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.

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**.

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!

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

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?

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!

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 used to open credit spreads and figure out the exit later. Too often that meant holding a loser into expiry hoping it came back. Now I jot the take profit and max loss down before I click. Some days I still override it. Do you set the exit up front or manage by feel?

The OCC's list of weekly options offers a downloadable spreadsheet that buckets the data in two columns: "Weekly Options Summary For 11/27/2026 Expiration" and "Weekly Options Summary For 11/13/2026 Expiration."

https://www.theocc.com/market-data/market-data-reports/series-and-trading-data/weekly-and-quarterly-options

Given that these are weeklies, I don't understand the reference to these two dates/columns, as they don't correspond with the next pending expiration. Can anyone shed light on this?

Also, how often do assets get delisted from this master, or added to it? Is it a regularly recurring event, or once a ticker offers weeklies it tends to continue to offer them?

Many thanks in advance for the guidance...

In June, 2026 I changed my exit plan from a rollout to a buyback strategy. As a result of several buybacks, the income has been flat because each buyback cost several weeks of income. I changed the strategy back to a rollout on October 8. 
Details of the October 8 rollout is in https://www.reddit.com/r/options/comments/1udyri5/comment/pexxs85/?context=3
I have two more rollouts on October 14, 2026.
Rollout #1:
Roll the 29760 PS out 1 day and down 335 points to 29425 for 3.81 debit. (Buying back would have cost $10.)
On the next day, the 29425 was rolled down 125 points to 29300 with same day expiration for 1.75 debit.
The 29300 expired.
Rollout #2:
Roll the 29725 PS out 1 day and down 375 points to 29350 for 1.81 debit. (Buying back would have cost $8.)
The 29350 expired.
The cost of the rollouts were reduced by selling some junks.

TradeStation and MooMoo have announced options extended hours will be available on their platforms starting Monday, October 19th.

ETF’s: SPY, QQQ, IWM, GLD, XLF

Equities: NVDA, TSLA, AAPL, MU, INTC, META, AMZN, AMD, MSFT, GOOGL, PLTR, ORCL, AVGO, NFLX, HOOD, GOOG, SNDK, BAC, MRVL, BABA, TSM, NOK, F, PFE

PreMarket: 7:30-9:25am ET

AfterHours: 4:00-4:15pm ET

Anyone receive emails from other brokers announcing they will be offering extended hours for options?

SOXX will have forward stock split on 03 November 2026, which will be effective on the 4th. The split stock will be active on 05 November 2026. Current after hours price = $510.57

What are some of the available opportunities / strategies we can utilize during this event?

Ref:https://www.ishares.com/us/products/239705/ishares-phlx-semiconductor-etf

Is there a way to contact someone running boxtrades.com? The order book seems to cut in and out and then vanish for a while, and then it disappears for seemingly all time periods. The 1- and 2- month periods seem to be more stable.

It seems like when there's a refresh, it fails to pull new data so it all gets wiped out. Something breaking with the syntheticfi connection perhaps?

Please i would like to know if its possible to trade stock options on Binance

New to options trading. Considering a zero-cost collars on MSFT. Trying to avoid stepping into a landmine with taxes and other pitfalls. I have a heavy concentration of MSFT that I want to protect. Some has already gone into an exchange fund. But there's a lot left.

MSFT is at 533. 52 week span goes from 350 to 550.

First, am I reading this right with the available call and put prices

• Dec 2027 450/730 collar
• December 2028 collar at 470/800

Both would effectively be close to zero cost?

Are these collars wide enough to avoid getting an IRS designation of a constructive sale? Any other tax pitfalls beyond capital gains, NIIT, and WA state taxes for LTCG?

This just seems deceptively too easy. What else should I be considering or could wind up regretting?

Earlier this year I incurred a gain of around mid 6 figures. I immediately used that money to reopen an options position. I am now down on this position, so I rolled the position to a high strike price but 1 year out. Is this considered a wash sale? I would ideally want to deduce the losses from my gains earlier this year. Thanks!

Edit: If you haven't been to one, please move on. I know it's mainly a sales pitch, but am curious if anyone got anything out of attending one. Not interested in opinions of what it probably is. Don't waste your and my time please.

An ad popped up in Facebook for a free Trading Academy workshop at a Marriott Courtyard 3 miles from my home. If anyone has attended one of these, please let me know if they are worth the two hours. I’ve been averaging approx 16% yearly including interest on my cash securing the options. I am primarily interested in some drawdown protection, but without denting my returns too badly. If I can’t make 12% or more, it isn’t worth my time. I would just buy and hold and hope. I’d be interested in the experience of any one who has bone and/or anyone who has worked with them.

Im really curious why everyone seem to trade only options and not CFDs. It’s like CFD s have a bad rep for no reason so that made me thought maybe I am missing something. For me, cfds mean i can scale in and out without being forced to utilize a full contract. As cons i only see maybe the overnight fees (I sometimes hold trades for days/weeks even though I also do intraday trades)

So please make me understand why everyone seem to trade options or futures but not CFD s

Every time someone asks how to start wheeling, the top comment is always some variation of 'just pick a stock you don't mind owning, and collect the premium.' Honestly, I feel like this advice is a complete trap. It just leads to people chasing inflated premiums on highly volatile meme garbage or overextended tech stocks right before they crater 30%. If you're only looking at the dollar amount of the premium, you're flying blind.

Lately, I’ve been trying to force myself to stop trading the same 3 to 5 familiar tickers over and over again. It’s so easy to get comfortable with a name like TSLA or PLTR and completely ignore the actual entry point or the macro trend. Selling a CSP when a stock is sitting at an all-time high has a totally different risk profile than selling it after a healthy pullback, even if the premium looks identical.

Before I even look at an option chain now, I’ve been running everything through a strict checklist: underlying size/liquidity baseline (to avoid awful bid-ask spreads), a technical trend check (stop catching falling knives), and making sure the IV rank is actually high relative to its own history so I'm not selling volatility when it's totally crushed.

Instead of blindly clicking a 0.30 delta, I've been calculating the actual downside cushion relative to major historical support levels to see if the premium is even worth the capital tied up.

Are you guys actively screening the broader market to find better risk/reward entry points, or do you mostly stick to a core list of familiar tickers and just wheel them repeatedly regardless of where the underlying is sitting?

As I am only doing minimum 45 DTE, always avoiding earnings and only sticking to ~12 tickers I follow closely I find in the roughly 20 trading days per month I am maybe opening/closing positions on just 3 or 4 days. And as these are 45-55 DTE and with earnings happening every 3 months it just doesn't give me much to trade with that avoid earnings rule.

On securities that don't have earnings- pretty much all the SPX strategies perform equivalent (or worse) to buy and hold with more risk so I never touch that unless VIX spikes over 25 (aka incredibly rare these last couple of years). Leveraged ETFs have way too much variation relative to their IV% which also keeps me away from them.

I am curious what others that trade similarly do. I have learned discipline to not break these habits which has kept me at almost never having to close out due to a loss and within my desired percentage return per month.

When you sell a covered call and it says it has a expired and voided because not exercised. Does that mean I can sell more or should I wait an extra day to be safe? It also says it's completed.

I have been getting shafted on leap calls because I’m not sure when to get out. I keep thinking to myself that I have a couple weeks/months left so I can still get back to even/take a smaller loss but a lot of times the stock never recovers in my time frame. What is yalls strategy in getting out of leaps? Do yall have a percentage drop that you stop it at?

I'm thinking of converting my iron condors into iron butterflies for a week before closing them.... essentially 2 weeks as iron condors... then 1 week as iron butterflies then close em all and select new underlying to play the next 3 week course again.

Is this something that others have tried and still do? Any comments appreciated. Thanks!

Got burned during peak Iran war tensions when I scaled up too much on credit spreads and held through a binary scheduled political event. Lost a very painful chunk of my account but I recently just got back into it. Following very strict sizing rules now and made back some of what I lost this month.

Haven’t been sticking to one strategy, this month I’ve done credit spreads, iron condors, iron butterflies, debit spreads, calendar spreads, and covered calls. Just trying to stay consistent and trade often when the right setups appear.

I opened an account at Charles Schwab two months ago. After that, I started making a lot of money. [I traded in the spread of options on a certain stock. Minute trading. In two weeks, I made $25,000 on the $2,000 I just invested. After that, they closed my account and blocked access to my account for a whole month plus. After that, they started retroactively canceling hundreds of my trades every day. Today, my account is only $6,000.

Is there anyone who has talked about this? Is there anything I can do about it? Who should I contact?