SNOW reports tomorrow (9/2) after close. Options are pricing a ±11% move (±$35.28). I went back through its last 8 reports plus the longer 18-report history to see whether that price is honest.

The EPS side is ugly and consistent. Every one of the last 8 quarters has come in below

the estimate.

8 for 8 misses, and the stock still closed green on 5 of those 8. Something's off, and it's not Snowflake — it's the data. My best guess is the feed is comparing GAAP actuals against non-GAAP estimates. SNOW pays so much stock comp that GAAP EPS is basically negative by design, while the number the Street actually trades off is non-GAAP and usually a beat. I haven't pulled the raw filings to confirm, so treat the 0% beat rate as a broken column, not a signal. I'm flagging it myself because I'd rather you hear it from me than find it in the comments.

The vol side is the real finding anyway.

Across those same 8 reports the stock's average realized move is ±17%. Average implied going in was ±10.6%. That's actual coming in at about 1.5x what the options priced. They've just been cheap.

Zoom out to all 18 reports on record back to March 2022 and it holds. Options overpriced SNOW's move only 39% of the time — the market-wide average I've measured across other names is about 57%. Median actual was 1.48x implied. Mean implied ±9.7%, mean actual ±14%.

So here's the weird part. On a name everyone swears always misses, the options market has spent three years underpricing how far it actually moves.

I’ve been developing and backtesting a systematic Opening Range Breakout strategy on SPY and have gotten it to a point where I’d really appreciate some fresh eyes from people with experience in ORBs, systematic trading, or 0DTE options.

The strategy uses a defined opening range, breakout confirmation, time restrictions, range filtering and systematic exits. It trades both directions and is limited to one trade per session.

I’ve been developing it in TradeStation/EasyLanguage and optimizing the major components individually rather than throwing every variable into an optimizer at once.
I’m trying to judge the strategy on more than net profit — profit factor, expectancy, drawdown, trade count, long/short performance and parameter stability all matter.

The current underlying backtest covers SPY from 2020–2026: 576 trades, 54.2% profitable and a 1.56 profit factor. I attached the equity curve and performance report. The small dollar P&L is due to the test sizing — I’m evaluating the underlying edge and consistency rather than the nominal return.
My eventual goal is to execute this strategy through SPY 0DTE options, which is where things obviously become more complicated. An edge on SPY doesn’t automatically translate to an edge on the option because of strike selection, greeks, IV, spreads, decay, execution, etc.

I know historical intraday options data will eventually be necessary. I’ve looked into purchasing Cboe data ($2,200), but before making that investment I want to take the underlying research as far as reasonably possible and make sure I’m approaching the next stage correctly.

That’s really why I’m posting. I’d love to hear what experienced traders/system developers think when looking at these results. What would you investigate next? What concerns you? What am I potentially overlooking?

I’m not looking for anyone’s proprietary strategy or asking someone to build mine. Just looking for criticism, ideas, resources and another set of experienced eyes before taking the research further.
Happy to discuss more specifics where they’re relevant in the comments. Appreciate anyone that’s read this far and is willing to take a look!

I'm a big fan of strangles, but when it comes to harvesting theta, I find it difficult not to have a directional bias.

For me, the ideal time to sell a CALL is after the underlying has already had a strong run, while for PUTs I prefer the opposite, selling them after a significant decline. I focus on reliable, relatively low-volatility stocks.

Lately, I've been testing a theta portfolio in my paper account using this approach:

• CALLs: stocks that have already run up significantly or are near a resistance zone
• PUTs: stocks that have sold off significantly or are near a support zone
• Delta: between 5 and 15
• DTE: 30–45
• Closing positions at around 20–50% profit
• Stopping out only when the underlying gets close to the strike

So my portfolio always has a mix of CALLs and PUTs, but on different stocks.

In a way, you could think of it as a short strangle across different underlyings, but with a directional bias based on mean reversion. I'm essentially betting that stocks that have moved significantly in one direction will eventually retrace, or at least that their movement will slow down.

This has been working very well in my paper account so far. Of course, I know the risks involved with naked options, including the possibility of multiple positions being stopped out at the same time. The idea is not to use leverage, but rather to manage the portfolio so that the overall exposure remains controlled.

I'm curious if anyone here is doing something similar.

Is there a specific name for this approach? If you've seen a Reddit discussion, article, or even a good YouTube video covering something along these lines, I'd really appreciate the link.

I'm mainly trying to understand the different ways this can play out and learn from people who have actually traded this type of approach.

Continuation of yesterday's post — real numbers, no fluff, this is how the day actually played out.

Overnight, the warning from yesterday played out: one of the two walls had to give, and this time it was the put side. Pre-market saw real selling pressure testing the ES 7659 level.

By the open, the 0DTE put wall was only Fragile at 7625, with the call wall Moderate at 7705. Price dipped straight into the open but bounced off the range support inside the very first 15-minute candle and turned higher.

An hour in, the position was sitting on roughly $820 of profit — well clear of the 7659 level. With 12 contracts still open, I made the classic mistake: held for another $80 instead of taking the win. Greed, plain and simple, and I know better. The market dipped, the paper profit evaporated, and a resting order to lock in $640 didn't fill. Had to sit through the 7625 support actually getting tested and breached on a third dip before finally closing the main position, buying it back from 0.85 down to 0.15.

Added one more small position later for $80, bringing the total for the day to $779.

Lesson worth repeating: once you're at 70-80% of max profit on a spread, take it and walk away — especially on a volatile, high-volume day like this one. Riding a position from near-full credit into a real drawdown, then white-knuckling it back to almost-full credit, isn't a repeatable strategy. It's luck.

Looking at tomorrow: this makes three red days in a row. The real concern is what the close shows for the next session — the put wall has already slipped back to 7550, and there's no reliable support level on the chart between here and there. That's a real warning sign. On the upside, there's a resistance zone around SPX 7670 that I'm skeptical this tape breaks without a genuine catalyst.

Current lean: a put credit spread doesn't look attractive up here — if anything, only below 7550 on a real dip. A call credit spread up around 7710, respecting that 7670 resistance, looks like the more sensible side. All of that can change overnight, but you can't trade a guess. In hindsight, a lower entry below 7590 today would have priced in more credit — impatience cost me there.

Levels SPX Source: gammawalls.com

Using a TLT call credit spread for income because I can’t refinance at these long rates.
I don’t need yields to rise. I need them not to fall ~100bp. TLT is $81.87. Duration is ~15, so 100bp lower on the long end is roughly TLT into the mid-90s. That’s about the move that would make a refi real for me. Until then I’m stuck with the mortgage, so I’m getting paid to wait.
Trade (from the Nov chain today)
• TLT $81.87
• Sell 20-Nov-26 85 call / buy 20-Nov-26 90 call
• 80 DTE
• Credit $0.50 ($50 per)
• Width $5
• Max profit $50
• Max loss $450
• BE $85.50
85 is ~+3.8% (~25bp). 90 is ~+10% (~65bp). Full 100bp / ~$94 is still outside the long strike. If rates never come down enough to refi, I keep the credit. If they drop hard enough that a refi is actually on the table, this can already be at max loss before TLT gets to $94.
I looked at 90/94 on the same expiry. Credit is only ~$0.08–0.09. Not worth it for “can’t refi so I want premium.” Nov IV on TLT is ~11–12%, so you don’t get paid for being that far OTM.
Defined risk only. Not short TLT, not naked calls.
Management
• Take it off around $0.25 (half the credit)
• Don’t hold the last week if it’s close
• Size off the $450 max loss
Questions:
1. Is pairing “can’t refi unless long rates drop a lot” with this 85/90 a reasonable way to get paid while I wait, or am I just selling cheap TLT vol and dressing it up as a mortgage story?
2. For the same idea, would you sell closer (83/88, more credit) or farther (88/94, less credit, closer to the 100bp line)?
3. Anything dumb about Nov vs pushing it to Dec?
Not advice. House first, options second. Want the structure kicked before I size it.

If so, how far out do you usually go on the options
for expiration? How far out of the money do you like to buy puts?

How do you handle big moves up without getting your shares called away? Do you roll the calls?
And on big drops, how do you cash out the puts — sell them, roll them down, or use the gains to buy more stock?

I am mostly interested in indexes.

Curious how this has worked in real life.

Like many people, my ira is a snp500 index fund that I won’t touch for another 20years.
As I’ve learned about options, it seems like it would make sense to regularly sell a put spread from spot to 90% of spot in the account. This would allow me to harvest additional equity risk premium without exposing myself to the catastrophic risk of an uncapped put.
Is this a well understood strategy in the options world? Does anyone else do this?
I found OVL does this with some success, but has high fees. I’d probably automate this myself after some more DD.

390 Professional Order Rule

Just got an email about this new rule. I'm confused and struggling to find info online or on RH about it. It says you cannot exceed an average of 390 Option orders per trading day during a calender month.

Does this mean if I do 1 order of 10 contracts does that count as 1 or 10 towards 390.

Can someone explain this to me better than Google can. Thanks

Edit: I played around on robinhood and was able to talk to the AI assistant and figure out how it works.

Example- If I place an order to buy 20 options and then sell all 20 options in a single order. That will count as 2 orders for the day. If I were to sell those same 20 options as 4 orders of 5 then in total it would be 5 orders for the day.

Almost seems impossible to hit 390 orders a day, thanks for the answers

Ranked this morning's pre-market movers at 9:45 by relative volume and options volume instead of by % gain, dumped the list into TradingView, and let it run.

Here's where all 15 sat pre-market.

Same 15 names at 11:47 ET, sorted by performance:

The asymmetry is the whole story:

All five up-gaps still green. Of the ten down-gaps, four held and six either faded to flat or flipped green.

FRVO is the one to look at. Came in with the highest relative volume on the board at 5.41x, gapped +7%, now +24.7%. That's the whole argument for ranking on participation instead of gap size — it was 8th by percentage and first by volume.

INTC is the mirror image. Gapped −2.92% on 0.37x relative volume — below its own normal — and it's now −0.21%. A gap with nobody behind it.

Here's where my own thesis only half works.

Relative volume sorted the up-gaps cleanly — the two highest (FRVO 5.41x, CRK 2.83x) are the two best performers. It did nothing for the down-gaps. The six that faded had RVOLs of 1.15x, 0.46x, 0.37x, 0.35x, 0.41x, 0.45x. The four that held: 1.61x, 0.41x, 0.52x, 0.34x. No pattern at all. Low participation predicted a down-gap fading about as often as it didn't.

Caveats: one session, 15 names, and 11:47 isn't the close — some of these will look different at 4pm. And gap direction is confounded by whatever the broad tape did today; a market that rallies off the open flatters every down-gap fade.

Anyone tracked up-gap vs. down-gap hold rates over a real sample? One day tells me nothing, but the split was stark enough that I want to know if it holds.

Hello,

I am trying to use double calendar spread on Webull however could not find it in the list of available strategies. Does anyone know how to trade double calendar on Webull? Also does Webull offer custom spread builder so one can choose legs manually to build double calendar?

I absolutely love the app and thinking about moving other accounts to Webull but this can be deal breaker. I have IKBR and TOS and they offers this option however I am not big fan of their mobile application. Anyone knows if Robinhood or Moomoo has custom spread builder?

Thanks in advance!

I see a constant debate between weeklies and monthlies. So I ran the backtest delta matched on 84 US large caps from 2021–2026, selling 1-week vs 1-month calls at the same target delta, 0.10 through 0.40.

1. Below 0.25 delta, weeklies win. At 0.10 delta, weeklies beat monthlies risk adjusted (Sortino) on 73% of sample, +1.9 CAGR/yr median. At 0.20, still 66% of sample.
2. At 0.25 it's even.
3. Above 0.30, monthlies win. By 0.40 delta, weeklies win risk adjusted in only 36% of sample.

Why even at 0.25? A 0.10 delta weekly harvests about 2x the annualized premium of monthlies while being assigned just as rarely.

But at 0.40 weekly strike sits much closer to spot, every assignment gives back more of the trend, four times as often.

Methodology: premiums from bid/ask mids where available, otherwise full implied vol surfaces (BAW).

Everyone argues about whether cheap far-out options are dumb. Well...

If losers go to zero and you hold winners to target, the hit rate you need just to break even is set by the payoff:

That's to go flat. Not to make money.

Now the part that actually matters. Losers go to zero is a choice, obviously.... Cut them at −50% instead:

Cutting at half roughly halves the hit rate you need. That's a bigger edge than any amount of better picking, and it's free. The problem is a 3-cent contract doesn't feel worth managing, so it gets held to expiry, and your real break-even is the left column instead of the right one.

Then the spread. On a 0.45/0.55 quote you're down 20% at fill. On 0.01/0.02 you're down 50% before you've done anything — your stop got hit the moment you bought. That's why this stuff paper-trades great and trades terribly.

So: 10x needs 10% holding to zero, ~5% if you cut, back to ~7% after a normal spread, and sub-10-cent contracts are basically unplayable.

Lotto tickets aren't automatically losers. But nearly all the edge is in the exit, not the entry.

Anyone actually track their hit rate on sub-$1 contracts separately? I'd bet it's a lot worse than your overall win rate is hiding.

Did you ever find what happens when you go and look at the option options chain or scanner, and select the strike to sell?

There is a lot going on and traders make discretionary decisions what strike to use.

I want to automate that part for making trading more consistent and hopefully more profitable

First attempt I went with a naive delta range. It was something like 24-38, then turned into a map for ranges, separated on calls and puts.

It’s still didn’t work well sorry so I added more maps to adjust for stock prices, and IV ranges.

That worked for a while, and then market settled in current mode, “flat” implied volatility where a lot of names get a narrow premium distribution across strikes. What happens is premiums get clustered around ATM strike.

Which means delta range has to extend to 45-48 on puts

I decided it’s time to build a model which going to look at greeks, expected move and determine delta range for strikes.

It tools a while to build something that determines ranges reliably across different securities, separately for calls and puts. I wanted closed richer puts and more distant calls.

This was one of the most fun project I did. I have a full test suite to validate results, but I haven’t quite figure out how to make test inputs automated since they have to come out of some other model or calibration data.

I’m also not using any historical data or backtesting, again same problem what’s the test inputs.

Still, it works with remarkable consistency. I run it today on a bunch of names, NBIS TLT COST CHWY just random liquid names and all strikes from delta ranges were well defined. I was looking and yup that’s where I’d look to sell premium.

Has anybody build anything similar? As a model, math formula basically, rather than set of rules.

Anybody interested to compare results, even empirically for discretionary selection? Let me know the names, I can reply with results (when market opened)

Upd this is how it works

Pretty good selection across vastly different securities

Zebra Technologies took its name from the black and white stripes of a barcode. It makes barcode scanners, rugged mobile computers, RFID readers, machine vision systems, and printers, the physical hardware layer underneath most modern inventory tracking, retail checkout, and warehouse logistics operations. If a package got scanned somewhere between a warehouse and your front door, there's a real chance Zebra hardware was involved.

Q2 2026 results were genuinely strong. Revenue grew 20.4% year over year to $1.56 billion, beating estimates by nearly 4%. Non-GAAP EPS of $6.35 crushed the $4.38 consensus by 45%. Gross margin expanded to 53% from 47.6% a year earlier, helped partly by IEEPA tariff recoveries and favorable currency effects. Management raised full-year 2026 non-GAAP EPS guidance to $20.75-21.25, up from an earlier range, and issued Q3 guidance above what analysts were expecting too. This followed an already strong Q1, where EPS of $4.75 beat estimates by 16% and sales grew 14.3%.

The demand drivers span retail and e-commerce, transportation and logistics, and healthcare, with management specifically framing the strategy around deploying AI on the frontline through connected devices and automation solutions. Recent product launches like the WS501-R wearable computer target frontline worker productivity directly. Transportation, logistics, and retail e-commerce have been consistent strengths, while manufacturing and parts of Europe, especially automotive-exposed markets, have lagged.

The stock is up 48.5% year to date following these results, and one fair value model built around 7.5% annual revenue growth through 2029 implies around 25% further upside from current levels, though that requires sustained execution on the growth trajectory. The honest risk with Zebra is real: tariff exposure and trade policy remain a genuine ongoing variable even with recent recoveries helping margins, the company is still working through integrating recent acquisitions like Elo and Photoneo, and reliance on hardware sales means this business stays more cyclical than a pure software company would be. Anyone track the industrial data capture and automation space?

I’ve been doing mostly covered calls for consistent ROI in this choppy market. But one strong bull case that seems to make enough sense to go the LEAPS route vs covered call is the one for SLV. I have been reading a lot of bull vs bear case info and to me the long term bear case would essentially require a combination of so many unlikely events to gain any traction. Electric cars, green energy systems, and AI data centers are all heavily reliant on silver, and it seems unlikely that the Fed will crank up interest rates high and fast enough to steer investors away from silver.

Anyone else doing the same? Anyone with strong bull/bear case thoughts? I bought a 12/31 contract 60 strike at $6.65.

I also found it interesting that of all analyst reports on the matter, JP Morgan Chase is projecting a slight slowdown at the end of the year before the price drifts higher. The irony is that JP Morgan Chase is also the bank in charge of holding the physical silver required to back up SLV shares. Are they intentionally doing this so if SLV goes up more than they project, they can promote the legitimacy of SLV investing by saying it has real value based on supply/demand rather than hype? Or perhaps is it a strategic way to keep the value down while they build their inventory of silver?

These (in particular the broken wing butterfly) used to be some of my bread and butter trades on SPX when VIX was higher but I haven't really touched anything options related other than the occasional naked put on a non-index stock in a while.

Part 2 of yesterday's post on the 7700 level — quick real update on how Monday played out.

Overnight, ES lost the 7714 support that had held all Friday and dipped as low as 7685 (SPX ~7675) before bouncing and recovering. That 7650 level flagged yesterday as the next support down actually softened overnight — it went from a moderate level to a lightly-built one before the open.

On the cash open, price pushed down again but held right around 7675 — that became the new sticky level for the day. By the close, both the call and put walls had compressed into moderate levels, roughly two hours before the bell.

Took a put credit spread at 7630/7620, 12 contracts, for $520 total credit. No issues with the position all session — held clean start to finish.

Now here's the interesting part for Tuesday: the market is coiled tight. Strong resistance sits at ES 7714 (SPX ~7700), and underneath there's a real shelf of lows acting as support at ES 7658 (SPX ~7648). Something has to give — and the expected move for Tuesday is unusually low, so extra caution is warranted either direction.

If 7700 breaks to the upside, 7750 is the next level to watch. If the 7648 support gives way, the next real support down is 7617. We have a very compressed range for the call and put walls for tomorrow. The call wall is at 7710 and it is only fragile. The put wall just at 7690 as moderate.

My plan: looking for put credit spread entries near those support levels, and a call credit spread above 7750 if we get there. My lean is that ES retests 7714 (SPX 7700) first, then continues up toward 7750 — but with the range this compressed, I'm not forcing anything early.

Curious how others are reading this coil — anyone else seeing 7700 as the pivot for tomorrow?

Source: gammawalls.com

I have 200 shares of Google:

• 100 shares -> Cost Basis $280
• 100 shares -> Cost Basis $388

I am considering selling a covered call with an expiration 81 days from now.

Is that too far out? I'd like the income, but I am a bit hesitant.

Variance risk premium is a difference between implied and realized volatility. You can think about it as an insurance price against an adverse move in the underlying - institutions (asset managers, hedge fund, pension funds, etc.) want to hedge a risk of a market crash, to that extent they buy option contracts (usually puts), creating a supply-demand imbalance that drive prices of those contracts up.

Those who are willing to accept that risk can act as a supplier and receive a premium for that. Theoretically those contracts are overpriced under no-arbitrage assumptions, so potentially traders could harvest this mispricing by selling any type of option structure, or even naked options.

Short straddle has an advantage of being delta neutral, therefore its value does not change with changes in the underlying (again theoretically for small changes, do not forget about gamma). That leaves us with volatility (short vega) and time (long theta) exposures. To profit from short straddles we need for IV at the moment of selling to be greater than volatility realized over the holding period, which is a definition of VRP.

I backtested 4 variants of selling ATM short straddles strategy on 50 largest single stocks and 6 indices options, spanning all major sectors:

• Single name, unhedged;
• Single name, delta-hedged daily;
• Index, undedged;
• Index, delta-hedged daily.

Contracts were held until expiration for all 4 variants. Here are the returns:

Results are not great. Only indices made profit, all variants underperformed compared to SPY. Let's interpret the data:

• Single stocks massively underperformed to indices;
• Unhedged variants had significantly larger drawdowns and beta values compared to delta-hedged ones;
• Only delta-hedged index strategy had positive alpha (returns unexplained by overall market returns).

Let's start from the first point. Why did single stock trades have such a bad performance? My take is that VRP is an index phenomenon and either absent or significantly diminished in single stock options. And the reason is simple: institutions are not that afraid of a single stock crash because it's a risk that can be hedged away by diversification. Indices, by their nature, are already diversified, and only risk exposure they bear is market risk, which can only be hedged by negative delta exposure. Puts provide that and in addition they provide convex returns, therefore they are attractive as a hedging mechanism.

Why did unhedged variants lost to delta-hedged ones? Because unhedged short straddles are not a bet on volatility magnitude, but on terminal move in the underlying. Delta hedging allows trader to secure his returns day-by-day. And because VRP is on average positive, returns are too.

Here are some other interesting figures from this research:

Both distributions show high left tails. The premium is positive most of the time and the tail eats into the mean, especially for single names.

Alpha increases and beta decreases with delta-hedging. We went over this topic above.

Single names actually made money in some sectors. Almost all indices made money. Small cap paid the most.

Returns were fairly stable with expections during 2008, 2020 crises and 2022 bear market and other short periods of underperformance.

Entries with higher IVR (>60%) had increased returns. Could be viable entry signal.

Mean returns correlation to SPY at 0.22, pushed down by a drop during 2022 bear market. It tends to spike during abnormal market conditions (Lehman, Volmageddon).

Before wrapping up i would like to point out some limitations of this backtest:

• Index sample size is small, only 877 trades compared to 7k+ single name ones. Related to this, index alpha value has t-score of +1.78. Statistical significance should be questioned;
• End-of-day fills and hedges only;
• Only ATM contracts. VRP could be more pronounced in OTM puts, but that would introduce skew dynamics, i wanted to zero in on VRP;
• Fixed one contract. No compounding or margin, which could have improved indices returns even futher.

This is not a trading strategy and not in any way a financial advice. My main goal with this post was to underline misconceptions someone might have when trading short straddles, namely: VRP mainly exists in index products and only delta hedged straddles should be used to harvest VRP, naked straddles are a bet on terminal move in the underlying, not volatility magnitude.

This research would not be possible without the options analytics/backtesting platform i have created. I'm releasing it in free beta for anyone interested in doing similar research for themselves. Link in bio.

PBWBs are bearish trades in the sense that you actually make more profit if the underlying drops in value (but not drastically, obviously). The question I have is about taking profit if this does in fact happen.

Let's suppose that I open a PBWB for a credit of .30. If I set a traditional Take Profit order it's based on that $30 credit. Instead, is there a way to use TWS's Condition tool to trigger a STC order if the underlying drops close to the short strikes (the Max Profit amount)? I'm not sure if the Condition tool is capable of doing this. I'm not that familiar with that aspect of TWS. Otherwise, the only way I can see to make more profit (than simply the credit received) is to "babysit" the trade and close it manually if/when it drops in value. I'm thinking there must be some way to automate this...???

PLTR: Coincidence or a Repeated MM/Options Manipulation Pattern?

I can easily imagine the same players working together — or at least moving in the same direction — to create a recurring cycle: pressure PLTR down, accumulate calls while volatility is depressed, push the stock higher, let dealers' hedging amplify the move, then cash out on the calls. And then do it again.

Push the stock down → load up on cheap calls → trigger the rebound → let dealer gamma hedging do the heavy lifting → sell into the volatility spike → repeat.

Coincidence? Independent strategies? Or a well-oiled machine designed to extract money from volatility? I don't claim to have proven it. I'm saying the pattern deserves to be investigated.

The SEC's whistleblower compensation program offers substantial financial rewards (up to 30% of fines collected). An engineer or trader at a market maker or hedge fund who provides algorithmic logs or evidence of collusion (spoofing, wash trading) is the most direct way to trigger a targeted federal investigation.

Mine, currently:

1. nothing where the implied move is under 5%, isn't enough premium in it to be paid for the tail
2. nothing where the bid/ask on the straddle is more than about 8% of its mid, because the edge is thinner than the spread
3. no defined-risk earnings play where max loss is more than one normal winning day

What's yours?

Premium $2.46 mid, ROI 69.49% probability 99.71%. Seems like free money unless I am missing something.

So I will have a significant lump sum of cash to invest in the next 30 days and I’m looking at strategies to deploy it. I understand the percentages of lump sum into the market vs DCA but I am very new to the idea of options/ puts and I’m not sure if I’m missing something because it almost sounds too good to be true.

I’m thinking of buying (selling?) 2-3 put contracts with a strike price just below that day’s price on VOO and QQQM for 4 months. The premium for a 4 month contract with a strike just below the current price is significant. I would also sell puts at 15-20% below the current price on VOO and QQQM in case there’s a crash in the next 4 months. The premium for this would be in the 10’s of thousands of dollars just to invest money that I was going to invest anyway and at cheaper prices. Am I missing something? Is there an inherent risk I’m not accounting for?

Yes, I realize that if the market shoots up and the price never drops from that day on, then I would be missing out on some gains, but I’d still have the huge premium + 3.5% on the cash in a money market. It’s also hard to believe that the day I sell the puts will be the very bottom of the market, especially with the pre midterm volatility we’re going into. Even if I ended up having to pay out on all 4 puts, that would still leave me like 20-25% in cash and 75-80% of my portfolio owning VOO and QQQM at good/great prices.

Again, I’m new to options and mostly have been talking to ChatGPT for ideas, so please let me know if this is a good strategy or if there’s something I’m missing.

Not looking for basics but more intermediate and advanced strategies including, positioning, risk management and designing the entire process.