If you sell premium you probably know your win rate. 80%, 90%, whatever it is. But a lot of people with a high win rate look at their account and it just isn't growing. A few big losers wipe out a pile of small winners, and the win rate never shows it.

Win rate on its own can't tell you whether you're making money. You need it next to your average win and average loss. If your average loss is twice your average win, you need to win about 67% of the time just to break even, before fees. At three times, it's 75%. So a 75% win rate can be completely flat.

Tastytrade doesn't show win rate or average win/loss anywhere. All three are answerable, but you can't just ask Claude or ChatGPT to figure it out. I learned that the hard way. Splits and other corporate actions throw off the cost basis, rolls are hard to align, and expirations and assignments come through as separate entries. Get any of those wrong and the numbers you get back look better or worse than they really are. Getting that right is most of why OptionsInsights took as long as it did to build.

Has anyone else checked their win rate against their break-even? How far apart were they?

I've been trading stocks and options for a while and understand technical analysis and trade setups. However, my biggest challenge has been timing and keeping up with macroeconomic events, sector rotations, and other market-moving news.

With a busy career and family, I'm looking for an experienced, research-driven trading group that does the heavy lifting and provides high-conviction options swing trade alerts.

Ideally, I'm looking for:

Holding periods of 1 week to several months, including LEAPS.

Clear entry, exit, and trade management alerts.

Traders who consider macroeconomic conditions, sector trends, and technicals before making calls.

A documented track record of profitability, including losing trades.

I'm happy to pay for a quality service. I prefer fewer, well-researched trades over frequent speculative alerts.

Which groups have you personally used and been consistently profitable with? I'd especially appreciate feedback from members with at least 3–6 months of experience.

Not looking for promotions or affiliate links, just genuine recommendations. Thanks!

So I've been back to day trading after taking 5 years off and did some aggregation of my results after about a month. My strategy so far has been basically take a quick win , never average up and never let runners run, just look for the next trade. While it's been successful overall (+20%) and overall generally not a ton of risk per trade, I struggled for sure with averaging down sometimes (multiple times) and then holding on for the trade to turn. The statistics on my under 1 minute trades was quite eye opening.

I guess what I'm asking is -- does anyone else use this type of strategy?

I'm aware of my leaks and now and I'm not going to change up too much yet until I have more profit but definitely just need to learn to kill trades if they aren't working faster.

Weirdly a lot of my bread and butter are off hour SPX scalps because it tends to bounce around a lot and I just buy 2-3 contracts and sell for a 0.20 or 0.30 profit and repeat.

Also looking for like minded folks to talk this strategy if there is a discord of like minded folks.

Thanks!

**Long-option trades by holding time — through October 16, 2026**

P/L includes estimated fees.

**No averaging down**

| Holding time | Trades | Win rate | Total P/L | Average P/L | Median P/L |
|:--|--:|--:|--:|--:|--:|
| Under 1 min | 332 | 96.4% | +$54,664.72 | +$164.65 | +$84.12 |
| 1–3 min | 194 | 76.3% | +$15,070.02 | +$77.68 | +$54.12 |
| 3–5 min | 57 | 61.4% | +$2,973.74 | +$52.17 | +$24.12 |
| 5–15 min | 33 | 39.4% | -$8,403.51 | -$254.65 | -$62.55 |
| 15–60 min | 2 | 100.0% | +$809.08 | +$404.54 | +$404.54 |
| **Overall** | **618** | **83.8%** | **+$65,114.05** | **+$105.36** | **+$73.75** |

Median holding time: **54 seconds**.

**Averaging down**

Averaging down means another opening order below the average cost of the remaining position. Partial fills of the same order count as one entry.

| Holding time | Trades | Win rate | Total P/L | Average P/L | Median P/L |
|:--|--:|--:|--:|--:|--:|
| Under 1 min | 1 | 100.0% | +$46.08 | +$46.08 | +$46.08 |
| 1–3 min | 33 | 78.8% | +$476.99 | +$14.45 | +$69.76 |
| 3–5 min | 24 | 66.7% | -$1,690.50 | -$70.44 | +$113.59 |
| 5–15 min | 37 | 32.4% | -$31,083.97 | -$840.11 | -$527.84 |
| 15–60 min | 7 | 28.6% | -$10,971.72 | -$1,567.39 | -$632.51 |
| **Overall** | **102** | **55.9%** | **-$43,223.12** | **-$423.76** | **+$33.24** |

Median holding time: **4.53 minutes**.

As the title says, I’m looking for info on trading options on tickers such as RKLX or IONX. Rocketlab 2x and IonQ 2x. It seems like there is crazy reward for minimal risk but I must be missing something?

Has anyone done trades with leveraged stocks or etfs and had success? or even horror stories?

Thank you

I’ve been trading SPX 0DTE iron butterflies and have noticed some interesting pinning behaviour around 1:30–2:30 PM.

I’ve been working with ChatGPT to develop a tool that identifies potential pins using price concentration, gamma exposure, volatility, and how consistently SPX returns to certain levels. The goal is to create a “pin strength meter” that helps determine whether selling a 10-point-wide iron butterfly around 2 PM is worthwhile, ideally closing within 30–60 minutes to capture theta decay.

I’m curious whether anyone else has noticed similar pinning behaviour during this window and whether you’ve used AI, Python, or other tools to identify and measure it.

Has anyone developed a reliable way to distinguish a strong pin from temporary consolidation, or estimate how long a pin might hold?

Would love to compare experiences and ideas.

This is relatively aggressive and on large side position for my account. I still like it how the stock had a nice run, it's part of nasdaq and the index being mean reverted, and it has annualized return on capital (estimated) that I call ridiculous territory.

Everything else checks out as well, IV rank and IV are high, realized is lagging. Delta could be smaller but okey whatever agent picked with all the data it had. Liquidity is average, but still filled pretty fast.

I think it has the most expensive options right now, even more expensive than AI stocks.

Anybody else trading MRNA? Any advise what to expect or how to handle it beyond standard thresholds?

Do you set a separate limit for potential assignment exposure on defined-risk options trades, in addition to your max-loss limit? If so, how do you measure it?

For example, suppose I have a $100,000 account and limit each trade’s defined max loss to 1% ($1,000). I sell one Amazon Nov. 20, 2026 $230/$225 put credit spread for a potential $100 max profit and potential $400 max loss.

The spread is within my max-loss rule. If the short $230 put is assigned, I could be required to buy 100 shares for $23,000, even though the spread’s defined max loss is much smaller.

How would you, or do you, set a guardrail for potential assignment exposure, especially across multiple positions? For example, if 10 positions had a combined defined max loss of $10,000 but a gross assignment value of $150,000, how would you limit that exposure? Would you cap that assignment exposure at a percentage of your account (e.g. 30%), and limit the number or size of positions accordingly?

Thank you!