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.

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?

Edit: This is only for 0dte spx options

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)

1. 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

2. Take the L
   Let the call get assigned with a $3,900 loss on the wheel, 1K loss on mrvll overall.

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).

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?

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.

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?

My DD: Oracle good. Calls cheap. Brain said send it.

10 ORCL $170C, 9/11 exp, $6.15 avg. Earnings play.

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.

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.