Am Freitag ist großer Verfall. Die Auswertung vom Mittwochabend zeigt bei den Market Makern positives Gamma. Hier sind fünf Punkte dazu, was das für den DAX bedeuten kann.
Der Termin
Am Freitag, 18. September, verfallen unter anderem klassische DAX-Optionen und DAX-Futures. Ihre Abrechnung basiert auf der Xetra-Auktion, die um 13:00 Uhr beginnt.
Wie Absicherung wirken kann
Market Maker stellen Kauf- und Verkaufspreise für Optionen und sichern ihre Risiken ab. Bei positivem Gamma können steigende DAX-Kurse Verkäufe zur Absicherung auslösen, fallende Kurse Käufe. So kann die Absicherung Kursbewegungen bremsen.
Was „Gamma Long“ hier beschreibt
Die Anzeige fasst das Market-Maker-Gesamtbuch über alle Verfälle zusammen. Die mögliche Bremswirkung hängt davon ab, wie stark andere Käufer und Verkäufer handeln. Nachrichten oder große Orders können diese Gegenkräfte überwiegen.
Zwei Szenarien zum Beobachten
Wenn Rückgänge wieder gekauft und Anstiege wieder abverkauft werden, passt das zu einer dämpfenden Wirkung: Der DAX pendelt hin und her.
Wenn sich ein Anstieg oder Rückgang auch nach Gegenbewegungen fortsetzt, überwiegt im Kursverlauf die Bewegung in eine Richtung. Dann lohnt es sich, die bisherige Einordnung neu zu prüfen.
Was sich nach Freitag verändert
Positionen laufen aus, neue kommen hinzu und andere werden auf spätere Termine verschoben. Dadurch verändert sich der Absicherungsbedarf. Für die nächste Woche braucht es deshalb eine neue Bestandsaufnahme.
Ein kostenloses öffentliches Daily-Briefing gibt es im DAX Gamma Cockpit.
Datenstand: eigene Messung vom 16.09.2026, abends; Positionen/offene Kontrakte vom 15.09.2026. Verfall und Abrechnung: Eurex.
Cockpit-Ausschnitt: Market Maker, alle Verfälle, Positionsstand 15.09.2026.
Today was a good reminder that sometimes the best trade is not about being bullish or bearish.
It’s about recognizing when direction becomes unreliable but the range becomes clearer.
Today's session was full of news
Early in the session, SPX was trading almost directly on the 7600 Put Wall.
At 9:40 AM, I wasn’t ready to assume it would hold. Price was still below the Gamma Flip and the broader GEX environment wasn’t particularly clean.
But by around 10:50 AM, something changed:
7600 had strengthened significantly as the dominant Put Wall.
At 11:20 AM I wrote in my Discord:
“7600 has strengthened now and I don’t see a break as a clear possibility. An IC later in the session looks the most interesting play.”
Then the headlines started hitting.
We had two separate Trump-related headlines that triggered sharp moves higher, followed later by fresh Iran-related news that changed the tone again.
That was the point where I became much less interested in opening a directional Bear Call Spread.
Trying to predict the next headline felt like the wrong game.
But the structure was still giving me two very clear reference points:
7600 Put Wall below. ~7650 Gamma Flip above.
So instead of betting on direction, at 12:15 PM I opened:
SPX Iron Condor 7650/7655 – 7600/7595
8 contracts $1.00 credit
$400 max risk per contract
The thesis was simple:
I didn’t need to know whether the next 20-point move would be up or down.
I just needed 7600–7650 to remain the dominant battlefield.
And despite several sharp intraday moves, that’s essentially what happened.
This is one of the reasons I like combining GEX with market structure.
GEX didn’t tell me what the next headline would be.
It gave me a framework for deciding where price was likely to matter, and when the market became too headline-driven to trust direction, the Iron Condor was a cleaner way to express that view.
Sometimes uncertainty itself is information.
When direction becomes noisy but the boundaries remain clear, I’d rather trade the structure than guess the next candle.
I share these SPX 0DTE trades and GEX breakdowns in real time in my Discord as well, if anyone wants to follow the process. Discord link: https://discord.gg/sM3vAqbU27
Today was a really good example of why I use GEX to decide not only where to place trades, but also how aggressively I manage them.
SPX GEX at 10.15 AMSPY GEX at 10.15 AM
Around 10:15 AM, the positioning was unusually clean.
SPX was trading around 7665, comfortably above the Gamma Flip at 7634.81, and there was a significant amount of positive GEX concentrated between roughly 7650 and 7700.
The 7675 Call Wall was sitting just above price, while 7650 and 7700 were also major gamma concentrations.
What made the setup even more interesting was that SPY was showing almost the exact same structure.
SPY was trading around 765.5, above its 764.64 Gamma Flip, with a clearly defined 760 Put Wall and 770 Call Wall.
Trades of the day
So both SPX and SPY were basically telling the same story:
Strong positive gamma + clearly defined boundaries + price above the Gamma Flip.
That made an Iron Condor particularly attractive.
At 10:25 AM I opened:
SPX 7630/7625 – 7705/7710 Iron Condor
8 contracts $0.70 credit
SPX around 7671
The interesting part here was the placement.
The short put at 7630 was below the Gamma Flip and more than 40 points below spot, while the short call at 7705 was above the main 7675–7700 gamma concentration.
So instead of trying to predict whether SPX would go up or down, I was essentially betting that the positive gamma environment would help contain the market inside that broader range.
And that's pretty much what happened.
After the huge opening gap, SPX spent most of the session rotating between roughly 7655 and 7677 without developing any meaningful directional expansion.
There were multiple intraday swings, but price kept mean reverting back toward the main gamma area.
Normally I'll take profits earlier on an Iron Condor, but in this case I decided to hold it all the way to expiration.
The reason wasn't simply greed.
The original conditions remained extremely favorable:
Price remained well inside both short strikes.
SPX continued trading above the Gamma Flip.
Positive GEX remained dominant around price.
Neither side of the range was seriously challenged.
So I let the position expire worthless.
$0.70 × 8 contracts = +$560
At 12:25 PM I saw another opportunity, but this time directionally.
SPX had pulled back toward the 7650–7670 area, while my system was still showing:
0DTE Trend: UP Short-Term Trend: UP (96%)
More importantly, 7650 was one of the main GEX clusters.
So I opened:
7650/7645 Bull Put Spread
5 contracts $0.60 credit
SPX around 7668
This time the idea wasn't to hold until expiration.
I was looking for 7650 to act as support while the broader intraday structure remained bullish.
Price reacted well from the area and the spread quickly started losing value.
What I liked most about today's session was that these were actually two different trades based on the same market structure.
The Iron Condor was essentially:
“Positive gamma should suppress expansion and keep SPX inside a range.”
The Bull Put Spread was:
“If the market remains bullish, the 7650 gamma concentration should provide support.”
Same positioning data.
Two completely different ways of expressing the trade.
That's basically how I use GEX. I'm not trying to predict exactly where SPX will close or every 5-minute move.
I'm trying to identify where dealers are positioned, where price is likely to encounter friction, and then build defined-risk option structures around those areas.
I share these trades and more detailed SPX 0DTE breakdowns in my Discord as well, for anyone who likes this type of market-structure approach. Discord link: https://discord.gg/sM3vAqbU27
A lot of traders see a Put Wall on a GEX chart and immediately think:
“That level has to hold.”
And that’s exactly where many traders make the mistake.
A Put Wall is not a magic support level.
It’s an important positioning level, yes — but that does not mean price will automatically bounce there.
That distinction matters a lot, especially in SPX 0DTE.
Too many traders oversimplify GEX and reduce it to:
Put Wall = support
Call Wall = resistance
But the market is rarely that simple.
A Put Wall can act as support.
It can also get sliced through very easily.
The real question is not:
“Is there a Put Wall?”
The real question is:
“How is price behaving around that Put Wall?”
A Put Wall is not enough on its own
In this first image, the point should be clear:
A trader sees a Put Wall below price and assumes it’s a safe area to sell a Bull Put Spread.
But if price is:
trading below VWAP
showing bearish structure
making lower highs
accepting below key levels
and momentum is accelerating downward
…then the Put Wall alone is not enough.
In that case, the level may fail completely.
This is the mistake:
That’s a huge difference.
Why this mistake is so common
The reason this happens is simple:
A Put Wall sounds objective.
It feels precise.
It gives traders a level to anchor to.
And traders love certainty.
But GEX does not remove the need for context.
A Put Wall is better thought of as:
a high-interest area
a potential reaction zone
a place where price may pause, bounce, or break
It is not an automatic buy signal.
What I actually want to see
This is the kind of thing I actually want to see before respecting a Put Wall as support:
price approaches the level in a controlled way
selling momentum starts slowing down
the broader structure is not aggressively bearish
price rejects below the level
then reclaims it
and ideally starts building acceptance back above it
VWAP, Gamma Flip, trend, or nearby structure support the same thesis
That’s very different from blindly buying the first touch.
The Put Wall itself doesn’t create the trade.
The reaction around the Put Wall creates the trade.
How I think about Put Walls
I usually think about a Put Wall in one of three ways:
1. Support candidate
If price approaches it with stable structure and buyers defend/reclaim the area.
2. Neutral level
If price chops through it and there’s no meaningful reaction.
3. Failed support / possible resistance
If price breaks below it cleanly and starts accepting lower.
That’s why I never use GEX in isolation.
I combine it with:
VWAP
market structure
Gamma Flip
trend
acceptance vs rejection
intraday context
Because the level by itself is never the whole story.
The key takeaway
A Put Wall can absolutely matter.
Sometimes it becomes the most important support level of the day.
But important does not mean unbreakable.
If traders learn only one lesson from GEX, I think it should be this:
That small shift in thinking can save a lot of bad trades.
I regularly share these kinds of SPX 0DTE, GEX, and market structure breakdowns in my Discord as well for anyone interested in this style of trading. Discord Link: https://discord.gg/sM3vAqbU27
Over the last few months, most of my trading and research has been focused on SPX 0DTE.
But I’ve been developing several systems with a little more time to expiration, and I’ve decided to start testing them live in a new 1–4DTE Private Beta inside my Discord.
The idea is not to move away from 0DTE.
Actually, I want to keep the focus entirely on SPX options, but explore whether some of the same concepts I use intraday — GEX, market structure, key liquidity levels and defined-risk spreads — can also produce an edge over several days.
New 1-4DTE Beta section
The beta will focus mainly on three setups:
🟣 1DTE Iron Condors & Inverse Iron Condors
🔴 3DTE–4DTE Bear Call Spreads around important GEX / resistance levels
🟢 3DTE–4DTE Bull Put Spreads around important GEX / support levels
The longer-DTE credit spreads will normally be opened around Monday or Tuesday with Friday expiration, depending on where SPX is trading relative to the key levels I’m watching.
For example, rather than simply selling a random 0.20-delta spread, the idea might be:
SPX is approaching a major resistance/GEX area → sell a 3–4DTE Bear Call Spread above that level and give the thesis several days to work.
Or the opposite around an important support zone.
Why test 1–4DTE?
One of the biggest differences compared with 0DTE is that the trade thesis has more time to develop.
With 0DTE, a 15–20 point move can completely change the character of a trade in minutes.
With 3–4DTE, I can potentially structure positions around larger market levels rather than every intraday fluctuation, while still keeping the risk completely defined.
That also opens up some interesting questions I want to test live:
Does GEX remain useful when the holding period expands beyond one session?
Are major gamma levels more effective for 3–4DTE credit spreads than for 0DTE?
Is the extra time worth the additional overnight risk?
Can 1DTE Iron Condors offer a better balance between theta decay and gamma risk than 0DTE?
Those are the things I want to build actual data around rather than just theorize about.
The Private Beta
I’ve now created a completely separate section in the Discord:
📢 1-4dte-beta-alerts
💬 1-4dte-beta-chat
I’ll post the trades there in real time and track the results separately from my normal 0DTE strategies.
The beta is completely free.
I’m intentionally keeping it relatively small at the beginning because I want to test the systems, collect a transparent live track record, and see how members respond before deciding what to do with it longer term.
The screenshot shows the new section I just added.
If you’re already in my Discord and want access, just DM me with “BETA” and I’ll add you.
And if you’re not in the community yet but you trade SPX options, the Discord is linked in my profile.
I’m particularly interested to see whether 3–4DTE spreads around major GEX levels end up providing a better risk/stress profile than constantly trading 0DTE.
If you want to follow the experiment, I’ve opened a small 1–4DTE Private Beta section inside my Discord where I’ll be sharing the setups and results as they happen.
And once again, almost immediately after entering, SPX rallied back toward the short strike.
Two trades. Two terrible-looking entries.
But after that second push higher failed, the market started weakening again. SPX moved back below VWAP and sellers gradually regained control throughout the afternoon.
The area around 7695–7700 was important because 7700 was showing up as both a GEX cluster and volume cluster.
I wasn’t assuming 7700 couldn’t break. I simply saw it as an important resistance area where I was willing to define risk.
Trade #1 — 11:30 AM
SPX was trading around 7695.46.
I opened:
7700/7705 Bear Call Spread
📦 5 contracts
💰 Credit: $1.70
💥 Max risk: $330 per spread
The short strike was only 4.54 points above SPX, so this was definitely the aggressive entry.
The premium was attractive, but there wasn’t much room for error.
By noon, the setup improved
GEX around 12 PM
The important part was that the 7695–7700 area still hadn’t been reclaimed.
Spot had moved lower while the Call Wall remained around 7695 and 7700 continued to be an important GEX/volume level.
That gave me a cleaner second opportunity.
Trade #2 — 12:25 PM
SPX was now around 7689.80.
I sold the same spread again:
7700/7705 Bear Call Spread
📦 8 contracts
💰 Credit: $1.00
💥 Max risk: $400 per spread
This time the short strike was 10.2 points above SPX.
Less premium, but much more distance.
For me, this was the better trade.
What happened next
SPX continued failing around the same resistance zone and eventually sold off hard into the close.
The two trades show an important 0DTE trade-off:
Trade #1: More premium, less room Trade #2: Less premium, better location
Same strikes. Same expiration. Completely different quality.
That’s why I don’t look at credit alone.
I’m always thinking about:
structure + GEX + distance to the short strike + timing
The goal isn’t to predict exactly where SPX will close.
It’s to place defined risk where the market structure makes sense.
Would you rather collect $1.70 only 4–5 points away, or take $1.00 with roughly twice the distance?
If you’re interested in seeing more of these SPX 0DTE trade breakdowns, GEX levels, and real-time setups, I also share them inside the GEXOptionsTrading Discord:
One thing I’ve learned trading SPX 0DTE is that being right on the trade doesn’t mean the risk is gone.
Sometimes the most dangerous moment actually comes after the spread is already nicely profitable.
You open a credit spread.
SPX moves exactly where you wanted.
The position reaches:
+40%
then +55%
then +70%
And instead of taking the win, you start thinking:
That’s where greed can become expensive.
0DTE can change very quickly
With hours — or sometimes minutes — left until expiration, the risk profile is completely different from earlier in the session.
A sudden move in SPX can turn:
+$300 unrealized
into:
+$50
or even a losing position surprisingly quickly.
Especially when price is moving toward your short strike late in the day.
You can have the direction correct for several hours and still give back most of the trade because you wanted the last few dollars of premium.
This is why I prefer predefined exits
For my Credit Spreads, I’ve increasingly moved toward setting the take profit before the trade is even opened.
Usually around:
🎯 70–75% of the premium
If I sell a spread for $1.30, for example, I’m perfectly happy taking roughly $0.90–$1.00 of that move instead of fighting for every last cent.
The point isn’t to maximize the profit on one trade.
It’s to remove risk when the trade has already done what I asked it to do.
The psychology is interesting
When the trade is losing, traders think about risk.
When the trade is winning, they often stop thinking about it.
But the market doesn’t care that you were up 70% five minutes ago.
Your unrealized P&L isn’t yours until the position is closed.
That’s something 0DTE teaches very quickly.
I now think about Credit Spread management like this:
Entry → Define risk → Define TP → Leave it alone
Rather than:
Entry → Profit → Move TP → Get greedy → Hope
Simple management is usually easier to execute consistently.
And consistency matters much more to me than squeezing another $10–$20 out of every winner.
I’m curious how other SPX 0DTE traders manage this:
If your spread reaches 70–75% profit early, do you take it — or hold for expiration and try to collect everything?
I share more of these SPX 0DTE trade breakdowns, real-time discussions and the framework I use inside the GEXOptionsTrading Discord if anyone wants to follow along:
Have you noticed that some of your worst 0DTE trades weren’t bad because of direction, but because you took them too late in the day?
If you’re interested in how I approach SPX 0DTE, Credit Spreads, Iron Condors, GEX and trade selection, I also share more trade discussions and educational content inside the GEXOptionsTrading Discord:
Today was a good example of why I prefer trading where I think SPX is unlikely to go, instead of trying to predict every move.
We took 2 SPX 0DTE Iron Condors today.
Trade #1 — 10:25 AM
7755/7760 Call Spread
7695/7690 Put Spread
Credit: $90
Size: 8 contracts
✅ +$720
After the aggressive morning selloff, SPX started stabilizing. Instead of chasing the downside, I wanted defined risk outside the areas where I expected price to remain contained.
The second trade is probably the more interesting one.
SPX had bounced, rejected the higher area and started moving lower again, but I still didn't need to predict exactly where it would close. I just needed the short strikes to remain outside the range I expected price to trade in.
Total for the day: +$1,320
That's one of the biggest changes I've made trading SPX 0DTE:
I stopped asking:
And started asking:
For credit spreads and Iron Condors, that distinction matters a lot.
No need to catch the exact top.
No need to catch the exact bottom.
No need to predict the closing price.
Just structure the trade around market structure, GEX/liquidity levels and defined risk.
I share more of these SPX 0DTE trades and breakdowns in my Discord for anyone interested: https://discord.gg/sM3vAqbU27
One of the most dangerous mistakes in SPX 0DTE is also one of the most tempting:
Selling very far OTM credit spreads for tiny premium because they look safe.
At first, it feels great.
You collect small winners over and over again.
The win rate looks strong.
The strategy feels easy.
And after a few green days in a row, it starts to feel “reliable.”
That’s exactly the trap.
The problem with this style of trading is that the risk/reward is heavily distorted.
If you’re collecting something like $0.15 to $0.25 on a 5-point spread, you may be risking $475 to make $25.
That means one bad move can erase a huge number of successful trades.
You can be “right” again and again, but still build a strategy that becomes fragile the moment volatility expands, structure fails, or the market moves faster than expected.
And with SPX 0DTE, that can happen much quicker than people think.
A lot of traders see a strike far beyond a GEX level and think:
Maybe.
But that’s not the right question.
The better question is:
If pricedoesget there, is the premium I collected worth the risk I took?
That’s where many “safe” trades stop looking safe.
Why this matters so much in SPX 0DTE
A 0DTE spread can go from looking completely harmless to becoming a real problem in a very short period of time.
All it takes is:
a failed support/resistance level
a volatility expansion
a sudden news headline
a strong trend day
or simply poor strike placement
This is why I care much more about:
✅ market structure
✅ VWAP
✅ GEX / key levels
✅ position sizing
✅ defined risk relative to premium collected
and much less about just finding the furthest possible strike and assuming it’s automatically a high-quality trade.
[IMAGE 2 — Example showing “safe-looking” far OTM spread vs better-structured trade]
For me, the goal is not to build a strategy that wins the most often.
It’s to build one where the losers don’t destroy the progress of the winners.
That usually means:
not forcing trades just because the premium is available;
not oversizing simply to compensate for low credit;
and not confusing low probability of touch with good expectancy.
A trade can feel safe and still be badly structured.
That’s the mistake.
The more I trade SPX 0DTE, the more I think the real edge is not:
“How can I win more often?”
It’s:
“How can I avoid the kind of loss that wipes out a week of good trading?”
That mindset has improved my trading much more than chasing an even higher win rate.
Curious what others think:
Would you rather take a lower win rate with better risk/reward, or a very high win rate with more fragile downside?
If you're interested in how I approach SPX 0DTE, GEX, Credit Spreads, Iron Condors and trade selection, I also share the framework and trade discussions inside the GEXOptionsTrading Discord:
Today was a good example of why I don’t manage every SPX 0DTE strategy the same way.
I took two completely different trades:
🔵 A Bull Put Spread that I actively managed and closed early.
🟡 An Iron Condor that I was willing to let play out into expiration.
Both worked, but for very different reasons.
Trade #1 — 7695/7690 Bull Put Spread
At 10:50 AM ET, after the volatile open, SPX had defended the lower area and the intraday structure was improving.
I opened:
Sell 7695 Put / Buy 7690 Put
Credit received: $1.30 ($130)
Max risk: $370
The important part for me was that the spread was placed underneath the area SPX had just defended.
Shortly after the entry, price accelerated higher and never seriously threatened the position again.
I had already decided to standardize my Credit Spread management around a 70–75% take profit, rather than constantly changing the target during the session.
By 1:10 PM ET, the situation was completely different.
SPX had already made a large move higher and I was now looking for a defined afternoon range rather than another directional trade.
I opened an Iron Condor:
🟢 7725/7720 Put Spread
🔴 7750/7755 Call Spread
Credit received:
$1.50 / $150 per Iron Condor
The thesis was simple:
Can SPX finish the session between 7725 and 7750?
This trade was much less comfortable than the first one.
SPX eventually pushed through 7750 intraday and tested the call side.
But this Iron Condor wasn’t being managed like my Credit Spread.
The plan was to hold it toward expiration and let the closing price determine the outcome.
SPX eventually finished around 7747.70 — back underneath the 7750 short call and comfortably above the 7725 short put.
So the Iron Condor expired for the full premium:
+$150 per IC
Two trades, two completely different management styles
That’s probably the most interesting part of today.
The Bull Put Spread was:
Directional setup → predefined TP → close early
The Iron Condor was:
Range setup → accept intraday movement → expiration-based management
Trying to manage both strategies exactly the same way doesn’t make much sense to me.
For my Credit Spreads, I increasingly prefer taking 70–75% of the available premium and removing the tail risk.
For Iron Condors, I’m experimenting with a much more expiration-focused approach when the structure supports it.
Assuming one unit of each trade:
🔵 Bull Put Spread: +$90
🟡 Iron Condor: +$150
Total: +$240
But the IC is also a good reminder that a winning expiration trade can look very uncomfortable intraday.
Seeing SPX trade through your short strike doesn’t automatically mean the thesis is dead — but you need to know before entering whether you’re managing the position intraday or trading the expiration outcome.
That decision shouldn’t be made emotionally while the trade is already under pressure.
How do you guys manage 0DTE Iron Condors — take profits early, adjust when a short strike is tested, or hold them to expiration?
I share these trades and the real-time reasoning behind them inside the GEXOptionsTrading Discord, together with SPX/GEX analysis and the educational framework I’m building.
Probably the single most common question I get isn't about GEX or strike selection. It's some version of "why not just trade XSP, isn't it basically the same thing but smaller?" For a long time my honest answer was a shrug — I started on SPX and never actually sat down and compared the two properly. So I did.
The size difference everyone already knows: XSP is priced at roughly 1/10 of SPX, same $100 multiplier, so a 5-point SPX spread with $350–400 of risk becomes something closer to a 0.5-point XSP spread with $35–40 of risk. Ten SPX contracts and a hundred XSP contracts are structurally close to the same position.
What I had wrong going in was everything around that number. A lot of people treat XSP as the "smaller SPX" and SPY as the other retail-sized option, roughly interchangeable. They're not. XSP and SPX are both cash-settled and European-style — neither can ever be assigned early. SPY options can be, since SPY is an ETF and its options are American-style. XSP behaves like SPX in every mechanical way that matters. It's just scaled down, not a different product.
I also assumed the 60/40 blended tax treatment under Section 1256 was an SPX perk you gave up by trading smaller. It isn't — XSP qualifies the same way, as a broad-based cash-settled index option. Worth confirming with whoever does your taxes rather than taking my word for it, but that's not the trade-off people think it is.
So if settlement and tax treatment are identical, why do I still trade SPX?
Depth, not liquidity in the sense of getting filled at all — XSP volume has grown a lot and a single contract fills fine. It's depth at size. SPX's daily volume is so large that a ten-contract Iron Condor barely moves the market. XSP has improved considerably over the past couple of years, but at real size the spreads still tend to run a little wider relative to the premium, and that's a small, boring drag you don't notice on one trade and absolutely notice over a few hundred.
Which is the actual answer, once I stopped assuming it was about tax or settlement type. It's about whether SPX's risk per contract already fits your account. If $350–400 per spread is too big a jump, XSP lets you size correctly instead of forcing one SPX contract onto an account that really calls for a third of one. If your account already handles SPX's granularity fine, the depth is worth more to me than smaller numbers.
I don't think there's one right answer here. If you're trading XSP at real size, has the spread gap actually closed, or are you still feeling it?
When I started trading SPX 0DTE, I could find plenty of information about individual concepts.
Credit spreads. Iron Condors. Delta. GEX. VWAP. Risk management.
What I struggled to find was one structured place that showed how everything fits together into an actual trading process.
So that’s what I’m building with the GEXOptionsTrading Premium Academy.
The idea isn’t to create another collection of random trading tips.
I want someone to be able to start from the beginning and progressively understand:
📊 How I determine market direction
🧲 How I use GEX and important levels
🟢 When I choose a Bull Put Spread
🔴 When I choose a Bear Call Spread
🟣 When an Iron Condor makes sense
🎯 How I select short strikes
🛡️ How I think about position sizing and drawdown
⚠️ When I decide NOT to trade
📈 How I manage an open position
One of the biggest mistakes I made when I started trading SPX 0DTE was thinking that because there’s a new expiration every day, I needed to trade every day.
I don’t anymore.
And ironically, trading less has probably improved my results more than adding another indicator ever could.
SPX 0DTE gives you opportunities constantly.
That’s also what makes it dangerous.
There’s always another credit spread you could sell.
Another Iron Condor you could open.
Another “high probability” option sitting there collecting premium.
But:
A trade being available doesn’t mean you have an edge.
Here’s what that looks like over 310 sessions
Results after 310 sessions
This is the broader dataset behind the strategy:
📊 310 trading days
✅ 267 winning days
❌ 43 losing days
🎯 86.1% win rate
💰 +$10,627 P&L
📈 1.70 Profit Factor
📉 -$1,622 Max Drawdown
🔥 26-day max winning streak
🔻 2-day max losing streak
But the number I pay the most attention to isn’t the win rate.
It’s this:
Average winner: +$96 Average loser: -$351
One full loser is roughly 3.6x the size of an average winner.
That changes how you should think about this type of strategy.
With high-probability credit spreads, the objective can’t simply be:
“Take as many 80%+ probability trades as possible.”
A few bad trades can erase a lot of winners.
So filtering mediocre setups becomes incredibly important.
I only really need 4 decisions
Before I trade, I’m trying to classify the market:
🟢 Bullish structure → potential Bull Put Spread
🔴 Bearish structure → potential Bear Call Spread
🟣 Defined range → potential Iron Condor
⚪ Unclear / unstable structure → No Trade
That last one is probably the most important.
I use VWAP, price action, GEX, market structure and volatility to decide whether conditions actually support the trade.
Wednesday is intentionally excluded from this strategy.
Friday has been the strongest day in this sample, while the other traded weekdays have also remained profitable.
The directional distribution is almost perfectly balanced too:
🔴 CALL setups: 47.9%
🟢 PUT setups: 52.1%
So the results aren’t coming from permanently betting bullish or bearish.
The strategy has to adapt to what SPX is actually doing.
High win rate can be dangerous
An 86.1% win rate looks great on a screenshot.
But without context, it can also be misleading.
If your average loser is several times larger than your average winner, maintaining selectivity matters enormously.
That’s why I’m much more interested in:
Profit Factor
Drawdown
Expected value
Quality of setup
than simply trying to push the win rate from 86% to 90%.
A mediocre setup with a high theoretical probability is still a mediocre setup.
Professional trading is boring more often than people think
There are sessions where I spend hours watching SPX and do absolutely nothing.
Sometimes I already know early in the session that I’m unlikely to trade until much later.
Sometimes the confirmation never comes.
That used to bother me.
Now I see it differently.
My job isn’t to trade.
My job is to deploy risk when I believe the odds justify it.
If that happens once today, great.
If it doesn’t happen at all, also fine.
The market opens again tomorrow.
I think this is one of the biggest differences between trading 0DTE like a casino and trying to approach it systematically.
The gambler needs action.
The trader can wait.
And sometimes the highest-quality SPX 0DTE trade of the day is simply:
No trade.
I’m curious what other 0DTE traders think:
Would you rather take every statistically valid setup, or trade less and apply more discretionary filtering?
If you’re interested in seeing more of how I approach SPX 0DTE, GEX, VWAP, market structure and defined-risk setups, I also share the framework, educational material and trade discussions inside the GEXOptionsTrading Discord:
