from those. Makes a $10k bp stake. A variety of ways to manage, but in most markets you'd make something every day. Could leave the longs on for subsequent day(s) and maybe catch big profit on one of those, if the market decides to go in one direction for a few days....

Example shown for Monday, but it'll be different. I will shoot some live 1-lots at this strategy for a while & see how it goes. I could get into the 0dte grind if I could find something that would reliably make a few $100 or a few $1000 a day....

here it is...there are a few related vids also but you can find them if you want....

In this put fly since late last week. At the time, I think 5600 was about 1.5 the expected move. I watched it go to the guts early and let it run. Took a couple off at $2, a couple more at $2.50, and holding the balance for the end game 3/14. Perfect finish around 5595 in the last 10 minutes. That would be super good luck, but I'd take it.