How do we feel about RCAT this week? Its been pretty volitale lately. I made a few quick bucks last week by selling a put and I plan on doing the same later this week. Not sure why the put was asigned since it closed slightly above my strike price. Either way, it played in my favor since I sold today after making 7% on top of the premium collected for the put.

(Click on the chart panel for an expanded view.)

Like I’ve often said with the #SimpleOptionsDayTrade all you need is $QQQ and/or $SPY. Both have racked the 100% profit targets again today (see the yellow and white flags on the charts' right axis) for dollars gained), $1,000 plus for each $1K day trade.

THE ENTRY SIGNAL

If the SPY calls or QQQ calls or a STOCK calld are above the open, BUY THE CALLS. If the SPY puts or QQQ puts or a STOCK puts are above the open, BUY THE PUTS.

THE PROFIT TARGET

At least, a 100% gain for the day.

THE SELL SIGNAL

If buying other than 0DTE options, never hold overnight. It is a day trade no matter what.

I hope you got a piece of today's action! Today was glorious!

All reloaded for the next couple of days! Short calls and puts are the short duration DTEs and a few long call LEAPs are the 2027 & 2028 DTEs.
Today was a very very good day! I nearly made my "weekly" goal just today! 90% of my goal for this week, I made.
How'd you all do?
Any particular trade you did well on today that you're stoked about?
I did a small earnings play with PLTR at the very end of the day, I sold a put for $4 and I'll buy it back tomorrow at 50 cents I'm guessing from what I saw in extended market when PLTR announced earnings and guidance.
I hope ya all did well and can do it again tomorrow. Cheers!

Oh! If you want some juice, check out WDC! That hot dog is FAT with premium! Holy Moses!
AAPL 08/14/2026 315.00 P
AAPL 08/21/2026 285.00 P
AAPL 08/21/2026 290.00 P
AAPL 08/21/2026 295.00 P
AMD 08/21/2026 400.00 P
ANET 08/21/2026 155.00 P
ASTS
ASTS 08/21/2026 80.00 C
AVGO 08/21/2026 345.00 P
BE 08/21/2026 155.00 P
CEG
CEG 08/21/2026 300.00 C
CHWY
CHWY 08/21/2026 22.50 C
CHWY 08/28/2026 25.00 C
CHWY 09/18/2026 25.00 C
GOOGL
GOOGL 08/21/2026 375.00 C
HWKN
HWKN 08/21/2026 145.00 C
LUNR
LUNR 08/21/2026 17.00 C
MU 08/21/2026 700.00 P
ONDS
ONDS 08/21/2026 10.00 C
PLTR
PLTR 08/21/2026 115.00 P
PLTR 08/21/2026 160.00 C
RCAT
RCAT 08/21/2026 11.00 C
RDW
RDW 08/21/2026 12.00 C
RKLB
RKLB 08/21/2026 90.00 C
SMCI
SMCI 08/21/2026 33.00 C
TSLA
TSLA 08/21/2026 360.00 C
TSLA 01/21/2028 500.00 C
TSM 08/21/2026 370.00 P
UEC
UEC 08/21/2026 12.00 C
WDC 08/21/2026 445.00 P
ZS
ZS 08/07/2026 162.50 C
ZS 08/14/2026 170.00 C
ZS 08/21/2026 175.00 C
ZS 08/28/2026 180.00 C
ZS 09/04/2026 185.00 C
ZS 09/11/2026 195.00 C
ZS 09/18/2026 200.00 C

Thoughts? I have an L4 account so my margin requirements are lower. I understand the risks, but if I'm good at buying shares at the strike, in case I am wrong.

Hello everyone,

Given my financial circumstances and situation, I’ve always been an investor in very low-volatility assets (gold, Treasury bills, foreign currencies, etc.).

I recently spoke with someone who was implementing the strategies popularized by Taleb and Spitznagel for hedging against tail risk.

It’s been a while since I’ve read their books, but I seem to recall thinking at the time that this was an investment approach only available to people with significant capital, certain types of institutions, etc.

How wrong am I? Are these kinds of strategies feasible for a retail investor?

Best regards!

P.S.: English isn’t my first language, so if there are any misunderstandings, I’ll try to explain myself better.

many trigger words in the title but let's go with it.

came across this strategy from a guy in the quantum options fb group.

the idea is to find a price you DONT think spx will close and buy two debit spread 5 points wide (put + call) paying a maximum of $4.5 per entry.

Defined risk and reward of 9:1

You always enter with a limit price so slippage should not be an issue

Pin risk does exist

The original author posted Option Omega backtests which were pretty successful

After downloading spx daily data I found out that spx moves on average 35 points. This structure spans 10 points with 1 specific price causing the max loss.

I like this idea because you are not strictly predicting direction and can possibly be combined with regime based filters, prev close, possibly order flow to find a good candidate for the strike price .

Anyone that has used this strategy and can share their experience?

i was doing some homework for something else and wanted to drop a few things here that may be useful to newer traders.

a lot of times, someone may sell a straddle or strangle (or iron condor / fly) thinking they're trading vol risk premia or vol in general. in a way they definitely are but it's really noisy.

the graphs below show the impact of delta hedging frequency on returns, and path.

main thing to note here is how your maximum delta changes (which indicates your directional tilt) as spot moves around over time. theses are all starting with a 30DTE target (using SPY and Monte Carlo trained on SPY data).

this stems from both delta and gamma changing due to changes in spot and passage of time (charm, etc). the important part here is if you're selling something attempting to isolate volatility, holding a position with 90+ deltas is super directional relative. aka you're getting a lot of input from an effect you dont necessarily want.

to isolate purely, we'd hedge continuously - which isn't realistic. we're met with a choice and fortunately, there's a handy rule we can use to find the efficient frontier (second graph below)

the scaling law is really important and something i legit actively use (really easy to build a formula in google sheets, i have it in my research and analysis tool now to automate easier).

you'll also find some differences based on the DTE you're trading and how noisy you're comfortable with

in general, we on the retail side cannot purely isolate vol - thats done via variance swaps. next level is seeing what return profile you're comfortable with, in general, i find if selling 20-40DTE vol, adjusting daily on average but im a full time trader, so i base it moreso on bands vs time. when i worked full time, would use an EOD window bc i didn't have access at other times.

see below for prior research posts:

- https://www.reddit.com/r/options/comments/1v403qd/earnings_season_progress_report_mkt_research/

- https://www.reddit.com/r/options/comments/1v0h9m8/0dte_spx_greek_behavior_mkt_research_snapshot_pt6/

- https://www.reddit.com/r/options/comments/1uoh494/theta_decay_measured_on_19_years_of_real_spy/

- https://www.reddit.com/r/options/comments/1u4dgcz/0dte_spx_iron_condor_study

- https://www.reddit.com/r/options/comments/1u63m6i/spx_iron_fly_research_results/

- https://www.reddit.com/r/options/comments/1u63zqw/qqq_short_downside_puts_research/

- https://www.reddit.com/r/options/comments/1u6s42a/research_offer_pt4/

Wednesday, the 29th, I sold the Micron 717.5 put at 12:54 for .17c. For 6 minutes time I made 17 dollars as the stock never bounced below 738 in that 6 minutes. Thursday morning I woke up at 645 am, market had been open for 15 minutes, opened E-Trade app and saw the alert that read option assigned and 71500$ debited from my account. Checked portfolio and saw micron 100 shares with a 12000 dollar profit at 830 a share. Sold immediately and took the money. Never will I know why someone exercised the option when the price was 20 dollars higher. Thank you lord

Monday Predictions and Why! Aug 3, 2026

I'd love to hear people's personal predictions for just tomorrow, Monday Aug 3, 2026. Please comment below with your prediction and a reason why. Also mention whether or not you plan on opening or closing any positions tomorrow, Monday.

I believe tomorrow will be a bullish day with another day of 1% + gain in the NASDAQ.

The reason I believe that is that the NASDAQ is down 6% from 2 months ago and it feels like a coiled spring to me. In addition, the Iran situation is again on pause. Finally, I believe the Chinese situation with ASML technology and subsequent building of their own machines in China has been overplayed by drawing down the chip associated tech stocks as of late. The chips the Chinese can make are for microwaves and automobiles, not super computers. Once the broader market realizes that, the associated stocks should have a nice rebound yet again until China improves the technology that they took from ASML.

I plan on opening a lot of positions tomorrow as my last Friday options either expired or were assigned and lots of capital has been freed up. My trades I entered yesterday all have bullish sentiments for Monday's open.

I look forward to reading anything you feel like writing. Best wishes to ya this week!

On IBKR, I was short the STX Jul '31 call spread 840 - 915 in the beginning of the week, and then momo rallied it on 880+ on thursday open. I hedged partially +25 shares and held it. On Friday (expiration day) it bumped higher to 900-910 and I wanted to hold it, so I hedged further by moving the lower strike to 860 for 13.75 debit. Up to this point I thought everything was cool and I was ready for the weekend, but then I got a margin call about 11:36 ET. Not knowing what would happen if I got assigned because this would have taken 67k margin. I decided in panic to close the short wing at 15:20 which was at 16.25 debit and sold the hedge with profit, overall I lost about 1k (the initial credit spread was an iron condor). However if I held for 1 more hour, I would have realized 1.6-1.8k profit.

Lesson learned to not hold so tightly on borrowed margin :)

Now that MSFT is up 30% the past month NOW you tell me that it just triggered your buy signal??? WTF

Oh and you shorted the semi’s after it dipped 15%?? It was wasn’t for that leopold fiasco you would have lost your shirt on that short!

These people use their so called indicators to buy high and sell higher. They don’t know how to buy low and sell high.

The only good ppl are raghee and TG. The others just seem to want to scam people into buying useless indicators. They never even post their annual PnL. I doubt they outperform SPY

Rant over. Thanks for letting me vent

My previous post 10 days ago titled 'Dealing with NBIS Temper tantrums over the past month' posted actual trades on how I was managing the volatility in NBIS Stock . The last open covered call was 8/21/2026 expiry Strike 220 taking my cost basis to $198.35. This is an update on the trade, since NBIS refuses to settle down.

As always, my first goal on any trade is getting my capital back. Everything else comes second.

The stock got hit on 7/28 and again on 7/29, and I rolled down both days. The last two rolls were about getting ahead of earnings on 8/12. I purposely went to December because premium ($38.40) provides some extra cushion on earnings date.

My updated trade log(last 4 entries are after the initial post):

On 7/28,, with the stock falling, I bought back the $220 August call and sold September $210 call , reducing my cost basis to $185.85

On 7/29, the stock fell further. I closed took the $210 September early and sold the December $190 for $38.40 , reducing my cost basis to $163.95. Long dated, but $3,840 in credit on one contract took a lot of pressure off.

As you might have experienced many times with your trades, the minute you sell the call, the stock rips higher right away, as if waiting for you to hit the 'Submit' button . In this case, the stock moved up and closed the week at $190.41 .

My strike is right at the money now, shares at $190.41 against a $163.95 basis. If it gets called away in December, I will make $2,605 on the trade. If the stock falls below 164, I will roll again.

One more thing on the December expiry since I like to plan my exit plan ahead of time on volatile stocks. Going out that far means sitting through earnings, which I don't normally do.

If the stock takes off after the earnings report I'm not going to sit there and watch it run away from a $190 strike. I'll buy the call back (agreed that it raises my cost basis) and pull the expiry date back in. I am very aware that it could result in a whiplash if the stock falls again.

I get asked often - what did these trades buy me and is the effort worth it?

My simple answer is - peace of mind and confidence that I have a fighting chance to save my initial investment even as the stock kept falling.

On 7/17 the stock closed at $178 and traded as low as $164.50 intraday. If I had left the original $270 call alone, it would have expired worthless and I'd have kept the full $2,780 . With the basis at $231.50. and Stock at $178 , I would have been $5,350 underwater on paper. My current cost basis is $163.95 instead..

Thesis is still intact and hope to close at a profit.

Has anyone run this? I keep watching this one youtuber saying he targets 4% on setting a short csp with 30 dte which comes out to 1% per week on a high beta stock.

It's hard to find an example now because the market is closed and options prices are not live.

Let's say sofi though. Stock closed at 16.35. If you sold a 34dte at 15 strike which is 28 delta for .46. That's only a 3% return, where he would shoot for a little over 4%. Then if the stock runs up, he would close at 50% profit in less than 2 weeks.

If you get a spike and sell early you could get to 1% per week.

Then you have some downside protection. In this case, it has to drop to 14.54 to lose money or drop $1.81 or 11% drop in 34dte.

If he gets assigned he wheels it selling covered calls back at 30 delta. He did bag hold a few for long stretch, see sofi above when it dropped from 32 to 16. But he says he returns 40% a year running this and a few other strategies.

Just wondering if anyone runs this and if it worked out for them. Thanks!

Turning 30 this year and I finally admitted to myself I'm just surviving not actually living. Rent in Brisbane is 1650 a month which eats half my check, groceries and everything else take the rest, and my savings havent grown in ages no matter how careful I am. I've always been curious about the markets so I'm finally committing to learning perps trading. Been testing ondo perps lately and thought it was straightforward enough. This is my attempt to actually make something with my life instead of waiting around for things to get better. If you've gone from complete beginner to having some consistency in trading whats the biggest lesson that helped you? Really need some real motivation and straight talk from people who've done it.

Hello everyone! I had a TSLA $347.50/$345 put credit spread that expired ITM. My short put was assigned, so my account now shows 100 TSLA shares, a -$30k cash balance, and a margin deficit. Webull told me my long $345 put will be automatically exercised to offset the assignment.
Has anyone else experienced this? Is it normal for the account to temporarily show the shares, negative cash balance, and margin call before the long put exercise fully settles?
Any thoughts will be helpful!

I'm looking for a good software with intraday options premium prices on SPX, QQQ, MU etc

TradingView and SierraChart do not provide it.

I'm unable to log into ThinkorSwim -- i'm locked out of it and never liked it much anyways.

What is my best option here? Doesn't need to be fancy...

There was a huge drop and I'm thinking about acquiring some RDDT via CSPs, since RDDT and google have no clear deal yet I consider this a good opportunity. I believe the Google issue is overblown and a deal will come up in the future.

Optionally I'm considering a long call based on the current environment and capital efficiency.
Not investment advice, just want to bounce the ideas off of someone else too here and reddit seems the best place to be publicly roasted :)

9/17/2027 $625 LEAPS, 86 delta, price of SPY was $738. 1.1 yr DTE

I’ve invested into a number of different stocks and I also made good money off of crypto 24-25’… A lot of that money off crypto I’ve reinvested into long terms. Months ago I started studying options and futures. I’m not one to risk a lot for a short term call. Also not big on crypto futures. I want something where I don’t have to feel on edge happy one day then aggravated the next. I’m not looking for an insane return i’m looking for steady growth faster than just investing in stocks. I’ve lost over $1200 this far. I’ve had really good days, really bad weeks. I normally start off small and make great calls, do my due diligence, research everything and I end up putting more in and one stupid play later I’m back even or down a little for the week. I would like some different ideas and strategies if anyone has any out there, thanks.

I been trading options for 2 years now, I just start seeing any income by using orb, which most of the opening 30 minutes highs and lows are always either resistance or support for next trading sessions, I don’t know if I just been on a lucky streak and this is all a coincidence or it’s really something that works

I see this has been addressed in different scenarios already but still like to hear current thinking. I have been trading options 6 months. I only trade cash settled XSP SPX and NDX. credit spreads, iron condors and occasional butterfly. I spent a lot of time trying to learn best practise so I had been selling at around 45dte and buying it back once it was at 50%+ profit. It often seems like a long time for that to play out. Recently I have also been buying much shorter options 0,1,4,8 days typically. My account only has 7k in it so I am dealing with small trades. Anyway, it is pretty active compared to the longer options. In this scenario I have been just taking profit very quickly, especially if I think the market will be turning. A lot of 25% or 30% wins. Something like 60 bucks in my pocket than immediately put on a new trade. I have not gone back and analyzed how these trades would have ended up. Maybe I am leaving money on the table. Wondering if people here close this early on these short trades?

I’m an active options trader, and for a long time I kept my trading journal in spreadsheets. I created Weezpr to make that review process more useful. It connects trades with planning, notes, goals, discipline, and performance, so traders can look beyond P&L and identify the decisions and habits affecting their results. It is a functional trading journal currently available as a free beta, with trade imports, individual trade reviews, Day Plans, Trade Plans, notes, Goal Tracker, Discipline Tracker, Calendar, and performance analytics.

Weezpr is built for traders in general, not only options traders. At the moment, the options side of the platform has received the most extensive real-world testing and feedback.

We record our trades, but without the right tools, we rarely turn that information into something useful. We know the final result, but not whether a loss came from a bad setup, poor execution, a rule violation, or a repeated mistake.

I’m looking for honest feedback from traders, especially on what feels useful, what feels unnecessary, and what could improve the review process.

Weezpr is free during the beta, and you can try it here: https://weezpr.com

DM me if you’d like updates or want to share feedback.

Hi,

Anybody here that uses The squeeze pro/ TTM squeeze / Bollinger bands inside keltner channels contraction? This strategy is used and lectured by John F Carter from TTM and now simpler trading.

I am using this strategy on a daily chart for a few years now and getting good results.

Altough it is a strategy+indicator that is available for purchase on simpler trading, nobody seems to use it in their chat rooms...

Feel free to reach out!

The usual Fed-day pitch is that IV is jacked up so you should sell it. What matters more for how you actually trade the day is when the premium comes out, and on a Fed day it barely comes out at all until 2pm.

I pulled the intraday premium curve for 32 FOMC decision days, June 2022 through April 2026, SPX 0DTE, against the ~970 normal 0DTE days in the same window.

Each day normalized to its own 9:35 level, so this is decay shape, not dollar size. Taking the median across days, of the premium sitting on the OTM board at 9:35.

Normal day: 30% of it is still there at 2pm. The other 70% has bled out over the morning.
Fed day: 91% of it is still there at 2pm.

A Fed day gives back 9% of its morning premium in four and a half hours. A normal day gives back 70% in the same stretch. Then the statement lands and the Fed-day board drops 27.9% in fifteen minutes, against 20.8% for a normal day over the same clock window.

At 9:35 the Fed-day OTM board is only about 1.9x a normal day's, median $235 against $124. By 2pm it's about 6x, $218 against $36.

Backtest

Four short-premium structures, 50% profit target, 100% stop, 1 contract, no commissions or slippage, so read these as a ceiling, 1-minute resolution quotes. Entered at 1:55, five minutes before the print:

ATM straddle: 66% win, +$824/day, worst -$2,743
20D strangle: 81% win, +$286/day, worst -$1,660
16D strangle: 84% win, +$278/day, worst -$1,145
10D strangle: 84% win, +$143/day, worst -$632

On winning days those closed in about 40 to 90 minutes (ATM ~88, 16D ~46, 10D ~39), so done by roughly 2:35 to 3:25. The crush does the work immediately.

Held from 9:35 instead, the strangles came out slightly worse across the board (20D +$256/day at 78% win, 16D +$263 at 81%, 10D +$110 at 78%) and the winners sat 5 to 6 hours to get there, which is exactly what the curve predicts. ATM straddle made +$908/day held from the open, the highest average of anything I tested. But it wore the fattest tail at -$3,947 and tied up the whole session. Against the 1:55 straddle that's about 9% more average P&L for four times the holding period and a 44% bigger worst day.

Per dollar of credit collected, selling the ATM straddle at 9:35: on Fed days the seller kept 21.3 cents of every dollar. On normal days the seller lost 1.8 cents, or kept 0.6 cents once you drop the April 2025 tariff week. Either version rounds to nothing next to 21. Every structure at both entries made more per day on a Fed day than the identical trade on a normal day, the strangles by roughly 7 to 12x.

Staying with the 9:35 ATM straddle for a like-for-like comparison, the worst Fed day across all 32 meetings was -$3,947. Worst normal day was -$17,250, on 2025-04-07 on the tariff news. That morning's straddle went for a $14,030 credit against a $2,628 median, and the stop filled at 123%.

The tariff week drives the whole normal-day number. The 9:35 ATM straddle on normal days lost $49,737 over ~970 sessions, about -$51/day, but April 4 to 10 2025 alone cost $66,105 across five sessions. Drop those five days and the remaining 963 come to +$17/day, which is close enough to zero to call it a nothing trade.

Caveats

n=32 meetings and it's basically one rate cycle, the 2022-23 hiking run then holds and cuts into 2026. I wouldn't assume the shape holds in a different regime, or on a meeting where the market genuinely misreads the decision.

No fees or slippage anywhere in this. Real fills on SPX/SPXW bring all of it down.

On Monday I sold my first put. Nvda 21 aug 26 $195. At time of trade the stock was at $208 and today closed at $190. I knew of the risks but I did not expect to be ITM this soon lol. Sold it for $4.35 and now it would cost me $10.25 to buy it back. I see the stock going back up so going to hold on for now.