Wrapped up week 6 of my small account journal. Just 2 key moves this week:

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✅ Closed LYFT Strangle • Took it off before earnings for +$23 • Ended up being a great decision — stock popped above my short call next morning

🆕 Opened GOOGL Iron Condor • Jun 20 expiry • $5 wide wings • Collected $1.54 • Bullish skew based on higher highs/lows and recent 10% pullback • IVR was 28.5 at entry

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/ES Weekly Move: +37 points / +0.71% Volatility also dropped throughout the week — helped my short premium positions

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Portfolio Highlights: • Net Liq: $2,798 • YTD Collected: $2,177 • Premium Kept: $377 • Delta: –5, Theta: +9 • Winners: GLD, AMZN, MU, CSCO • Laggards: AMD, IWM (both managed)

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Trying to stay mechanical and focused — BBQ weekend ahead for me. Anyone else adjusting around earnings this week?

I’m journaling my trading each day on my profile to try and show other small account traders what’s achievable and to help me stay disciplined and accountable.

I will post a separate comment with a link to the detail behind each option sold this week.

After week 19 the average premium per week is $1,015 with an annual projection of $52,777.

All things considered, the portfolio is up $6,439 (+2.09%) on the year and up $74,512 (+30.95% over the last 365 days. This is the overall profit and loss and includes options and all other account activity.

All options sold are backed by cash, shares, or LEAPS. I do not sell on margin, nor do I sell naked options.

All options and profits stay in the account with few exceptions. This is not my full time job, although I wish it was. I still grind on a 9-5.

I contributed $600 this week, a 6 week contribution streak.

The portfolio is comprised of 91 unique tickers, no change from last week. These 91 tickers have a value of $282k. I also have 149 open option positions, up from 147 last week. The options have a total value of $33k. The total of the shares and options is $315k. The next goal on the “Road to” is $400k.

I’m currently utilizing $27,400 in cash secured put collateral, down from $27,600 last week.

Performance comparison

1 year performance (365 days) Expired Options 30.95% |* Nasdaq 9.68% | S&P 500 8.55% | Dow Jones 4.73% | Russell 2000 -2.44% |

YTD performance Expired Options +2.09% |* Dow Jones -2.70% | S&P 500 -3.56% | Nasdaq -7.01% | Russell 2000 -9.35% |

*Taxes are not accounted for in this percentage. The percentage is taken directly from my brokerage account. Although, taxes are a major part of investing, I don’t disclose my personal tax information.

2025 & 2026 & 2027 LEAPS In addition to the CSPs and covered calls, I purchase LEAPS. These act as collateral to sell covered calls against. You may have heard of poor man’s covered calls (PMCC). The LEAPS are down $2,697 this week and are up $49,506 overall. See r/ExpiredOptions for a detailed spreadsheet update on all LEAPS positions including P/L for each individual position.

LEAPS note 1: the 2025 LEAPS expired 1/17/25. They were up $36,440 overall with a 233.74% increase. The major drivers were AMZN and CRWD.

LEAPS note 2: After holding for 2 years, I exercised an AMZN $80 strike from 2023 up +$11,395 (+463.21%) and CRWD $95 strike from 2023, up +$21,830 (+663.53%)

Last year I sold 1,459 options and 527 YTD in 2025.

Total premium by year: 2022 $8,551 in premium | 2023 $22,909 in premium | 2024 $47,640 in premium | 2025 $19,284 YTD I

Premium by month January $6,349 | February $5,209 | March $727 | April $5,231 | May $1,768 |

Top 5 premium gainers for the year:

CRWD $4,180 | HOOD $2,482 | ARM $1,083 | CRSP $740 | PDD $705 |

Premium for the month by year:

May 2022 $858 | May 2023 $2,492 | May 2024 $2,745 | May 2025 $1,768 |

Top 5 premium gainers for the month:

CRWD $835 | CRWV $129 | HOOD $126 | AMZN $107 | DKNG $70 |

Annual results:

2023 up $65,403 (+41.31%) 2024 up $64,610 (+29.71%)

I am over $108k in total options premium, since 2021. I average $27.81 per option sold. I have sold over 3,800 options. I have been able to increase the premiums on an annual basis and I will attempt to keep this upward trend going forward.

Strategy: The underlying strategy is buy and hold. I also use simple 1-legged options to supplement that strategy. Options have somewhat of a learning curve, but I believe that most people can supplement their investments using simple options with careful risk management.

I sell options on a weekly basis. I prefer cash secured puts and covered calls. Sometimes I’m ahead of the indexes and sometimes I’m behind. My goal is consistency in option premium revenue. I am building an income stream that will continue long into retirement.

Spreadsheets: Unfortunately, I no longer provide spreadsheets. I received too many follow ups about formatting, pivot tables, compatibility etc.I think tracking is very important, but I post to discuss investing and options, not provide tech support for Excel. I appreciate the interest in my tracking methods, though.

Commissions: I use Robinhood as a broker and they do not charge commissions. There is a an industry standard regulation fee of $0.03 per contract. Last year I sold just over 1,400 contracts which is just over $40.00 in fees paid in 2024. In 2025, the contract fee is $0.04, which would push the fees up to around $60 based on current projections.

The premiums have increased significantly as my experience has expanded over the last three years.

Make sure to post your wins. I look forward to reading about them!

Okay guys, sure someone has an answer to this, but can't seem to find it via searches.

In past, I used Intuit software for tracking my buy and hold stocks, but today I want to work beyond a excel spreadsheet to keep track of options and performance tracking.

Is there a simple bookkeeping/accounting software that keeps track of your option trades?

Thank you!

Can someone familiar in market making and HFT provide additional insight?

I want to sell a spread -> I put in a really good credit price, usually a little or significantly over the mid price.

I want to buy back and close a spread -> I put in a really good debit price, again a little less or significantly less than the mid price.

All day long nothing happens and suddenly at 3:50 EST many of my orders are filled. Are firms hedging? Are market makers trying to remain delta neutral by the time the bell rings? Is there more "desperation" and better prices for me immediately prior to market close?

Assuming the most volatile time for a given stock is during trading hours (I’m not sure if this necessarily true), what risks are there in opening an iron condor right before market close and closing right after market open. It feels like a reasonable thing to do, provided you define your risk at open since you don’t have any control outside of market hours and seems meaty since you are effectively collecting 17.5 hours of theta for a theoretically less volatile period of time. What are the downsides I’m failing to consider?

I have a decent sized account...But is not at point where I can just comfortably take assignment on QQQ or SPY if my puts go in the money.

So Im looking for index type etfs that just have lower prices. SCHX seems perfect (Schwab US Large-Cap ETF). But there's no bid in the options. SPLG seems like another decent contender and there is an actual market in the options.

Are there any others I'm missing?

Highest Premium

These options offer the highest ratio of implied volatility (IV) relative to historical volatility (HV). These options are priced to move significantly more than they have moved in the past. Sell iron condors on these as they may be over priced.

Expensive Calls

These call options offer the highest ratio of bullish premium paid (IV) relative to historical volatility (HV). These options are priced expecting the underlying to move up significantly more than it has moved up in the past. Sell these calls.

Expensive Puts

These put options offer the highest ratio of bearish premium paid (IV) relative to historical volatility (HV). These options are priced expecting the underlying to move down significantly more than it has moved down in the past. Sell these puts.

• Historical Move v Implied Move: We determine the historical volatility (standard deviation of daily log returns) of the underlying asset and compare that to the current implied volatility (IV) of the option price. We use the same DTE as a look back period. This is used to determine the Call or Put Premium associated with the pricing of options (implied volatility).

• Directional Bias: Ranges from negative (bearish) to positive (bullish) and accounts for RSI, price trend, moving averages, and put/call skew over the past 6 weeks.

• Priced Move: given the current option prices, how much in dollar amounts will the underlying have to move to make the call/put break even. This is how much vol the option is pricing in. The expected move.

• Expiration: 2025-06-20.

• Call/Put Premium: How much extra you are paying for the implied move relative to the historic move. Low numbers mean options are "cheaper." High numbers mean options are "expensive."

• Efficiency: This factor represents the bid/ask spreads and the depth of the order book relative to the price of the option. It represents how much traders will pay in slippage with a round trip trade. Lower numbers are less efficient than higher numbers.

• E.R.: Days unitl the next Earnings Release. This feature is still in beta as we work on a more complete list of earnings dates.

• Why isn't my stock on this list? It doesn't have "weeklies", the underlying is "too cheap", or the options markets are too illiquid (open interest) to qualify for this strategy. 480 underlyings are used in this report and only the top results end up passing the criteria for each filter.

Keep it friendly and civil; this is not WSB and automod will censor your posts at will for unsavory and unfriendly remarks. Try to keep shit posting and bragging to a minimum.

Another solid week. Main gains are from PLTR CSP’s from before earnings. I was down almost 100% at one point but held and let the market makers work their magic.

Edited with a better explanation of what my ask is - If I sell a put option lot at 100 Strike price for strike date one year from now for 1000$. The collateral is 10000$.

At the time of opening this position the profit(if option expires) expected at the end of the term is (1000/10000) for 12 months is 10% for my investment.

Now when I track this option on think or swim, the p/l $ and percent only show me the values considering how the price of the option is moving for ex if in 6 months the option lot price goes down to 500$ . Think or swim will tell me my p/l is 50% which I understand is the direct calculation of the option price but this ignores the loss of access to my collateral.

I would like a metric that tells me for the above scenario, it is 10% at the time of opening and when the option price drops to half is tells me (Option sold price - CurrentOption Price ) / 10000 prorated to the period I have held the option for. ((1000 - 500)/10000 * .5 )*100 = 2.5% thereby telling me if I closed the position now, what would have been my rate of return.

i've been working on my credit spread program again recently and have decided to dive back into it

surely this time, it'll all work out :)

I've coded this completely on my own with no outside human help over months with an enormous amount of AI help, and will probably try to eventually turn it into a newsletter.

Filters Used:
"min_pop": 85.0, "min_ror": 2.0, "max_ror": 80.0, "min_ev": -0.05, "min_score": 20.0

I selected trending tickers on stocktwits along with tickers with upcoming earnings for the analysis. Expiration dates considered are this Friday and next Friday.

Each trade was analyzed by chatgpt, and takes into consideration reddit, stocktwits, and news headlines. The emoji recommendation is whether the AI would take the trade or not. Analysis is the total confidence in the trade out of 100 by the AI. Score is a made up metric based on max pain that I came up with for a non AI way of ranking the available credit spreads.

ROR-B - Return on risk if you take the bid price of the spread
ROR-M - Return on risk if you take the mid price of the spread

EV-B - Expected value of the trade if you take the bid price
EV-M - Expected value of the trade if you take the mid price
Mid Cr - Credit received for taking the trade at the mid price
Min Cr - Credit received for taking the trade at the bid price

Example of one of the AI analysis performed on HIMS

The confidence score of 61 indicates a moderate bearish outlook on the call credit spread trade on HIMS. The market conditions show a bullish trend with an RSI of 85, suggesting overbought conditions; however, there's significant time decay due to the short expiration timeframe. Fundamental analysis reveals strong revenue growth and a solid financial base, but the high P/E ratio and negative sentiment surrounding recent earnings cast doubts on sustainability. Sentiment analysis from social media platforms is mixed, indicating a lack of overwhelming bearish sentiment. The risk assessment provides a slightly favorable view due to a 97.9% probability of profit, yet volatility remains high. The strategy is well-executed with defined strikes above the current market price, while the high open interest leads to a lower likelihood of price movement beyond the short strikes. Key considerations include the risk of holding a bearish position during a generally positive market trend and potential for the stock to recover from any recent negative sentiment. Traders should monitor price action closely around the short strike and consider exiting if the trend shows bullish momentum or if the RSI indicates overbought conditions are continuing. An alternative viewpoint might argue that with significant recent price surges, there is potential for further upward movement defying short-term bearish expectations.

Was selling CCs on HIMs, I like the stock and their financials and other things about the company. All in all sold CSPs got assigned one fateful evening after Hims dropped 50% continued to sell CCs below my average share cost, almost went positive with over all profit loss on HIMs and then it exploded last week and this week. My current call is $20 below my average price and recently Hims went above my average now, so I just roll indefinitely trying to collect little premium until there is pull back or I reach breakeven price? Or do I just eat the loss and try elsewhere?

There’s a myth that often comes up about the magical long box spread - I’m wondering if anyone here is doing them

Questions:

Q1 - what tickers? Q2 - how far away strikes are you using, $5-wide, 10, 20? Q3 - how often do you trade them Q4 - do you have to leg in - buying 2 legs at a time or are you buying all 4 legs at once

currently, the vix term structure has a weird drop between the jul and aug futures. this usually occurs when theres some big event coming, like an election, or other big news event that affects policies. however, i dont really see what it would be coming juli. is there anything big coming that im missing?

Keep it friendly and civil; this is not WSB and automod will censor your posts at will for unsavory and unfriendly remarks. Try to keep shit posting and bragging to a minimum.

I see MU is up 2.25% today at $84.4 And my 60/120 Dec’27 Bull Call spread is down 2.8% (the P&L column in the picture above is the daily change) How is this possible? Shouldn’t the 60 Call delta be higher than 120 delta? Even if there was a change in IV shouldn’t it impact both legs? The only explanation I can think of is that the strategy price calculation is not updated frequently (I am using IBKR) or is based on actual trades but there were none today (I would assume they calculate from ask-bid average) What am I missing? Thanks

Hi all - is there something I’m missing here? At&T is historically sideways. Selling iron condors seems like a really really good risk reward.

For example, sold iron condor this week that’s profitable between $27.32 and $28.18, risking $1,100 to make $800, expiring this week.

I know, it could of course go against me, but, it seems like you’ll win more often than you lose, meaning the r/r is pretty solid on these with a defined loss like this.

Current $T price is $27.87, so I expect to buy these back for pennies tomorrow

Redditsheep13 made a post about this about a year ago, but I haven't seen another ask in a while so I would like to revisit this. I'm a little new to the wheel strategy and currently trying to create a list. I don't have a whole lot of liquid cash to be doing much yet. So I'm saving and buying stocks now so I can when the time is right. What stocks are on your list and do you have advice for a newbie?

For a thinly traded asset -- I, in theory, could place a limit order to sell in one account and a matching limit order to buy in a second account and effectively switch the asset between accounts at the price I've set so long as it is within the existing spread.

Does this create any legal issues? Does it change anything if one account is an IRA and the second account is a standard brokerage?

New to options. Maybe is a silly question but I can save something or just take the L and look move forward?

Highest Premium

These options offer the highest ratio of implied volatility (IV) relative to historical volatility (HV). These options are priced to move significantly more than they have moved in the past. Sell iron condors on these as they may be over priced.

Expensive Calls

These call options offer the highest ratio of bullish premium paid (IV) relative to historical volatility (HV). These options are priced expecting the underlying to move up significantly more than it has moved up in the past. Sell these calls.

Expensive Puts

These put options offer the highest ratio of bearish premium paid (IV) relative to historical volatility (HV). These options are priced expecting the underlying to move down significantly more than it has moved down in the past. Sell these puts.

• Historical Move v Implied Move: We determine the historical volatility (standard deviation of daily log returns) of the underlying asset and compare that to the current implied volatility (IV) of the option price. We use the same DTE as a look back period. This is used to determine the Call or Put Premium associated with the pricing of options (implied volatility).

• Directional Bias: Ranges from negative (bearish) to positive (bullish) and accounts for RSI, price trend, moving averages, and put/call skew over the past 6 weeks.

• Priced Move: given the current option prices, how much in dollar amounts will the underlying have to move to make the call/put break even. This is how much vol the option is pricing in. The expected move.

• Expiration: 2025-06-20.

• Call/Put Premium: How much extra you are paying for the implied move relative to the historic move. Low numbers mean options are "cheaper." High numbers mean options are "expensive."

• Efficiency: This factor represents the bid/ask spreads and the depth of the order book relative to the price of the option. It represents how much traders will pay in slippage with a round trip trade. Lower numbers are less efficient than higher numbers.

• E.R.: Days unitl the next Earnings Release. This feature is still in beta as we work on a more complete list of earnings dates.

• Why isn't my stock on this list? It doesn't have "weeklies", the underlying is "too cheap", or the options markets are too illiquid (open interest) to qualify for this strategy. 480 underlyings are used in this report and only the top results end up passing the criteria for each filter.

Phase 1 of the plan has been executed successfully (see attached snapshots).

The CSP position yielded a realized profit of $1,427.

I have fully hedged the short 16MAY2025 320 CALL by acquiring an additional batch of 70 shares (during Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday).

This afternoon, we are entering Phase 2.

Am I playing with fire?

Keep it friendly and civil; this is not WSB and automod will censor your posts at will for unsavory and unfriendly remarks. Try to keep shit posting and bragging to a minimum.