Let's Trade Options

On weakness in the opening hour I rolled down the 6950 calendar calls to 6920, for another $1.30 debit.

insurance for another Friday surprise dump...

done tweaking, will just be doing 1 dte flys. May use those to guard @ 6800 overnight Thursday.

I took some losses & took some profits, entered some flys for tomorrow. I am covered for 6600 to 6875, SPX stack looks like this now....

Obviously, I'd love to see SPX take another big dump tomorrow and settle below 6700, where I have that 6-lot 6610/6650/6690 put fly waiting....

But, I'm ok with what I have. Realized about $6k today and should be able to grab another $5k or more Friday. I know this looks like a mess but it's just rolling spreads, taking some profits and losses when that makes sense, and trying to get things lined up for payday = expiry day for all the spreads...

a few more tweaks and closes and opens and I'm set for payday

Expecting a rally back to 6900+ next week, so entered the combo below. Will add put side perhaps on Monday.

It's about that time...watch out, Santa rally will rip your face off....can we close the yr > 7000....?

added the fotm put calendar shown. I may take everything off Wed pre-NVDA, or most of it, if there is some profit, and then set something up shorter term for the NVDA aftermath. I kind of expect tight ranging into Wed now, but I am only right about 1/2 the time...

closed the call fly for 50% loss, rolled down the call cldr from 6950 to 6820; added call diag AM/PM 6850/6860, and the combo looks as shown. I may close chunks of it tomorrow if the iv's hold

Rolled down the call fly from 6820 to 6775 for an added $1 debit. Wil lleave the fotm diagonal.

Brace for impact re NVDA ER.

that is quite a surprise....I closed everything early, had good wins @ call spreads. I coulda made money on the put spreads, too, had I held them. Obviously not expecting a 150 pt swing...

This fucked things up for the AM/PM spread, I learned the hard way

AI Overview
The main change for SPX AM-settled options is that their trading has been extended to 9:30 a.m. ET on expiration day to align with S&P 500 futures and allow more opportunities for risk management
. The final settlement value is now determined at the opening of the RTH trading session, and the last day to trade the option is now the expiration date itself, rather than the day before.
Key changes

1. Trading hours: SPX AM-settled options can now be traded until 9:30 a.m. ET on expiration day, instead of closing at the prior day's market close.
2. Last trading day: The last day to trade the option is now the expiration date itself, when the exercise settlement value is determined.
3. Settlement calculation: The final settlement value is determined at the opening of the RTH (Regular Trading Hours) session on expiration day, rather than the last day of trading in the underlying securities prior to expiration.

Impact of the changes

1. Increased flexibility: Investors have additional opportunities to manage their risk on the expiration day.
2. Market alignment: This change aligns the trading hours of SPX options with S&P 500 futures contracts, which can trade until 9:30 a.m. ET on expiratio

Tgiving spread - Wed/Fri, we should rally back to at least 6700

once more unto the breach...

I sold a Nov 28 SPX 6250/6225 put spread (15 delta) a couple hrs ago for $2 and I will take it off @ $1.20 net gain today if SPX tacks on another 5-10 pts. That is my kind of bull put spread.

...in for -$2 and out for -$0.85. Anytime you get >50% gain in one day man just grab that cash, keep your bp clean.

I need SPX to settle down this week and stop swinging around like a bat outta Hell. Just a few days of nice grind up to pin 6700 by Wed close. Thank you.

What do you do if you are trading and something comes across the wires and you know it's gonna be a big deal in the market? Typically, a big drop, like an asteroid lands right on Wall Street? But, could be anything.

Last Thursday, for example - that sell-off was brutal. Worse is it made little sense - there was no warning. Anyway - to answer the question above, you buy some otm options out a week or 2, whatever you can afford. Looking at the 11/28 6300 puts, last Thursday, they went from $3.50 to $32+ in just 1.5 hrs...

with today's near 2% rise, the combo is in good shape. I am sitting on hands for the diagonal, at least until tomorrow. The overall value of the combo - re: max profit at expiry - has come down about 25%. It'll slide even more as SPX rises. But, that's the sad aspect of call calendars. IV erosion huts them. The call flys suffer much less in this regard, but you might have a harder keyhole to hit for the flys. Anyway, fingers crossed for a slow uptick towards 6750 for the Wed endgame.

A little pullback helps me today, still sitting on hands for the time spreads.

https://www.forexfactory.com/thread/...9#post15488709

Note I am abandoning call cldrs/diags for upside range capture, and will rather use flys; will stick to cldrs/flys for downside traps.

Another thing I need to clean up or at least re-assess is the dte I normally use for the time spreads. I am leaning towards fine-tuning the time spread dte a little more, after using the Friday/Monday spread for ages, typically entered @ 5dte. As noted above a ways, I got burned one too many times on the AM/PM spread, but I might still keep that in the quiver for put spreads only.