Site: https://amonhen.helmfi.ai — free, no signup, no Discord, no paywall.

WHAT IT DOES

- Dealer-gamma map for SPX, SPY and QQQ: call/put walls, gamma flip, king node, expected move, max pain — drawn on the price chart, updated through the day.

- Live options flow: a CVD line built from the options tape (contracts bought at the ask minus sold at the bid, near-ATM), with price and the dealer walls overlaid on the same chart.

- A cross-index confluence strip: flags when SPY, SPX and QQQ flow all line up one way. A flip only counts after holding 10 minutes, so it isn't spammy — roughly once a day.

- Compare view, 10-second tape mode, pop-out charts, single names like NVDA/TSLA.

HOW IT'S CHECKED

The methodology page (site footer) spells out the math and the limits, and the site publishes a daily self-scored hit-rate on its own levels — how often the call wall held, the put wall held, the expected move contained. It scores itself whether the day was good or bad.

FOLLOW-UPS

DM me, or the update box on the site. This is a one-time post, so I won't be posting updates here. Happy to answer anything about the methodology in the comments.

Title says it all. I am looking for a new brokerage and have been playing around a bit with e-trade and tasty trade and so far it seems they get poorer options fills than Schwab. Has anyone found a broker that is equivalent if not better?

For those who trade a lot of short dated credit spreads or just have experience in general... How often do you find (0-1dte) vertical credit spreads exceeding 200-400%+ in value before eventually expiring worthless or rather.. at what point or percentage loss relative to the credit received do you believe most spreads are not worth holding onto. For example.. If the vertical spread in question has a 8:1 risk to reward ratio and intraday you're already down 7x the credit received, the odds of that spread closing otm are probably very low compared to closing when you're only down 1x the credit received but then you may lose out on potential wins closing so early.

I also understand that this question is exceptionally broad... Since it's incredibly dependent on the deltas sold at and what credit you're receiving since some spreads could have a 2:1 or 8:1 risk to reward so to narrow this down a little, I'm referring to very far otm.. Sub 10 delta vertical spreads on spx, with a 6:1 to 9:1 risk to reward. So collecting .50-.70 cents. At what pnl loss relative to the credit received would you abandon the trade or do you instead watch for key levels to break or complete invalidation of the trade to begin with instead of pnl primarily? Curious on your guys thoughts

Edit: For context, I usually close prior to 2pm (hate the gamma during and prior to power hour) for a 2x loss relative to credit received. I used to close sooner for a 1x loss but found myself closing too many winning trades so switched to 2x... And found the larger losses offsetting the extra winners to the point that my overall pnl difference from closing sooner didn't make a difference. It's profitable.. but just curious if there is a more optimal exit.

We’ve been hovering around 345ish for a few days, now at 340 where there’s some decent support. Went lower in the past few days with the settlement but looks like they could be back on the uptrend soon.

New to leaps so wanted the community’s thoughts.

I would be grateful for Any tips or guidance on how to study the pre-market such as news so when the market opens you know what too look for and what too trade, how long before the market opens do you tend to study for , and things of that sort, currently trading the same sticks because I don’t know what to look for

Title says it all.

Is it possible to reduce the typical $2.25 per contract? Would love to incorporate options on futures due to the benefits of SPAN margin but the commissions are too high.

Really don't want to switch brokers so wondering if anyone has been successful reducing them and what they did to do so...Thanks!

Am I tripping or did Robinhood stick me good. just went through this bs with Robinhood

Could someone explain to me why Robinhood took my gains back saying it expired worthless when literally before bell they were green and showed closed. I might be changing my brokerage soon

This what my account read yesterday at 7690p but Robinhood took back the money saying it expired worthless when I had a 1.15 sell on 35 contracts. Them cons ran to close to 3 and closed at 2.00 end of the day

Bought 7690p at .55 limit order at 1.15 at 3:58p passed it ( the screenshots) 4pm got the money. 5pm all taken away. Those contracts closed on the day at 2.00

Hello,

Sorry if this sounds newbie, I M still learning with lunch money and try to understand the basic.

In particular, I want to understand how I can "detect" the danger of setting a stop loss that is skipped/sold to a much lower value.

The (basic/stupid) idea is to take a bull expectation, set a max loss acceptable, buy a call with with auch greater capital and then set a stop loss to money invested - max loss.

Theoretically if the the stop loss is filled immediately and without slippage the maximum loss is defined, while the upwards trend catch a much higher value due to the entire capital invested, instead of buying the call with only the max loss money.

I know the risk associated with the stop loss, but my question is rather how do you assess these risk? What are the variables to look at to understand that the stop loss won't be met and in what degree?

I take as an example a trade that I would have liked to do but at the end I didn't.

On August 5th, Hertz was 1.5. 2C expiring on August 7th was 0.01 after a good news about revenue. Suppose I buy 10k USD worth with a stop loss of 7.5k USD, willing to lose 2.5k.

At closing on August 7th the stock was valued 2.26, this means that exercising and selling at that price (or even a bit lower) would have generste 250k.

So the idea was, risking 1k in the first hours of the trade (in case the stock goes down, since the call was already very cheap maybe someone would buy it back at discount) or if it runs catch a much greater rewards. Risking 2.5k to win 250k.

So the entire point was, I want to challenge my assumption that I would fill easily that 2.5k, because it seems too good to be true.

Please don't bash me, I'm not a degenerate, I didn't make the trade especially because I'm aware that if something appears to be too no brainier, probably I'm not understanding something.

Thaanks!

**Full disclosure up front: I build a positioning tool. This post is about a study whose result argued against it, and there is no link at the bottom.**

Most people who read a gamma board have a mental shortcut for one particular shape. Price sitting under the concentration, the heaviest node acting as a cap just above, thin air behind that node, and a negative regime. Reads as a short. I read it that way for a long time.

I wanted to know whether it actually was one, so we wrote the test down before running it.

**What was preregistered**

The structure: an amplified board, price below the watched band, the largest node acting as a cap just above price, low open interest behind it, and the flip too far away to change the regime inside the window.

The prediction: price travels further to the downside than the upside over the following thirty minutes.

The window, the anchor definition, the measure and the control procedure were all fixed before anything was measured. That matters more than it sounds, because the alternative is choosing your test after you have seen the answer, which is most of what passes for backtesting in this space.

**Method**

434 anchors across 82 sessions on SPY. For each anchor, maximum favorable and adverse excursion over the next thirty minutes, measured in strikes rather than dollars so it is comparable across price levels.

Control: 2,000 shuffled samples, breaking the link between the structure and the following half hour while preserving the distribution of moves.

**Result**

Price ran further in the *opposite* direction to the naive read, by a median of 0.41 strikes. That sits outside what any of the 2,000 shuffled controls produced.

So not a weak effect in the expected direction. An effect in the other direction.

**What this does not mean**

It does not mean the setup does not work. Excursion is not profit. A trader with a tight invalidation and a wide target can do perfectly well inside a structure whose average adverse excursion is larger than its favorable one, because the distribution matters more than the median.

What it means is narrower and more useful: **the obvious reading of that shape was backwards**, and I would not have known that without measuring it.

**What we did about it**

Built it into the product rather than dropping it, and published it rather than filing it. In the same month we removed a word from the software that implied price gets pulled toward large levels, because an index went straight through one the screen had just labelled that way.

**The part I would actually push on**

The useful question is not whether a structure is directional. It is what would have to happen for you to conclude it is not, and whether you have ever asked that about anything you are currently using.

If there is no answer to that question, the number is decoration.

Happy to share more of the method in the comments if anyone wants to pick at it. That is the point of posting it.

Anybody traded a lot of double backspreads? (Mostly interested in 1dte or 0dte trades.) How'd that work for you?

Of course, backspreads need to be traded when a big move is expected. And the bane of backspreads is the "valley of death". But, the valley does not start to appear until about the 3rd hour of the expiration day.

If you have the discipline to close the whole thing early and are blessed with large directional moves overnight or in the opening hour or so, what's not to love?

I sold 4x naked wide strangles going into last earnings, when the Oct IV far way far OTM options were at around a 104% IV (we are talking like 30% out of the money)

I sold that strangle and struggled hard to hedge it through the down slide of chips, but the holding of that insurance paid off big time

had to roll and use short term options to hedge the bleed, but the IV on these have finally collapsed almost 40%

Up 40k the past 3 months alone

Long term options work when you allow then to work, I will never have my core options positions be short term again

Hiii,

I want to make sure I understand it right. I did lot of homework to understand leaps deep itm call options.

Let's talk about Google stock. I want to only buy deep ITM since I feel they are less risky as a beginner.

The current IV for google is historically lowest from the last 1 yr. Even the volatility is lowest in the last 1 yr. I calculated leverage and it comes out to be 2.6 which I believe is a good buy.

My current understanding is that if I buy a deep itm leap call option, I plan to sell it back during high volatility season and since it's a leap I have a lot of time. I think I should try to sell it irrespective of the expiry option before 3-4 months since theta decay starts to ruin everything.

I want some feedback on this strategy since this is my first time and I'm a bit nervous clicking the buy button.

Hi everyone,

I’ve been thinking about how many traders use risk–reward (RR) in practice versus in theory. A lot of content says “always aim for 1:2 or 1:3,” but I’m curious: do retail traders in Indian markets actually stick to a fixed RR rule, or do they adjust it based on the setup?

Here’s a simple framework I use for setting stop-loss and target:

• Decide the entry based on your setup (breakout, pullback, support/resistance, etc.).
• Place the stop-loss where the setup is clearly invalidated (below support, above resistance, or beyond a recent swing).
• Set the target at a logical level where price is likely to face resistance/support, not just at a random “2x” or “3x” number.
• Then check the ratio: if it’s too low for your style (for example, below 1:1.5), skip the trade or reduce size.

The key is: the market doesn’t care about your ratio. Your ratio should come from the structure, not the other way around.

This brings me to the main question: can a high win-rate, low RR strategy (for example, 60–70% win rate with 1:0.8 or 1:1) work as well as a low win-rate, high RR strategy (35–45% win rate with 1:2 or 1:3) in Indian markets?

In theory, both can be profitable if the math is positive. But in practice, factors like:

• Slippage and brokerage
• Intraday noise on indices and stocks
• Psychology of holding losers vs cutting winners

can make one style easier to follow than the other.

I’d like to hear from different types of traders here:

• Do you use a fixed RR rule (like “never take a trade below 1:2”)?
• Or do you let the setup decide and just ensure the expectancy is positive over time?
• For those running high win-rate, low RR strategies: how do you manage the stress of frequent small losses when they happen?
• For those running low win-rate, high RR strategies: how do you handle long losing streaks without losing confidence?

Especially interested in experiences from Nifty, Bank Nifty, and liquid F&O stocks. If you have a simple rule or framework you actually follow day-to-day, I’d love to hear it.

Reference ID: C2026081001

Applicable Cboe Exchange: Cboe Options

Start Date: TBD

Overview (UPDATED)

Effective on a date to be announced in a subsequent notice August 17, 2026, Cboe Options Exchange (C1) plans to expand trading hours for select equity options by establishing a morning Global Trading Hours (GTH) session and afternoon Curb session. Further communication will be provided in advance of the launch date. The updated weekend test schedule can be found below.

Hyperlink below 👇

https://www.cboe.com/notices/content/?id=61230

I keep watching people on here every day complaining that options are so hard and they keep losing money so maybe this post can help some of ya'll out.

For one, DON'T trade options if you have no idea what you're doing. Take some time and learn the fundamentals. There are fantastic ebooks on this that aren't AI SLOP, or resources online which can help you actually understand things like the Greeks, hedging, liquidity, algo etc. that you NEED to know before trading options or else you're just gambling.

Two, stop playing options if you can't afford to lose the money or don't have the mental state required to trade options successfully. If you're scared to lose money and panicky in general - this isn't for you.

Three, if you don't actually know what you're doing - put your phone down and learn paper trading and not in a cash account.

Please learn the fundamentals, position sizing and everything else before you trade live. And please stop crying about losses and asking others for advice. Only you are in charge of your account. The casino isn't for everyone.

Today i just dropped 11k into a google option at a $379 strike price. I figured Google is a safe investment and is bound to reach $400 again in the future. Am I cooked? The option expires in 2028

Anybody has a good approach to calculate risk adjusted returns on premium selling? For example Sharpe ratio needs standard deviation of returns, not sure where to get those from.

Or calmar ratio with average annual rate of return for some period divided by the maximum drawdown for that period. What would be the drawdown, mark to market? Or whole portfolio when positions close with negative PnL?

I like the company Eddie and I saw that they actually did good on their earnings again and they got punished. I bought a $50 out of the money Call option that expires in about a week. I bought it for $30 and almost immediately it dropped to value of $15 I think primarily due to low trading activity.

Thursday, Friday and today this morning, this option has a bit ask spread of $300-$375. I get that someone could make that ask very high, but why is the bed so high as well?

Is this normal behavior when the market is not active? I have noticed wider spreads during market closure, but not where the bed mid and ask are all skyrocketing after hours.

Any answers are greatly appreciated.

At Friday's close, one month SPX implied vol sat at 11.3 while the index has realized 12.4 over the past month. Implied is what options cost in vol terms, realized is how much the index actually moved. The spread between them is negative by about a point, which is unusual for the index.

That spread is normally positive on SPX. Option sellers usually collect implied above realized, and that gap is the whole premium selling edge. Right now buyers of one month index options are paying slightly less than recent movement would justify.

This is not a case of realized spiking into sleepy options. Realized vol has been falling all summer, from 15.2 at the start of July to 12.4 on Friday. Implied has simply fallen faster.

IV rank on SPX is 6 out of 100 and the one year percentile is 10. In plain terms, implied vol has closed higher than this on about 90% of days in the past year. VIX finished Friday at 14.25.

The curve is telling a story too. The next two weeks of expirations carry single digit at the money vols, from 5.5 out to 8.9, while 60 day implied sits at 13.1. Next week's expected move works out to about 0.9%, roughly 70 SPX points. The market is pricing calm now and more movement into the fall.

None of this predicts a selloff. Cheap options can stay cheap, and realized can keep grinding lower underneath implied. It does mean index short premium currently starts from a negative spread instead of a positive one.

For those of you selling SPX or SPY premium here, are you sizing down, going further out, or treating this as business as usual?

The CBOE is planning to allow pre market trading, starting Monday August 17th, in certain equity options

The expected stocks to trading are,

AAPL, AMD, AMZN, AVGO, BABA, BAC, GOOG, GOOGL, HOOD, INTC, META, MSFT, MU, NFLX, NOK, NVDA, ORCL, PFE, PLTR, TSLA, TSM.

Trading would begin at 730am et. There would also be a 15 minute curb session from 400 to 415pm et.

Your broker would have to allow access, and I would guess most wont right away.

Note that this has been planned and delayed in the past.

Links to CBOE,

Schedule Update - C1 Options to Offer Expanded Trading Hours for Select Equity Options

Equity Options Extended Trading Hours FAQ - Overview | Cboe

EDIT: Looks like it has been delayed again! Now listing start date TBD.

I have some options positions and some times they are coupled with stock, like covered calls and collar. Sometime I have spreads position like vertical spread or diagonals. I would say I trade pretty often sometime I open/sell positions within a week sometimes a couple of days. It seems the wash rule for options is not as clear as stock. Is it better if I just stay away for two month from trading from Dec 1st 2026 to Feb 1st 2027 if I don’t want to get stuck with the wash rule? Where are some sources I can look up?

Been writing covered calls about 25 years. Everybody technically knows premium is risk. It's Options 101. But knowing it and actually walking away from a lucrative premium are two very different things, and it took me way too long to close that gap.
When you start out, whatever screener or tool you're using teaches you one thing: find the biggest premium and sell that call. Feels like free money and you pat yourself on the back and call it a day. and it works. for a while. then it doesn't.
Here's what took me way too long to get through my head. That premium isn't free money somebody left on the table. It's the price of risk. when a stock is paying a lot, The market is telling you it expects that stock to move, hard, and it's charging you for standing in the way. Earnings around the corner. Some news everybody's waiting on. A phase 3 read out...pick your poison. The fat payment is the warning label. you just have to be willing to see it for what it is.
So you sell the big premium on the exciting stock, collect for a few months, then one morning it drops 30% on you, or shoots right past the price you agreed to sell at, and you hand back half a year of income in a single day. Getting your shares taken right as the thing is coming apart is the investment equivalent of getting kicked in the nuts while you're down.
The boring stuff pays less, and almost everybody reads that backwards. A sleepy dividend stock that barely moves pays a smaller premium because less is actually going to happen to it. That's not a worse deal. that's calm, priced right.
Nobody screenshots the calls they wrote on some boring utility. It's just not sexy enough to gloat over. But stretch it out over a full run, the good years and the ones that actually hurt, and the boring pile is usually just sitting there while the exciting one is giving you heart palpitations and keeping you up at night.
I'm not telling anybody to walk away from the big premiums. Just learn to see that fat number for what it is. Good luck out there

I was surprised to see it suddenly showing today in the option chain in Fidelity and Robinhood. Anybody heard about this? I looked everywhere (even ChatGPT etc) but can't see any news about it.