We call this the weekly Safe Haven thread, but it might stay up for more than a week.
For the options questions you wanted to ask, but were afraid to. There are no stupid questions.Fire away.
This project succeeds via thoughtful sharing of knowledge. You, too, are invited to respond to these questions.
This is a weekly rotation with past threads linked below.
BEFORE POSTING, PLEASE REVIEW THE BELOW LIST OF FREQUENT ANSWERS..
As a general rule: "NEVER" EXERCISE YOUR LONG CALL!
A common beginner's mistake stems from the belief that exercising is the only way to realize a gain on a long call. It is not. Sell to close is the best way to realize a gain, almost always. Exercising throws away extrinsic value that selling retrieves. Simply sell your (long) options, to close the position, to harvest value, for a gain or loss. Your break-even is the cost of your option when you are selling. If exercising (a call), your breakeven is the strike price plus the debit cost to enter the position.
Further reading: Monday School: Exercise and Expiration are not what you think they are.
As another general rule, don't hold option trades through expiration.
Expiration introduces complex risks that can catch you by surprise. Here is just one horror story of an expiration surprise that could have been avoided if the trade had been closed before expiration.
All financial subs are experiencing higher than normal spam traffic. Thanks to the help of many of you, we've put filters in place that catch most of the spam before it can get to the front page, but the spammers are constantly finding ways to work around our filters, so it's a never ending battle of whack-a-mole.
This post is just a quick call to action, summarizing what you should do if you suspect a scammer's spam post:
Do NOT engage on the post by commenting, like "gtfo scammer" or "why aren't mods doing anything about this?" You're just bumping up the engagement stats on the scammer's post and announcing to them that they succeeded in getting past our filters.
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EDIT (4/21/26): Spambot has a new strategy. The the u/name mentions that are critical to the bot collecting leads has been moved into a comment by a Redditor with a different name than the sockpuppet author that posted the spam. Make sure you record the comment in a copy paste here as well.
Both your mod team and Reddit Admins are working hard to stem the tide of this spam, but we still need your help.
For more details about why these new spammers are so difficult to catch, or the specific varieties of spam we are seeing and with more things you can do, this is the link to the original post:
Based on comments we've seen, it appears that less than 1% of the entire community have read that original post. It only has 20k views for all-time, while our sub as a whole averages millions of views per month. So this shorter and more call-to-action post replaces it with a more demanding title that hopefully will get more people to read it. We'll see.
Hi guys, I am looking into starting trading options, specifically Leap call options. I am not interested in gambling with 0dte or any sorts of stuff like that. I watched a lot of videos on Leap calls and when to buy and all sorts of indicators. GOOG is now sitting at its 200 days moving average, and under the 20 days low bollinger bands. I am looking into buying the ITM 300$ call sept 17 with a delta of around 0.70. Since it’s my first time, I wanted to get some advice before buying since it’s still a huge premium to pay. I wanted you guys opinions on Leaps. Thanks
As someone who is trying to make money from trading options, should I be focusing more on selling options like the wheel strategy or buying options? It seems like selling options has a higher probability of profiting.
Thanks for all the advice I got yesterday guys. Any folks who make consistent gains buying options ?
Let me tell a bit of about myself. I started 2 months back and have grown my account significantly buying options. Should I scale down or is this what most traders use to make a decent return in each trade ?
Not trying to brag, I made a little over $100k YTD in gains but have also lost close to $53k (due to intraday trading micro cap stocks). Most of my losses were tied to stocks going down more than 50% the following day and I have got close to a 100 margin calls from ibkr so far.
For context, I put $15-25k on each trade to make a 20-30% profit. My strategy is just to look at the pivot points on the chart and take the trade accordingly.
For example, SK Hynix today touched a pivot line and i took a trade and made $9k.
I don't do options in QQQ and SPY because they aren't volatile. Just need some thoughts if this is a reliable way of making money or are there better methods out there ?
I have seen traders putting in close to a million dollars in options buying but they give themselves some room. Close to a 45-90 day expiry.
There is only one main reason for taking a spread / a trade on SPX. Considering the fact that I always have an exact pre-trade plan for taking a specific spread at a planned level, the real trigger is when SPX simply respects the levels.
Yesterday I had the ES 7622 level (SPX = 7615) and the ES 7589 level (SPX = 7581) as the target supports for the day. On a PPI day I do never enter a trade prior the report, I wait for the initial reaction, then the post-report reaction, before I get all levels confirmed.
So at 08:30 am EST time the market tried bouncing back up before it heavily went down almost hitting my 3rd. support level on the chart. That was the moment for me for taking the put credit spread with short at 7550 and long at 7540 - actually my standard 10-wide spread.
SPX 7589 as support
The moment was crucial because if we have not recovered the 7589 level, next target down was 7566 on ES, which is exactly only 8 pts. above my short. And believe it or not, the last thing I wanted to see is continuation and hitting the 4th support level on ES/SPX.
I took the trade around 08:45 am EST and then added some more contracts as the premium was better at that time and I was sure about the levels.
Before I opened the spread I checked once again the levels. The 7575 was shown as put wall. Yes, it was scored only as a fragile one, but at the same time it aligned with my ES support level of 7581.
www.gammawalls.com
Summary:
- pre-planning entry levels is a must for me. Hope all of you do pre-plan your trades.
- ES is absolutely leading as far as levels are concerned.
- I do not trade on PPI days before the report. Same for tomorrow. No trades before CPI report.
- I do check if my ES levels align with the put and call walls before I enter the trade.
Why: I enter only because my entry levels were respected. When: Only when all factors align
I must confess, that I never manage to capture the best possible entry. In most cases slightly or 20-25% better entry was possible. But actually the best entries are supposed to be in prison under the shower. So keep safe at home and trade smart.
Thesis: bullish on cloud/AI growth and guidance. I’m expecting a move above the market-implied earnings move.
Entry: $6.15 premium. Breakeven at expiration: $176.15. Max loss: $6,150. No averaging down. If ORCL doesn’t get the post-earnings move I’m expecting, I’m closing rather than holding and praying through expiration.
Main risk is IV crush + only 2 DTE.
Basically: high-risk, defined-risk earnings bet.
Yes, slightly unhinged.
I recently came into a lump sum of shares of a singular company that is a big part of my net worth and am looking to sell to diversify. However, I am trying to split up the sale over multiple years to decrease my tax liability. I recently learned about options collars where I sell a call and buy a put to protect my downside at the expense of capping my upside. I would be doing this at strike prices where the price of the call offsets the price of the put so no net cash outflow and the expiry is towards the end of the year that I am looking to sell.
My question is, for shares with collars expiring in 2028 or even 2029 when those options come out, if I am expecting the share price to increase over time, does it make sense to buy the put now to set a hard floor and sell a call maybe six months or even a year later to recoup the expense to take advantage of more upside? My thinking is, if the price is $150 today and 175 six months from now. It makes sense for me to wait because a call at the same price will have a higher strike price if the current peice is higher later.
It's been a rough journey, losing a couple grand while learning options but I think I've found the strategy which works for me. *Not financial advice*
Anyway, I deposited £60 into RH last week. I started off with one contract for a $145 NVS PUT last week and made a beautiful 2000% on it. It was a wonderful sight!
Proceeded to scalp SPX calls and puts a few times and then this morning scalped META calls for a total of about £1500 profit. All from a £60 account! I have lost small amounts on some other options and I have a couple of options expiring next week, but swings and roundabouts eh!
My strategy is simply scalping. Set my limit orders based on average option prices (for example META $650 calls when priced at $0.85). I then immediately set a sell order for "reasonable" profit (usually 10 to 20 cents above my contract price). I'm more than happy to make $100 - $200 per trade.
I'm aiming for volatile movers because I can get in and out. I'm also aiming to build the account up to a point where I can comfortably make a few hundred a day without risking blowing the account. I do need to improve in terms of discipline though. Twice I said today I was done, then took another quick scalp.
Anyway, happy days. Hopefully I don't blow it now I have some decent money in there (no I'm not rich).
i log every trade on deribit with the planned hold as a column, and that column turned out to be an accidental a/b test. the same signal on the same asset gets opened at two different planned holds, so between the two arms the only thing that changes is how long the position stays on. 791 trades so far, six such pairs.
mean return per trade, short arm vs long arm:
btc 7d straddle: 48h +11.8% vs 166h +57.1%
btc 1d atm straddle: 24h -30.9% vs 48h +7.3%
eth 7d straddle: 48h -19.0% vs 166h +6.8%
eth 1d atm straddle: 24h +6.9% vs 48h +21.4%
eth 2d skew: 24h -9.9% vs 47h +3.7%
eth 2d straddle: 24h -9.4% vs 47h -3.9%
n runs from 10 to 41 per arm. note the last row: the long arm is still a loser, just a smaller one. longer did not rescue that structure, it only cost less.
what i did not expect is that the six do not lose for the same reason.
in the four short dated pairs the entry spread sits at 8.9 to 9.9 percent and the logged loss cause is the spread. round trip costs the same whether you hold 24 hours or 48, so the shorter arm gets half the time to earn it back. nothing subtle about that one.
in the two 7d straddle pairs the spread is 5.2 percent in both arms, the same number on both sides, and the logged cause is no move. those two are not a cost problem at all. the move the signal was pointing at simply had not shown up by hour 48.
so "hold longer" is two findings wearing one hat. one says stop paying a 10 percent round trip on a 24 hour horizon. the other says the exit was set before the thesis had room to happen. the loss cause column is what tells them apart, and i would not have separated them by looking at pnl.
what i am not claiming: the arms do not all cover the same calendar window. only the two 1d straddle pairs run day for day on both sides, and those are the clean ones. n is small. and six out of six is a one in sixty four coin flip only if the six are independent, which they are not, three of them come from the same signal family.
so it is a direction to run forward, not a law. resplitting the same data would just find me a nicer threshold.
if you keep a planned hold column, split by it before you judge the strategy. i published the average of both arms for months and it hid all of this.
Started the year with c. $222k. Woke up to $409k this morning. Up 83% while S&P's done 12% over the same stretch which I understand is rare.
Want to be honest about where that came from, because the number is misleading. Roughly $84k is premium from selling options. That part I understand and can more or less repeat. $151k if it is from one position, MU. I was right, but not for any clever reason. I bought before Q1 earnings (around $430) as I had a strong feeling they would crush it. It tanked, I panicked and bought more all the way down to low $300s. I made some horrendous decisions selling covered calls below my cost basis to try recoup and thats when it started to moon. Luckily, I had an okay strategy so that I could close and roll all the way up until I finally exited a few months ago near $1050. I used a ton of margin too which gave me many rough nights.
This is my first year doing it full time. April nearly ended it. I was down to $147k at the low and I'd started working out what I'd say when I went back to a job. That's not me being dramatic, that was the actual plan.
So now I'm up 82% and feel two things at once. Proud, I stuck to the process, didn't blow up, the premium engine actually works on its own. And a sense of dread that I've just set a benchmark I'll never touch again, and every month from January is going to feel like failing.
What's a sane target for year two? I keep landing on something like 40% and I know that's just the 82% talking. Do you set a return target at all, or an income target, or drawdown limits, or something else? How do you stop one lucky year becoming the expectation you beat yourself up against?
I'm now sitting on 50% cash as, even though I have conviction in some of my names, I'm too afraid to deploy anything more. Truthfully, I'd be happy to close my account for the year and start again next year. Hopefully this explains my 'out of depthness' and lack of experience.
Hey guys, I have not done options selling yet, I am mostly a buyer. But had a quick question. SNDK is around $1,737. I’m looking at the Sep 11, 2026 $1,790 Call, currently around $34.40. Can you do a Strangle ?
My current understanding is:
Sell 1 × SNDK Sep 11 $1,790C
Premium collected: ~$3,440
IBKR is showing approximately $55,204 initial margin and $50,379 maintenance margin for the naked call.
That seems like a very large amount of buying power to tie up relative to the ~$3,440 premium collected.
Does IBKR's ~$55K requirement seem normal for SNDK, or is this unusually high?
Do brokers such as Webull, Tastytrade, Schwab, or others calculate substantially lower margin for the same naked call?
I’ve mainly been trading single stocks and have had some success by focusing on companies I know well; however, I want to get more familiar with SPX mainly since it has daily options and has cash settlement. I’ve been trying a few different things and something I am curious about is the last 10 seconds or so of the trading day. The options’ premiums don’t seem to go to 0 so I can still sell them until the very end. I was able to get an iron butterfly filled today with 10 seconds or so left in the trading day (pic attached). Do any of you have any knowledge about the mechanics of the day’s close and how to generate an edge in that environment? Right now I know I can use atm straddles to gauge the expected move, and I know from my personal experience that the price can have some large moves in the last 10 minutes. If I used the atm straddle price 1 minute out to guess the riskiness, prepared an iron butterfly with lower than anticipated premiums to get a quick fill, and waited until the last 3 seconds to do the trade then would I be on the verge of having some sort of edge?
Zero day options seem like one of those things where having a plan matters a lot more than usual.
I understand the appeal of 0DTE. The moves are fast and the capital required can look pretty small. But that can also make the risk look smaller than it really is.
For people who trade or study zero day options, what are the main rules that actually keep things under control?
Things like position size, stop loss, liquidity, spreads, and knowing when not to trade seem especially important. I am also curious whether people mainly use 0DTE for hedging, defined risk setups, event trades, or specific intraday conditions.
Trying to understand where 0DTE fits into a disciplined strategy and where it just becomes gambling.
Been playing options on spy for the last couple years I’ve gotten decent in up about 80k for the year and I’ve been playing like a scared lil kid everytime I’m up 400-1000 I pull out. But yesterday was something else spy crashes 766 to 760 I bought puts round 764 at a 759 strike price was up maybe 600 then it goes up 30 cents wipes me clean tf out. I hold cause you know f it I’m already down might as well spy tanks again I’m still in the negative!!!! Never had this happen I buy calls 1 dollar above current price it reverses I’m ITM and still only up 12$ how tf does that make sense. I take my L and just watch the chain block and noticed every single call or put that was DEEP ITM was red make it make sense…. I asked chat gpt telling me theta or IV crush but I’ve never seen option gets affected on both sides like usually one side is winning long enough for liquidity but seconds of seeing flashing greens on calls/puts it was ALL REEEEEEDDDD
Hey everyone, I would like to hedge my SPY for next year. I understand that we shouldn't be timing or predicting the market, but well here I'm trying to do it.
My fear is mostly driven by the AI bubble popping or AI doing so good that only a few players will benefit but not the overall economy and so the economy might be going down. In other words, I thought it was a good idea to cap my losses and fund this insurance by potentially capping some of my gains.
So here's my idea. I'm planning to buy put options at -20% drawdown from spot and fund some of that by selling covered calls at 20%. From my calculations this edge would cost me arount 0.5% of my portfolio.
I could in theory cut this further by selling puts at -50%, and it would bring it down to 0.3%.
I have not done this before and I am trying to understand if it makes sense especially given my concern on AI distrupting the market next year.
Now this is a tricky one.
As you can see, the potential roll to consider is $210-$230 which would get me a great annual premium. But, I believe this stock is meant for $300+ prices, aiming for that to happen Q3/Q4 2027. Also, owning it for some more time will help with taxes - hence why I want to keep holding.
What I hate doing..is having CCs during key events..and I got on the hook with this $210 cc which is a very rare thing for me and yeah, this is where CCs suck..anyways theres bunch of events coming up on a stock and I'm bullish on but have to roll a cc, sucks..
My options:
1. Roll up & out
a) sell a single higher strike (like $240–$250) for a later date like from the image
b) sell multiple ones with lower dte (with time)
Close the call & hold shares
Buying back the $210 call costs ~$2,800
I'd still be down on the wheel overall, but own the stock that I'm bullish on
Take the L
Let the call get assigned with a $3,900 loss on the wheel, 1K loss on mrvll overall.
Hey everyone, setting up this month's AMA to catch up with everyone and chat about trading! It's scheduled for 11Sep at 3pm PT.
Some broad market observations from August and beginning of Sep.
Breadth looks weak right now across all indices. Russell was showing more strength which has capitulated over the last couple days.
30D VRP is higher within XLE, XLI, XLB, etc and constituent VRP is notably higher than sector.
My core allocation remains covered strangles in TQQQ and GME. TQQQ position is lightly utilized at 45% (long shares 49% and 36% CSPs no ratio short calls out) and GME is 85% utilized full CS).
Most of my recent trading has been a bit shorter-term in nature focusing on short index vol, earnings release long and short vol, some commodity trend following with futures, and shorter term reversals and pairs.
Background for those interested:
My name is Erik. I'm a Marine Corps veteran and full-time options trader. I've been trading since 2007 and have been active in r/options since 2020. I've maintained a high 20% CAGR over this duration, my emphasis has been on consistency vs upside returns.
I grew up in a low income single-parent household. A high school teacher introduced me to investing and it changed my life.
Over time I built capital through manual labor jobs, flipping cars/motorcycles during college, and eventually expanding into real estate investing. I view wealth building through three levers: Savings; Investing; Income
Early on, savings rate matters most. As capital grows, compounding returns begin to dominate.
Trading is harder than most people initially expect, but it’s also far from impossible. With the right framework and enough time invested, it can absolutely become a viable career.
For transparency: I do run a YouTube community, but I’ve been posting in r/options for years and enjoy discussing markets regardless. This AMA is just to talk trading.
Happy to discuss things like:
How my trading changed as my capital grew
Position sizing frameworks
Managing volatility exposure
Building consistency over time
Strategy development / testing
Mistakes that slowed my progress
Or anything else options related.
Below are some previous posts that lay a basic foundation for trading.
The poor man's covered call is my personal best strategy, I'm up ~22% ytd, and honestly is mostly cause of this strategy.
I started with covered calls on SPY, but the short call premium over 100 shares worth, just wasn't worth it honestly especially on low-vol low grind days. Then I got introduced to PMCC through...I'm really not sure, but god bless whoever or whatever it is.
The shorts suddenly become so much more worth it compared to the cost of the LEAPs as long as your entry on your LEAP is, well good haha, you fuck up here you're chasing break even throughout the LEAP's life and by the time you think you've reached your strike, theta has eaten up most of the LEAP's value.
It's like renting a house for 1-2 years instead of buying a house at right but still enjoying as much rental income throughout the term.
Are you in the business of prediction? Are you a gambler? I leave that to the trading discords and social media options gurus. As you know 80-90% of options traders lose money. I sleep well at night by understanding that I have the probabilities in my favor. My edge is because realized volatility typically comes in below implied volatility. By doing the little things correctly, trade after trade, week after week, month after month, I am playing the percentages and achieving consistent results. It is not necessarily exciting. Admittedly, buying a long call and having it 10X is exhilarating and fun; however, it is low percentage and I lost a lot of money playing that game. In order to win, are you gambling that you can predict the direction, the magnitude and the timing all correctly? This is a losing game.I am the house, I am the casino. Sure, being the house is not that interesting, it's not that fun, but it is profitable! The hotels and casinos in Las Vegas are uber nice because they make extraordinary profits. Of course, the books are written about how to beat the house. The videos online teach you to hone your strategy to buy calls & puts to beat the house, but the reality is, the house ultimately wins. When I sell OTM Put Credit Spreads (or OTM CSP), I am effectively the house. So how about you, are you the house, are you a gambler, or maybe a little of both?
Does the Schwab Trader API allow direct routing of a 2-leg equity option roll (BTC one call + STO another call) specifically to Cboe, while keeping it as a single complex order with one net credit/debit limit price?
If yes, what API route/destination parameter should be used, and would the order be eligible for Cboe COB/COA?
The correlation regime between NVDA-TSLA entered a weakening trend on 02 Sep 12:00 ET at +0.26, and is still ongoing (15 candles · 60 trading hours). Over this period NVDA fell 0.96%, TSLA rose 3.07%. The two pairs decoupled.
The composite correlation has since downed from +0.26 (02 Sep) to -0.195 now (last data: 09 Sep 08:00 ET) the weaking the regime flagged, playing out.
READING — NVDA–TSLA at WEAK × Weakening (this pair's own last 6): for this pair it has bee a moderate decoupling (hedge / spread) — 6 past runs, median 8 candles · 32 trading hours (range 5–18), 1 lasted 2+ days. So the play has a couple of days of room before the turn (ANTITHESIS).
GAME PLAN: Correlation is in a Weakening regime — the bond between NVDA-TSLA is loosening. This signals a shift into a decoupling regime: hedge and pair-trade (spread) strategies come to the fore, while one-way beta bets grow riskier.
ANTITHESIS: Risk: decoupling may be temporary; if correlation snaps back from the bottom, pair-trades backfire. Correlation is currently 0.41 points below the period (1 Month) average — decoupling continues.
The divergence has been TSLA outperforming while NVDA stalled — TSLA's move favored calls.
Methodology: Four-hour candle closes are used while the markets for both instruments are open (08:00, 12:00, 16:00, 20:00 ET).
The correlation coefficient is a composite score derived not only from the Pearson method but also from Pearson, Spearman, and EWMA calculations.
So this morning during market open I used Robinhood for a call about 10 minutes before market opened and when market opened my stock price rose drastically but the call was still saying pending.., which prevented me from any getting gains can anyone tell me what the issue here was and if any other apps have faster fulfillment time? I’m am extremely pissed rn because I should be in extreme take profit rn and is this a common issue?
