22 Trades. 18 Wins. 4 Days. The System Didn’t Notice What Kind of Week It Was.

Four losses from 22 trades. All four were early bear poppers or a sliced VWAP trade – nothing that wasn’t contained, nothing that wasn’t accounted for by the wins that followed. The week closed profitable on every single day.

 

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Monday 9 Mar – The Hormuz Open

The week opened into full geopolitical chaos. Hormuz sealed, NFP -92,000, VIX at 32. Not a normal Monday.

SPX ran three trades. The first bear popper failed quickly – the environment was too volatile for it to run and it got stopped. The second trade, a bull 2nd popper, smashed its target fast and made up the ground. The third was a VWAP popper that turned a profit into the close. Comeback from a hole before lunch.

RUT ran one trade, took the loss, and left it there for the day. That is the correct decision. One read, didn’t work, stepped away. No revenge trading. No digging.

SPX ROC: -50% / 67.7% / 68.75% RUT ROC: -46.4%

The loss on both instruments was the early bear read. The session validated stepping off RUT entirely after the first read failed – the chart was not giving clean setups and the right move was to close the book on it.

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Tuesday 10 Mar – Fast Action All Day

The Trump “pretty much complete” comment sent Brent down 7%. The session was fast, directional, and active from the open.

SPX ran four trades. The first bear popper failed quickly again – same pattern as Monday. The second, a 3rd BO, produced the goods quickly once the direction settled. Trade 3 was slightly discretionary – gamma exposure was being used as a potential HOD and resistance level. The expectation wasn’t a drop, just a meander sideways. It did more than meander and the trade captured it. Trade 4 followed directly from there – VWAP was reclaimed then price sold the rally below VWAP into the close. Two trades feeding off the same read.

RUT kept it standard. Trade 1 off the breakout, Trade 2 off the BO. No VWAP trades, no complication. Both paid cleanly.

SPX ROC: -100% / 68.8% / 65.2% / 67.7% RUT ROC: 72.9% / 70.3%

The -100% on SPX Trade 1 is the one that looks alarming on paper. It wasn’t – the position was sized for it and trades 2, 3 and 4 covered it in full. A -100% ROC on a defined-risk spread means the premium sold expired worthless or was bought back at full cost. It is not a disaster. It is a contained cost of doing business on a day that paid back considerably more.

 

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Wednesday 11 Mar – Plain Sailing

The cleanest day of the week. No drama, no discretionary reads, no decisions to second-guess.

SPX ran four trades. Bear BO, bear break, then two VWAP trades. All four paid. The VWAP trades were notable – the “$$$x2” annotation on the chart tells the story. Clean entries, clean exits, done before the close.

RUT ran two trades. Bull break, bear break. Both covered cleanly.

SPX ROC: 65.5% / 65.5% / 67.7% / 70.6% RUT ROC: 61.5% / 64.3%

Six from six. The ROC bands across both instruments were consistent – no outliers, no lucky escapes. Just the system running as it should on a day that cooperated.

 

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Thursday 12 Mar – The Penny and the Grind

An absolute grind on both instruments. The market was scrappy, range-bound, and making life difficult for anything that needed a clean directional move.

SPX ran four trades. Trade 1 was a fast early BO – caught it before the grind set in. Trade 2 was a standard BO. Trade 3 was a VWAP trade – got sliced out by a penny at -93.5% ROC. A penny. The irony is not lost. Trade 4 was a lazy day trade that ran to 90% ROC.

That sequencing is the point. The VWAP trade got stopped by a penny. The lazy day trade came straight behind it and paid 90%. The penny didn’t matter because the next trade was already in the process.

RUT ran two trades. Both BOs. Both paid cleanly despite the grind. $2 and $6 on the index – small numbers – but the ROC held at 64.3% and 65.5%. The system extracted near-maximum value from the premium even when the underlying barely moved. That is the whole point of selling premium. The index doesn’t need to go anywhere. It just needs to not go far enough to cause a problem.

SPX ROC: 64.3% / 65.5% / -93.5% / 90.0% RUT ROC: 64.3% / 65.5%

 

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The Week’s Key Observation

The ROC numbers on the winning trades barely changed across four very different sessions.

Monday was a geopolitical crisis open. Tuesday was fast and directional. Wednesday was clean and cooperative. Thursday was an absolute grind. Four completely different market conditions.

The winning ROC across all four days: 61.5% to 72.9%. Tight band. Consistent. Independent of what the index was doing.

This is what selling premium with defined targets does. The setup either works or it doesn’t. When it works, it pays in a predictable range regardless of whether the market moved 80 points or 8. The broker statement doesn’t know what kind of day it was. It just sees the exit fills.

The four losses – two early bear poppers on Monday and Tuesday, one early Monday RUT read that got left alone, one VWAP trade stopped by a penny on Thursday – were all contained. None changed the week’s outcome. The week closed profitable every single day.

 

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Week ROC Summary

Winning trades ROC range: 61.5% – 90.0% Losing trades ROC range: -46.4% to -100% Win rate: 18 from 22 / 81.8% Profitable days: 4 from 4

Proof as always is on the charts with the broker statements.

 

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Premium Popper | ORB20 | SPX Income System | Trading Should Be Simple & Work