With the margin requirements potentially falling to $2,000 this year, I’m starting to consider spreads, namely credit spreads as a way to semi-safely grow my account. Please tell me if I’m missing something here.
The plan:
Daily far OTM 0DTE SPY credit spreads. Starting fund: $3,500. Right now SPY is around 689, I would be looking at the following options.
Jan 26th
Long put(buy) - 641 strike 35 contracts @ 0.02
Short put(sell) - 642 strike 35 contracts @0.03
Entry credit: $35
Max risk: $3,465
The problem:
So I am risking $100 to make $1 per contract a day, betting that the market will not fall 7% tomorrow and wipe out my position. I’ve heard this as picking up pennies in front of a steamroller, where one bad day could wipe out 100 wins in my case. From what data I can find SPY has fallen 7% in a day on 11 occasions in the last 25 years, and most of those were in groupings like during COVID. So I would need a way to protect against days like that.
The solution:
I plan to purchase a separate long put contract each day to cut into my daily earnings and protect as much of my credit spread as possible, and try to bail on the main credit spread if it approaches a 5% daily drop.
Jan 26th
Long put - 661 strike 2 contracts @ 0.05
From what I can see, if the strike were to drop to $642 these contracts would be worth $3,786, so this would cover my fund amount in the event of a large drop. That would bring my daily profit to $25 each day. Naturally I’d want to reinvest my winnings and grow this account so I could earn more a day, while setting aside money for taxes. Am I missing anything else though?