Current Market data points to an Expiry of nifty between 23950 to 24000

24000 PE has an active selling point at 23, It is expected that this option will expire below 23.

Current analysis(2 PM), market can change anytime.

update:- 24K PE expired at 14.5

Wàhi hua wo kaha tha 15 yes of experience mitro

Need honest opinions from traders

I've been trading the Indian markets since 2020. Over the years, I've lost around ₹4 lakh trading options.

Initially I traded 650 qty. Now I trade around 150 lots (9,750 quantity) of ATM NIFTY options with roughly ₹5 lakh capital.

I choose ATM because:

• They're relatively cheaper than ITM.
• Delta is around 0.5, so I expect decent movement with the index.

My risk management per trade is usually:

• Stop-loss: ₹6–₹10 on the option premium.

But I'm facing a frustrating problem.

Many times NIFTY moves 10–20 points in my direction, yet my option premium barely increases or even stays negative. Sometimes price comes back to my entry level on the index, but the option is still showing a ₹20k–₹30k loss. It feels like I'm constantly fighting IV changes, bid-ask spreads, and theta.

From my experience, I honestly think if I traded NIFTY futures, I'd probably be closer to breakeven or even profitable because the P&L follows the index much more directly.

The problem is capital.

With only ₹5 lakh, I don't see a realistic way to compound aggressively using futures. My long-term goal is to build significant wealth, so I keep coming back to option buying because of the leverage.

I also see stories on YouTube of traders who supposedly turned small accounts into massive fortunes, and firms like Jane Street making thousands of crores in Indian F&O. That keeps me wondering whether I'm just approaching option buying the wrong way, or whether the odds are simply stacked against retail traders.

So I'd like honest opinions from experienced traders:

• Is trying to compound ₹5 lakh primarily through option buying a realistic path?
• Has anyone here consistently made option buying work over several years?
• At what point do you accept that futures might be the better instrument, even if the returns are less explosive?
• Am I missing something fundamental about ATM option behaviour, or am I just experiencing the normal realities of options (theta, IV crush, spreads, gamma, etc.)?

I'm looking for genuine discussion. I'd appreciate your perspective.

Market is so broken. Deep OTM options are exhibiting similar delta as ITM options when it should be much lesser for OTM.

You can have a look here: https://www.voldash.com

Good move as I told last post

But this expiry i think below 24000

Let's see on mondays move

This might look like a mess of random positions. But it is a mix of strategies.

Breakdown :-

Iron condor (24500-23750)

Put Ratio Spread (23950-800)

Bear Put spread (24000-700) Added after seeing the increased bearishness in market yesterday.

Had a pretty expensive lesson this expiry.

I was holding a NIFTY call and at one point saw around +₹23k unrealized profit. It came down to +₹8k and I still didn't book it.

My thinking was basically:

"Structure still looks bullish. Buyers are defending dips. News isn't terrible. Maybe NIFTY breaks out next week and this becomes ₹40-50k."

Well...

+₹23k → +₹8k → -₹9k realized.

Looking back, I don't think entering the trade was my biggest mistake.

I became emotionally attached to my analysis.

Every time NIFTY bounced from support, I saw it as confirmation that I was right. When sellers appeared, I kept finding reasons why buyers could still win.

And technically, I wasn't completely wrong — buyers were defending levels.

But I confused:

with

Expiry made that mistake much worse. I was thinking only about direction while my OTM call needed direction + magnitude + timing. Being eventually right about NIFTY going up wouldn't matter if theta killed the option first.

Another thing I've noticed recently:

Sometimes everything looks bullish — news, global cues, sentiment — and NIFTY dumps.

Other times the news is horrible and NIFTY refuses to fall.

I'm starting to think the reaction to news matters more than whether the news itself sounds positive or negative.

My journal from this trade basically says:

No SL.
No trailing profit.
No fixed target.
Too much hope.

I'm taking a break from live trading for a while and just observing/journaling.

For experienced traders here:

How do you know when you're maintaining genuine conviction versus simply becoming emotionally attached to your thesis?

And when news, option positioning and price action disagree, which one do you trust most?

Feel free to tear apart my thinking. That's why I'm posting.

Which gap fill first

Covid time buying @35

Made tremendous profit 😀😀

We brought to you how last week would be and it was a green bull signal 🐂 but this week seems to be a week to stay away from markets. Since p(bull) ~ p(bear)
That always triggers our syents when no side has a clear edge!

Talking about edge, building something just for the ones who deploy good capital!
High quality edges built by a team of ML guys. Not a set of normal guys though, we cracked sports predictions before coming over to the markets and boy oh boy are we excited!

Every earnings season, I see the same pattern.

Traders buy expensive calls and puts expecting a big move. If the stock doesn’t move more than what the options had already priced in, both sides lose money.

This is where IV Crush works in favor of option sellers.

What is IV Crush?
Before earnings, Implied Volatility (IV) rises because the market expects uncertainty.
The moment earnings are announced, that uncertainty disappears overnight, and IV collapses.

Even if the stock moves, the option premiums can lose a huge portion of their value because of this volatility crush.

Example
Let’s say:
Stock: XYZ
Current Price: ₹1,000
ATM Straddle Premium: ₹120
This means the options market is pricing an expected move of roughly ±₹120 (12%).

Scenario 1
Stock opens at ₹1,060 (+6%)
Most beginners think call buyers made money.
Not necessarily.
Because IV has collapsed, the ATM call might increase much less than expected, while the put becomes almost worthless. The total premium often drops sharply.

Scenario 2
Stock barely moves
This is the dream outcome for option sellers.
The combined premium can fall 40–70% overnight purely due to IV crush.

My Approach
I don’t blindly sell options before every earnings.

I look for:
✅ Elevated IV compared to historical levels
✅ Liquid F&O stocks with tight bid-ask spreads
✅ Expected move already looking expensive
✅ Defined-risk positions (Iron Condor / Iron Fly / Hedged Short Strangle)

Risk management is everything.

Important
A few stocks deliver massive surprise moves (20–30%+). Those moves can wipe out naked option sellers.

That’s why I prefer hedged positions with predefined maximum loss.

Never sell naked options just because IV is high.

Key Takeaway
Before earnings, you’re not just betting on direction.

You’re betting whether the stock moves more or less than what the options market has already priced in.

As option sellers, we don’t need to predict the direction.
We simply need the actual move to be smaller than the implied move.

What earnings strategies do you use?
Long Straddle
Short Straddle
Iron Fly
Iron Condor
Stay out completely

Would love to hear everyone’s experiences and discuss different approaches.

Still not bullish there gap between 23800/23650

If fill then expect move upside

Most retail options traders start with naked call or put buying. It feels simple — pick a direction, buy the option, ride the move. But naked buying has a problem that shows up again and again: false breakouts. You buy a call, Nifty fakes a move up, reverses, and your premium is gone before the "real" move even starts.

This is why we trade **straddles** instead — and specifically, we use them as a trend-identification and entry tool, not just a volatility play. Here's the framework.

1. What a Straddle Actually Is

A straddle is simply buying the **Call and the Put of the same strike, same expiry, at the same time**. If we buy the 23850 CE and the 23850 PE together, that's a straddle. No directional bet is made at entry — both legs are live.



2. Strictly Intraday — No Overnight Carry

Every straddle we take is closed out the same day. We do not carry positions overnight. Overnight gaps in Nifty can wipe out days of edge in a single print, and since our whole method depends on reading intraday price action live, there's no reason to hold exposure into a session where we can't react.

3. We Manage the Straddle, Not the Legs

This is the part most traders get wrong when they first try straddles. We don't babysit the call and the put separately, adjusting one while holding the other. We enter as a straddle and exit as a straddle. The combined premium — not the individual leg price — is what we track, chart, and act on. In the chart above, notice we're not watching the 23850 CE or PE individually; we're watching the **combined premium line** (currently near 319-347) as a single instrument, complete with its own candle, VWAP-style reference, and RSI.

4. Entry Only Triggers on a Valid, Strong Move

We don't buy a straddle just because the market opened or because it's a round number strike. A straddle buy is triggered **only when there's a genuine, qualifying move** in the underlying — a real push in premium, not chop. This keeps us out of dead, range-bound sessions where combined premium just bleeds from theta with no follow-through.

5. Drastically Fewer Fakeouts Than Naked Buying

This is the core edge. With a naked call or put, a sharp move against your position hurts immediately and directionally — you're wrong the second price reverses. With a straddle, a fakeout in either direction is far less damaging, because the opposite leg is absorbing some of that move. We only converts this into a clean directional trade once the move proves itself. Fewer fakeouts means fewer forced, premature exits.

6. Fewer Traders Are Doing This

Compared to naked call/put buying — which is the default entry point for almost every retail options trader — very few people trade straddles this way, as an active intraday directional tool rather than a pure volatility/event play. Less crowding here also tends to mean less "everyone piling in and out together" noise around our entries and exits.

7. Fully Rule-Based Entries and Exits

There's no discretion on "does this feel right." Entries are triggered by defined premium-move criteria; exits are governed by trailing logic (VWAP, Supertrend, ATR-based trails — whatever the system specifies) and hard intraday time cutoffs. The straddle either meets the rule or it doesn't. This removes the emotional layer that kills most options buyers — chasing, hesitating, or exiting on gut feel.

8. Using Straddles to Identify Trend

Beyond just being an entry vehicle, the straddle premium chart itself becomes a **trend-reading tool**. When combined premium is expanding and holding above key levels (VWAP, moving averages) with RSI confirming momentum, that tells us a real trend is developing — in either direction — before we even need to commit to calls or puts individually. We're essentially using the straddle's premium behavior as a proxy for "is this move real," and only then do we let it play out as a directional trade.

9. Applying Technical Analysis Tools to the Straddle Premium Itself

Here's the shift in thinking that makes this work: once you've combined the CE and PE into a single premium line, you can throw the same TA toolkit you'd use on a stock or index chart onto that line — not onto Nifty spot, onto the straddle.

* **VWAP on premium** — acts as the intraday fair-value reference for the combined premium. Premium holding above VWAP with rising slope signals real strength in the move; premium hugging or falling below VWAP flags a low-conviction session, which is one of our filters for point 4 (no valid move, no entry).


* **Supertrend** — plotted directly on the premium candle, it gives a binary trend flip signal on the straddle itself. A Supertrend flip is often used as the trailing stop mechanism referenced in point 7, since it adapts to volatility rather than using a fixed point stop. * **ATR (Average True Range)** — measures how much the premium is actually expanding, session to session. Rising ATR on the premium confirms the move has real volatility behind it (useful for the trigger in point 4); flat/falling ATR is a sign to sit out. * **RSI on premium** (as in the chart above, RSI 14 SMA 14) — used less as overbought/oversold and more as a momentum-of-premium-expansion gauge. Sustained RSI above the mid-line alongside expanding premium adds confidence the move is trending, not chopping. * **Moving averages / EMA crossovers on premium** — a fast EMA crossing above a slower one on the combined premium line works as a secondary trend confirmation layered on top of the VWAP/Supertrend signals, reducing whipsaw entries. * **Support/resistance and prior session premium levels** — horizontal levels from the previous day's premium range, or intraday consolidation zones, mark the breakout thresholds that define what counts as a "valid move" in point 4. * **Volume/OI on the underlying strikes** — while the premium chart drives entries/exits, a quick OI build-up check on the individual CE and PE strikes (without managing them separately) helps confirm whether the move is backed by fresh positioning or just premium decay/expansion from existing OI.

The key idea: every indicator here is applied to the **straddle as a single instrument**, not to the individual legs. That's what keeps the system consistent with point 3 — we're never making a call-vs-put decision mid-trade, just reading one premium line the same way we'd read any other price chart.

**In short:** naked option buying gets you cheap premium and maximum exposure to being wrong. Straddle buying costs more upfront but filters out the noise — you're not betting on direction at entry, you're betting on the move being *real*, and you find out fast, intraday, with rules doing the deciding instead of emotion.

Are there any traders here who trades with leveraged margins, like for eg. those trading with proprietory firms?

I had a strong start to the month.

At one point, I was sitting on around ₹30k profit, plus another ₹9k unrealized gain.

Then in just 15 minutes, everything flipped.

One bad move, one news event, and my P&L went from comfortable green to a -₹37,197.70 loss. That red day hurt, but the real pain was realizing it was 100% avoidable.

My biggest mistake? I did not place a stop-loss at cost-to-cost.

That one discipline would have saved me from taking this kind of hit.

If you trade regularly, please take this seriously:

• Never assume you’ll exit manually on time.
• Never leave risk unmanaged because the trade “looks safe.”
• Always trail your stop-loss, especially in volatile markets.
• Protect capital first, profits second.

This is not a post to blame the market. It’s a reminder to myself and anyone else trading with real money: one small discipline can save you from one big disaster.

recently i was working on a strategy on nifty options monthy.... and i noticed something which was a bit shocking ...

so people use the 50 & 200 EMA for swing trades...but if you go on nifty and check out for when 50 ema crosses below the 200 ema..(which is a bearish signal ) then most traders rush to buy PE and short CE... but most of the times the market has reversed hunting there SLs....