$380 Locked By Lunch. $1,800 By The Bell. I Was In The Cinema.

Monday was a Premium Popper day that did not need me after about 11am. Here is what got taken, what got locked, and the wild card that turned a decent morning into a very tidy one.

The Normal Morning

A Premium Popper morning is not complicated. The software flags the session, the opening range does what it does, and I take what the setup gives me.

Monday’s panel came in bearish, grade normal, plus 1, on a 1 lot position. ORB30 confirmed. ORB60 confirmed. Full stack, Lazy Score 6 out of 6. Session flagged as a breakout.

That is the baseline. Nothing exotic. What made Monday worth writing up is what I did around the edges of it.

Trade 1: The Premarket Entry

My first trade was taken from the premarket rally and the futures rejecting.

This is the part that would not have been possible a while back. Got to love that new almost 24 hour trading on the cash options now. Just select global trading, and boop.

The premarket pushed higher, the futures rejected the prior highs, and I took the entry off that rejection with the short strike at 7785.

Then prices pushed lower slightly and went sideways for the morning. Which is exactly what you want when you are short premium.

The premarket entry timed out to target. Theta doing its thing. That locked in the first profit tent, no drama, no management, no staring at the screen.

Trade 2 and 3: The 1st and 3rd Breakouts

The next trades were the 1st and 3rd breakouts, both at the same level, so the same short strike on both at 7770.

That is why they show up stacked on the same part of the profit and loss curve. Two separate setups, one level, one pair of strikes.

Both had their profits locked with the late morning and lunch time push, which created the second profit tent.

The Wild Card: A $20 Lottery Ticket

Here is the one worth paying attention to.

As a wild card I also took a low risk lottery ticket type of trade with a wide in the money credit spread, $20 wide, at around the same time as the premarket rally entry.

The logic is almost boring, which is the point. All that was needed was an average day’s move down. Not a crash. Not a catalyst. Not a headline. Just a normal day, moving a normal amount, in the direction the setup already said.

That is a very different bet to the usual. A tight spread needs the move to behave. A wide in the money spread just needs the market to do something close to average.

We landed around 3 quarters of the way into the spread for some bonus profits.

Low risk, low expectation, and when it works it stops being a lottery ticket and starts being the difference between a good day and a very good one.

The Math

All trades were 1 lot each for the spreads setup.

The floor:

• $380 minimum profit locked in by early afternoon EST

The 3 profit tents:

• $880
• $1,380
• $2,130

Where price landed:

• Most of the way into the largest profit tent
• SPX finished the session at 7,745.06, down 40.70 points, or 0.52%

The result:

• Around $1,800 by the closing bell

Which, as I said at the time, just about pays for the sushi and the movie.

The important number there is not the $1,800. It is the $380. That was banked by early afternoon, and everything after it was upside. The day could not go negative from that point. That is the whole idea.

The Closing Bell

Bingly bongs, targets reached as we headed into the movie, early afternoon EST time.

And again, I am in the UK so 5 hours ahead. Which meant the position was doing the work while I was ordering.

Spider Man, while excellent, was not worth waiting through the final credits for the piss poor tease of what is coming. C minus, Marvel, must try harder.

Woot woot, and PopPop.

And The Community Did The Same Thing

This was not a solo result. The community smashed it again.

Chris T. made the point better than I did:

“SPX popper took its sweet time. Finally hit target. The interesting one with this one is the spot price at target was only $1 lower than my entry price. So time decay worked for me rather than a price move.”

That is the lesson of the whole day in 3 sentences. The price barely moved and he still got paid. Theta does not care whether the market is exciting.

Richard H. had the patience test version of it:

“Same for me, I had to walk away, it was so frustrating. BO1 ATM SS7700 for $2.50cr and converted to a butterfly for a $0.6c win. Please come back SPX after all that wait!”

James D. closed Bear RUT for a tiny profit, Bear SPX for a profit, and a Bear Lazy Popper on XSP at 50%, and asked the question everyone is now asking: is this the start of the sell off?

Well done team AntiVestor.

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