Day 111

Stunning week! Another one for SPX! I took some risks and they paid off!

Market Recap

This was a roller-coaster week, but both SPY and QQQ ended the week nearly flat when compared to last week.

SPY is at ~$739, and QQQ is on ~$708.

VIX went up by a point and is around 18.

Trading Update

Here is the net realized Profit/Loss on each ticker:

• SPX
  • Net: +$1,378
• PLTR
  • Net: +$62
• INTC
  • Net: +$76
• HOOD
  • Net: +$85

There is nothing exciting to talk about for HOOD, INTC, or PLTR trades - all routine Naked Puts I scalped.

SPX though - it keeps reminding me to take what the market gives and don’t think too much about being an expert in predicting movement. I won frequently, risking small amounts each time I rolled the dice, and together it all cumulatively came out as a big winner.

I still had to speculate a direction to enter positions but I was not looking at any charts or indicators to guide my decisions.

The TastyTrade platform - that too just the mobile app - that was enough. As I have grown more experienced - I prefer to keep things simple. And the app is simple enough for my needs. Mind you - simple does not mean unsophisticated. I think the experience designers have done a fantastic job with condensing all relevant information on one screen.

What I like to be aware of is what the VIX is doing that day, and perhaps what is the IV rank of the ticker I am interested in (for non-SPX trades). And my primary mechanism of choosing the price to use is the expected move and the premium for that expected move.

This week, I got lucky again with SPX. All my Zero DTE SPX trades were successful. And as I have said before, I let my Zero DTE trades expire - I don’t manage them throughout the day. It goes back to my philosophy of simplicity - I effectively only need to make one decision when it comes to it - is the premium worth the risk on the Zero DTE trade I will attempt? If yes, sell it and forget it. I don’t chase premiums and rarely do price discovery - if the market gives me what I need - I enter, else I look for something else. For Zero DTEs, my premium target varies by when I am trying to enter, but at a minimum it should be $150 (for a $10-wide spread, i.e., ~$850 at risk).

This philosophy meant I couldn’t place Zero DTEs everyday of the week this week, but it also meant I was able to place two Zero DTEs on the same day (albeit at different times).

On Friday, I woke up to nearly a 80 point drop in SPX. I speculated that SPX wouldn’t fall any further. So I set up a $10-wide Put Credit Spread. I also speculated that SPX was not going to recover fully, but since the market has generally been bullish I didn’t want to set an equivalent risk on Call Credit Spread. So I skewed the call spread ($5-wide instead of $10-wide). Received $265 in premium. Net risk: $735 ($1000 - $265).

A couple of hours after market open, SPX had started to creep back up, and I speculated that the bears had left the town so the low of the day wouldn’t be breached again. So I entered another Put Credit Spread, at a different set of strikes, slightly higher than what I had in the morning. I didn’t open a corresponding Call Credit Spread since market was moving up. Received $205 in premium. Net risk: $795 ($1000 - $205).

And I was right on both. All the options I traded expired out of the money at the end of the day.

That gave me a net profit of $470. On a net risk of $1530. The risk to reward here was 3:1, I got a 30% return on capital risked in 1 day! If only this was scalable - I haven't built up the courage to risk more on Zero DTEs yet though. Maybe someday I will get there.

Here is the entire Year to Date P/L list for closed positions - I added previous week's list here for comparison.

I made $1601 in realized premium profits this week, taking my realized gains for the year to date from $2,550 to $4,151. That is a 62% jump in profits over previous week. If I was a startup, I would claim to have hit an annualized run rate of $83K (Weekly Profits x Number of Weeks in a Year)! But I don't need to sell anything to anyone (well, apart from the options, of course) so I don't need to do that charade.

Trade Ideas

I think SLV might be staying in a range.

Right now, a $60-$85 strangle is paying $327 in premium, with $8.8 in theta per day. If SLV continues to stay within the range at 21-DTE, I could possibly make between $40 - $220 bucks. The lower amount is if price skews towards $60 or $80, and the $200-plus profit is if price ends up around where it is now, i.e., around $70. The Calls are having higher premiums, so I might convert the Strangle to a Jade Lizard, but it won't be a true Jade Lizard since the premium on Put is not able to cover the width of the Call Spread width as it stands right now.

Portfolio Status

Here is the current portfolio status, including unrealized P/L.

I think the law of averages are going to catch up with me soon enough. I have been running extremely hot for the past few weeks in terms of winners.

Here are the profit amounts for last few weeks, you can thread through my previous posts to see the amounts:

• Current Week (N): $1,601
• Previous Week (N - 1): $745
• N - 2: $1,200
• N - 3: $445
• N - 4: $156
• N - 5: $375
• N - 6: $340

Sooner or later I am bound to hit a losing week. So I am trying to be careful with my position sizes.

By the time I had started journaling my trades here, I had already learnt a lot and had been trading options on and off for a few years. Last year was the first year I decided to approach it with sincerity. And I went through a tough initiation - read my last year's experience here: https://www.foolishtrader.com/2025-a-year-in-the-trenches/.

Which is why I am enjoying this phase of winning a lot. Nothing is guaranteed in this world - but for now my probabilities are aligned with my success.

If you are looking to learn something new, and do it successfully, my opinion is that you have to find your own path. There are probably more than a million ways to make money from money, and you only need to know one or two. Mine seems to be executing statistically highly probable trades that carry enough premium to offset the losses that are part of that same probabilistic set of outcomes, at a high enough volume.

It does take a while to reach that kind of volume if you don't have that capital. And I think it actually worked great for me since I didn't want to start with a huge capital outlay risking burning a whole lot of capital while I stumbled and practiced the theory in the options world. It has been a grind to reach this point, and I continue to grind juggling my main job while I build my options skillset outside of the day job. There are many ways to enjoy your leisure time - spending time on options is what is mine!

I will leave you with a good video about what constitutes a good enough volume to reach statistically probable outcomes. I first read this in Julia Spina's book on options (The Unlucky Investor's Guide to Options Trading - view on amazon here), but Dr. Jim's philosophy in this video lines up pretty well with how I think about the options world, and how it seems to be playing out for me in my options trading journey.

However, I recognize that learning slowly is perhaps not what many want, but that is exactly what I have chosen to do. While the road ahead is long, I am optimistic about my chances. This is my foolish journey.

Thanks for reading. See you next week!

📌 Disclaimer: Nothing on this site is financial advice - I’m just here to entertain! Here’s my introduction, my trading philosophy, and some ground rules.