TL;DR: A viral TikTok trading setup claimed a near-flawless win rate trading 0DTE SPX Iron Condors in the first hour of the market. NexusTrade backtested the exact rules to fact-check the claim, showing why "zero losers" is marketing fiction and how the mechanics can actually be tuned for positive expectancy.

The Viral Claim

The setup was popularized by creator @bridgingcycles, claiming that opening an Iron Condor shortly after the opening bell and taking quick 25% profits resulted in virtually zero losses.

The Strategy Rules (Verbatim)

• Underlying: SPX (tested on SPY scaled 1:10)
• Expiration: 0DTE (same-day expiration)
• Entry Timing: Exactly 9:45 AM ET (15 minutes after open)
• Strike Selection:
  • Short Legs: ~0.15 Delta Put & Call (placed just outside the expected daily move)
  • Long Wings: Scaled wide (~100 points on SPX, or ~2.5% OTM on SPY) to define risk
• Exit Rules:
  • Profit Target: Take profit at 25% of maximum potential credit.
  • Time Stop: Hard exit by 10:20 AM ET (close position if 50 minutes after open, regardless of PnL).

What the Fact-Check Found

1. The "Zero Loser" Myth (Tail Risk): Like most 0DTE premium-selling strategies, aiming for a fast 25% profit target gives a high win rate during calm morning chop. However, claiming "zero losers" ignores tail risk. On days when the market trends aggressively at open, picking up small 25% gains leaves you vulnerable to massive max-loss blowups that wipe out weeks of profits in minutes.
2. The Flaw in the 25% Profit Target: Across dozens of parameter sweeps (testing wing widths, delta distances, entry windows, and hold times), NexusTrade found that the 0.15 delta strike selection was actually optimal. However, taking profit at 25% dramatically skewed risk-reward against the trader.
3. The Optimized Variant:
   • Increasing the profit target from 25% to 70% proved to be the single biggest improvement across 35 backtests.
   • Capturing 70% of the decay gives the trade enough meat to justify the asymmetric tail risk when a side does get breached.

Links & Resources

• Video & Breakdown: NexusTrade 0DTE Fact Check Video
• Strategy Bot / Rules: NexusTrade SPY Iron Condor TikTok Fact-Check Bot
• General Concepts: CBOE 0DTE Options Overview | Investopedia Iron Condor Guide

Have any of you automated 0DTE morning condors? How do you manage sudden 9:45–10:15 AM momentum spikes without getting wrecked on the short wing?

The poor man's covered call is my personal best strategy, I'm up ~22% ytd, and honestly is mostly cause of this strategy.

I started with covered calls on SPY, but the short call premium over 100 shares worth, just wasn't worth it honestly especially on low-vol low grind days. Then I got introduced to PMCC through...I'm really not sure, but god bless whoever or whatever it is.

The shorts suddenly become so much more worth it compared to the cost of the LEAPs as long as your entry on your LEAP is, well good haha, you fuck up here you're chasing break even throughout the LEAP's life and by the time you think you've reached your strike, theta has eaten up most of the LEAP's value.

It's like renting a house for 1-2 years instead of buying a house at right but still enjoying as much rental income throughout the term.

My friend likes selling puts and honestly it worries me He makes money collecting premiums but I think he’s fallen into the trap of specifically looking for puts with high premiums At that point the strategy changes You’re no longer selling puts at a price where you’d actually be happy owning the stock You’re basically betting it won’t fall below the strike by expiration If you’re selling puts just because the premium is high on stocks you wouldn’t even want to own it starts feeling more like gambling I think he’s going about it the wrong way What do you guys think

I've been using call debit spreads more instead of straight calls when premiums are expensive, and I ran into something I somehow never really appreciated until it happened with actual money.

I had a QQQ 510/515 call spread open on Moon with a little under 2 weeks left. Paid around $1.60 for it.

QQQ moved way faster than I expected and was already above 517 with more than a week still left. In my head I basically thought okay, thesis worked, spread should be pretty close to the full $5 now.

It wasn't even close.

The 515 I sold still had enough extrinsic value that the spread was sitting around $3.70. I knew mechanically why this happens, but actually watching both legs move while QQQ was already comfortably through my short strike made it click differently.

I got greedy and decided I'd just wait for the remaining value to collapse.

QQQ pulled back a couple days later and I ended up closing around $2.90.

Still a profitable trade, but it was probably the first time I've been annoyed at an options trade where I got the direction AND size of the move right.

Starting to think that with debit spreads I need an exit rule based on percentage of max value rather than where the underlying is. Like if I can collect 70 to 80% of the spread's max profit early, just take it instead of waiting around for the last dollar.

For people who trade these regularly, do you usually close once most of the spread value is there or are there situations where waiting for the short leg's extrinsic to decay is actually worth it?

I have deep itm calls with big gains that I want to hold the underlying. My plan is to let it expire in Jan 2027 so they become shares that I would hold long term. It's in brokerage account so with the assignment, there's no realized gains and tax. Is this a good way to go about it? There's no advantage to exercise before expiration correct? Tia.

Can someone give me a brief lesson. On Schwab if I wanted to roll out an option, it would just roll it out. For example, two more weeks and I go up a couple dollars on the strike. Costs me a little bit per share.

Now with E*TRADE when I tried to roll, there’s a separate drop-down box that wants me to pick net credit, net debit, even, or market. I would think for the same scenario as above, it would kind of be a given. How do I know if I’m needing a net credit or net debit if I’m just trying to roll up and out or down and out in time on a put? Too many choices.

I mean what happens if the default in the situation is net credit and I hit either market or net debit? WTF.

Also, instead of rolling, does it work out the same if I manually buy to close and then sell to open at a later date and different strike? I know when you roll it bundles the two, but I haven’t really done the math enough to know if there’s a difference.

Currently all SPX options (SPXW) are PM settled, except for ones that expire on the third Friday of the month. Here both AM and PM settled are offered.

The CBOE now plans to list weekly SPX AM settled options starting in early November.

Guessing it will create some confusion depending on how your broker lists these.

Link to CBOE memo,

Cboe Options to List S&P 500 AM-Settled Expiring Weekly Options

I traded a SPY 0DTE call on September 1, and I’ve been trying to understand how much of the premium move came from SPY itself versus the volatility.

Here's exactly what happened.

The setup

ISM Manufacturing PMI dropped at 10am. Before the release, the SPY 763 call was quoted around $1.40 bid and $1.42 ask, with IV showing 13.76%. Cheap. Premium barely moving. Market hadn't priced in much uncertainty at all.

But there was something else happening on the chart before the number even dropped. The 5 minute ORB high broke clean before 10am. Price pushed above the opening range with conviction and held. That break was the first signal, not the PMI itself. The data just confirmed what price was already trying to do.

Two reasons to be in the trade going into the number. ORB break giving directional bias. IV still cheap, giving a good entry price on premium.

The trade

-SPY 0DTE 763 Call. Slightly OTM.

- Entry: 10:05am at $1.60

- Exit: 10:20am at $2.50

- Result: +$900. 15 minutes.

What IV did after PMI printed

763 Call IV jumped to 17.65%. Bid $2.78 ask $2.80.

Nearly 4 percentage points of IV expansion the moment the number hit. Premium almost doubled on the strike, from ask $1.42 to $2.80.

Two things happened simultaneously SPY moved in the right direction, and IV expanded. Both pushed premium higher at the same time. That combination is why the exit at $2.50 happened in 15 minutes instead of waiting for a larger price move to get there.

Why the ORB break mattered

Entering purely on the PMI play without the ORB confirmation would've been a directional guess dressed up as a catalyst trade. The ORB break meant price had already shown its hand before the data dropped. PMI just added fuel to a move that was already in motion.

That's a different trade from just buying before a number and hoping. Structure plus catalyst plus cheap IV all three lining up at the same time.

The actual takeaway

Not all catalysts inflate IV before the release. Some data drops especially when consensus expectations are flat, leave IV relatively low going in. That's the window where buying premium before the number can work in your favor instead of against you.

ORB break for direction. IV check for entry timing. If both line up before a catalyst that's the setup worth taking.

Check IV before deciding whether to enter before or after a catalyst. If IV is already elevated wait. If IV is still cheap and structure is there, the expansion after the number can add to the directional move rather than fight it.

Do you check IV levels before deciding when to enter around economic data or just trade the price action?

In options trading there are a lot of variables that are out of your control. So I say “control the controllables”. Days To Expiration (DTE) is controllable upon trade entry. Time is a constant. You can count on the sun rising tomorrow. You can count on 10 DTE today being 9 DTE tomorrow. It is certain, and there are few certainties in this business. You may remember the Rolling Stones song “Time is On My Side“, well, when you are selling OTM (Out of The Money) Puts that is definitely the case. Sometimes, we all may wish that time would slow down in our personal lives, but in our trading lives the passage of time benefits us daily through Theta decay. Theta decay accelerates as expiration approaches. When you sell a Put Credit Spread at 28-32 DTE, you capture the steepest part of the Theta decay curve. Each day that passes erodes the value of the options you sold, putting money in your pocket without the underlying needing to move in your favor.

What DTE are you guys typically trading?

From looking at a Zebra strategy setup, it looks like a PMCC with extra protection, would that be accurate?

Not new to options! Just first time seeing this strategy, I typically wheel or buy leaps.

Assuming one can handle a market drawdown for a couple of years what are some of the best leverage products you have used in your option trading strategy for example like selling covered call?

I found some online but wanted to ask experience with these products.

3× index ETF/ETP - e.g. UPRO, TQQQ, QQQ3/LQQ3
Micro index futures

A long ended up ITM that I expected to expire OTM. It was valued at 0.01 so obviously it didn't get bought. Unfortunately between market close and processing, it ended up very slightly ITM.

This caused my account to be short ~$1K.

Normally FINRA 4210(b)(4)/05 allows you to immediately sell said security as a remedy/exemption. But seeing how it processed over the weekend, would you be allowed a similar exemption at market open?

Last time, I shared a post with a link to a website of mine where I was writing about box spreads as I went on learning about them and it was banned even though the site was completely free and educational-only after which I messaged the mods on this sub for pre-approval and haven't received a response yet.

I wanted to share a box spread scanner I use to find myself more liquid and favorable pairs by searching up the SPX (or SPXW) chains on CBOE for people using IBKR, but was afraid the post will be banned since I'll be adding a github link.

EDIT:

- Retrieving SPX spot price so far

Hey guys, so I’ve been getting my feet wet in options selling last couple months. Rather than paper trading, I decided to do live trading but on a small account that would not affect me even if it got wiped. I’ve been mainly playing it safe, selling PCS since my capital is low, and my main moneymaker has been selling them on SPY.

I would like to branch out, so I’ve been looking into other opportunities to sell PCS on individual stocks. I’ve been listening to a lot of Tom Sosnoff, and he seems to be big on product indifference, which as I understand it means he doesn’t care about the name of the ticker or what its business is, he is rather looking at opportunities where he thinks options may be overpriced.

In order to find opportunities, what criteria do you guys use? I’m currently looking for high IVR, high liquidity, current IV > HV, and no earnings events in the 45 DTE as I don’t like the binary nature of trading those. This however seems extremely basic and I’m sure there’s tons more to it.

At what % of value capture do you buy out of short positions in order to re-deploy your collateral?

The context:

cash secured account low six fig, 90% are short options both sides, few cc positions.
Each position just one lot. Number of positions fluctuates 1-2 dozen. Vanilla premium selling, no strategies, analysis. Not using any spreads, poor mans cc, indexes, stops, LEAPS. No discretionary strikes selections, PnLs thresholds or timing to close.
Returns on risk adjusted basis are nice and steady.

(Let me know if I can clarify anything else for context)

This is what I imagined compared to how it's working in reality. These observations from running portfolio for ~4 last months.

1. I imagined it will be some steady paced position placement and then taking off winners

Reality: it's wait, wait and wait more patiently. Then volatility gets flushed, and suddenly a bunch winners show up in PnL table.

1. I imagined position will have some PnL relation to the market moves.

Nope, on large up days portfolio daily PnL may be all red due to vol expansion, on non eventful days may have all but one positions green.

1. I imagined positions will have steady burning theta and becoming greener when moving towards DTE threshold. Not even close. Almost all time portfolio has negative opened PnL "balance" - that freaked me out first. And most of gains come with vol collapse, like after earnings events, or some funds stopped chasing names.

2. I imagined balancing portfolio delta will be a thing but it doesn't seem have much importance. Delta moves around pretty substantially. All portfolio balancing comes from random picks of liquid names so one sided moves don't happen, at least not often.

3. I imagined opening and closing is a non event. Pun in order, click send.

In reality, I have 2-5 trade ideas generated and sometime put them to work after days, and sometimes they take 1-2 days to fill at limit price (most do get filled within minutes or hours). Closing is even more challenging! Routinely take days to close winners at the threshold.

1. I also imagined selling premium is not complicated at it core.
   But in reality it requires thinking about capital allocation and usage level, new positions fit, value ranks. Like chess.

7 I thought there were plenty of names to sell premium.

Discovered there are not so many truly liquid names, with good IV and positioning. I recycle some names for selling puts, but it's a challenge to find sellable liquid premium.

1. I thought low six fig is enough to diversify and trade plenty of names.
   In reality I realized buying power is the most precious and very scarce. A few clicks and buying power drops to 20% suddenly

Any similar experiences? Are any of this real or just the imagination?

Example of a typical trade in the portfolio.

Please give any constructive feedback. If there is something I'm missing please let me know. Much appreciated.

Been doing this strategy for almost 2 years now. I think it's really boring. I don't do any analysis; just 2 minutes each day to place trades. Account value is in the mid 6-figures.

Part 1: Selling almost-LEAP CCs on ULTY. UTLY did have a reverse split a few months back, but the weekly dividends are still on track to recoup my original investment in a few months.

Part 2: Selling 0dte CSPs on SPY. 90% of the trading days they just expire worthless. The 10% they expire ITM I just roll them. I'm earning about 50% using margins to cover. Nothing ever gets assigned so I'm not paying any margin interest. I'm selling 4 orders per day so earning $300-500 in daily premium.

Part 3: Holding SWVXX (until I have enough cash to cover more SPY shares, which I use as collaterals for margins. I also have some other tickers I bought a long time ago for collaterals as well. don't plan on selling any shares within the next 10 years).

Again, I don't consider it exciting. I don't feel any emotions when selling the SPY puts. It just feels like another task like checking emails or taking out the trash.

Happy trading!

EDIT: clarified that I'm holding SPY shares as collateral

I will share a few things from my experience. If you like them, stay tuned.

1. Extend duration when possible

2. Check spreads across strikes and duration to find the best contracts

3. Never get exposed to losses greater than the net premium i.e. be a net buyer not a seller of convexity

4. Always finance one position with another to reduce costs

5. The underlying move is more important than the option greeks

6. Greeks are good as relative measures, never absolute, and they are transient and always wrong

7. The profit is almost never highest at expiration so sell them as soon as you are ok with the return

8. Treat the trades as a diversified basket even if they are based on the same trade set up

9. Most trades should break even or lose a bit, but the winners should more than cover the neutral or losing trades

10. Split the capital across strategies and tickers, and never average down.

Cheers!

Edit: it is now obvious to me that most people commenting are youtube tiktok and chat gpt educated, and take the common talking points as gospel. Once you go through graduate level derivatuves pricing education, and have a couple of decades of trading experience under your belt, you will realize the bottom line from above - options prices are always wrong, and you need to trade the ones which are wrong the most both long and short. Always finance, and be long convexity and never risk blowing up your account. I will no longer comment below, but I wish you all good luck in your education!

Everyone has heard the folk model: when a name goes dead quiet and the range compresses, it is coiling before a big move. We wanted to know if the tightest compressions actually launch, so we tested it.

Design

• Universe: 516 optionable symbols, 5 years of dailies (~650k symbol-days)
• Compression: 10-day average true range %, ranked against the symbol's OWN trailing year, split into deciles. Decile 0 = this name is in the tightest 10% of its own recent history (not vs other symbols)
• Forward measure: biggest absolute close-to-close move over the next 5 sessions
• Split-half: everything before June 2024 vs after. A result has to hold in both halves or it is noise.

Result: monotone in both halves, the wrong way for the launch thesis

The tightest decile has the SMALLEST forward moves, perfectly monotone across all ten deciles, in both halves. Quiet names stay quiet, loud names stay loud. Volatility clusters - that is the real phenomenon, and it is one of the oldest results out there. Direction is flat too (P(up) runs 52-56% across deciles), so compression also tells you nothing about which way.

Before you flip it and buy options on the loud names: implied vol already knows. We measured implied vs realized separately and IV overshoots what actually happens in both tails, so "loud stays loud" is largely priced.

What actually preceded launches in our record was not shape, it was flow - repeated large premium hitting the same name across days, and catalysts. Breakout systems that use compression only as a shortlist and trigger on the actual break are a different claim than "tight = about to launch at a fixed horizon" - we only tested the latter.

Happy to share methodology details. Poke holes.

The President says he’ll be allowing ranchers and farmers to process and sell their own product on the open market. Tyson controls about 85% of the meat processing industry and this could cost them billions. Puts? Or is there an underlying reason why this wouldn’t affect Tyson?

There’s alot of tools out there but it’s so overwhelming, is there a good source you guys use to spot overall trends and patterns, I see a lot of ppl recycle the same watchlists and am wondering how they are all finding them.

There’s gotta be some sick tool that alerts what’s about to break and go parabolic for example trend lines breaks or something?!?

Any comments is very appreciated

I'm still a beginner options trader and just got a big un-realized win on GPRO. Locked in a 120 day call option on GOPRO with a strike price of $1 a couple days ago. I'm up around 138% after the stock pulled back yesterday but was thinking about selling covered calls off my 4 contracts with a strike price of $3-$4 with a short expiry instead of selling. Really wanted to lock in profits when I was up 200% but would rather go the covered calls route far OTM and hope the stock stays above $1.33 which is my break even point. What would you guys recommend?

cost for 4 contracts 130 USD
potential premium profit for 17 days: 50-80 USD (fluctuating wildly due to current volatility)

so i’ve been studying gamma for the past 3 months, and i’ve been trying to implement them in my futures trading during the day. I found it very hard tho, how do you guys use those levels? and how do you use them paired if price and levels are above or below the gamma flip level?

That's it. What is the minimal account balance do you all think it's the bare minimum to trade options?

I've built the first bull call spread today where I live, and also noticed that options contracts can be very expensive in US equities/exchanges.

Greetings

I’ve been playing around with an idea that really seems too good to be true so I’m sure it has to be lol. I’d love to hear thoughts about what I’m missing here.

My assumption is that in the long term I’m bullish on equities and precious metals. Of course the market is unstable and anything could happen, however there are only a few times that the Nasdaq has been negative for more than a one year period. Of course there was the dot com crash however I do think that there has been a fundamental shift in our economy making a repeat of that unlikely.

So this is what I’m considering. Layering (monthly) 0.7 Delta LEAPS on the QQQ, and GLD as far out as possible (>800 days) then selling weekly ATM or 1 strike OTM calls against them.

1 DTE if the underlying has risen ITM close the entire spread and establish. This way I do not have assignment risk. If the underlying drops resell a new ATM call but always staying above my cost basis.

Looking at an example as I write this the QQQ 15Dec28 685 is at a 155 mid. The 10Sep2026 719 (ATM) is 5.34.

If the QQQ is flat to up that extrinsic arbratage is about 3.2% a week. Since my leap is a higher delta I’m in no jeopardy if the QQQ rises, I’ll only make money. If the QQQ drops I’ll harvest the extensic and be able to sell a strike as low as 714 next week due to my lowered cost basis make the same 3% and wash and repeat. This annualized out to be 156% a year at 3% a week.

Now if the market is in a sustained downturn soon after establishing my position I might not be able to keep selling calls under my basis and I’ll have to wait for a recovery. The worst case would be of course there not being a recovery for multiple years, but I do hold a long term bullish bias.

In a great case in 30 successful calls I’d have a risk free leap that even in an extended downturn could sell calls against.

How would you compare this idea to the standard PMCC selling .3 delta calls and closing/rolling for a loss when needed. What am I missing as there has to be something.

Thanks all