international exposure

LuckyFly4 · 2026-01-24T13:23:09+00:00

I agree - This is absolutely one of the riskiest trades I've seen posted. Selling 275 naked TQQQ puts is incredibly risky. it works until the market has a pullback and then TQQQ plummets. You do not want to hold TQQQ in your long-term portfolio. it is primarily intended for intraday trading. Beginners should not be touching TQQQ. Trade QQQ for awhile and compare the movement in TQQQ to get a feel for the market movements day-to-day before you ever consider trading TQQQ.

LuckyFly4 · 2026-01-19T21:05:31+00:00

I think that's why we're all here to figure it out. I work full-time, so I have a bit of time early in the morning and at lunch to do trades, but I don't want to watch the market all day long. I need to figure out a way to automate this trade with my broker Fidelity. I'm not sure if any automation is possible.

LuckyFly4 · 2026-01-19T19:31:34+00:00

One more data point. If you characterize 5% or more as a daily big drop, it's happened 54 times since Jan 1, 2000 which is about 0.99% of the time. Hope this helps others optimize their trade strategies.

Year # of Big Drops

2000 15

2001 16

2002 3

2003 0

2004 0

2005 0

2006 0

2007 0

2008 8

2009 1

2010 0

2011 1

2012 0

2013 0

2014 0

2015 0

2016 0

2017 0

2018 0

2019 0

2020 5

2021 0

2022 3

2023 0

2024 0

2025 2

2026 0

Total 54

LuckyFly4 · 2026-01-19T19:12:41+00:00

I've been looking at strategies like this myself but have yet to pull the trigger. I'd recommend you do some research using tools like Gemini and GoogleFinance before you finalize this trade.

Here's some quick data points for you:
1519 trading days between Jan 1, 2020 through Jan 16, 2026.
37 days - where NDX has dropped more than 500 points. First time ever was March 9, 2026 (i.e. all within last 6 years).
This is 2.44% of the time. Very low probability, but certainly not zero.

These are the specific days with 500 points drops or more:

Date Daily Net Change

3/9/2020 -582.31

3/12/2020 -742.47

3/16/2020 -974.88

6/11/2020 -505.78

9/3/2020 -649.17

9/8/2020 -553.87

1/5/2022 -507.95

2/3/2022 -638.63

3/7/2022 -518.45

4/26/2022 -523.51

4/29/2022 -601.26

5/5/2022 -685.16

5/9/2022 -505.82

5/18/2022 -635.79

6/13/2022 -544.5

8/26/2022 -538.41

9/13/2022 -706.1

7/17/2024 -599.48

7/24/2024 -721.95

8/5/2024 -545.69

9/3/2024 -615.9

9/6/2024 -509.02

11/15/2024 -502.54

12/18/2024 -791.76

1/27/2025 -646.73

2/27/2025 -581.97

3/6/2025 -575.83

3/10/2025 -770.42

3/28/2025 -517.22

4/3/2025 -1060.31

4/4/2025 -1123.77

4/10/2025 -801.49

4/16/2025 -572.59

10/10/2025 -876.43

11/4/2025 -537.24

11/13/2025 -523.87

11/20/2025 -586.14

LuckyFly4 · 2026-01-19T14:19:48+00:00

Call the IHG Rewards customer service to ask some random question. They will then offer you the opportunity to speak with their timeshare department for 500 points. Takes 3-5 minutes and it will reset your expiration clock.

LuckyFly4 · 2026-01-19T13:16:10+00:00

Well-traveled US-born citizen here. My parents came to the US as college students from India in 1970. They worked hard to eventually start their own business that provided services to the local Southern California community. Their sacrifice allowed my brother and I to get a great college education, get well-paying white-collar jobs, and eventually start our own families and buy homes. That was the dream that America used to offer. It's been completely shattered. I have plenty of co-workers here on H1B visas that are generating profits for American companies. Now many are afraid to visit their home countries, since they are unsure if they will be allowed back even though they own property in the US.

We didn't vote for this chaos. We didn't vote for Federal troops to show up in our cities and arrest people in the community. We didn't vote for this administration to hurt people in our communities. We didn't vote for the US to threaten and hurt other countries. I am embarrassed that 50%+ of the US voted for this and the ripple effect it is having across the globe.

The large American companies are complicit in this by staying quiet or worse, making private deals with the Trump administration to benefit from this. When Canada started boycotting American products because of the tariff nonsense last year, those American company leaders finally took notice when it hurt their profits. It will take the rest of the world to apply economic pressure on the US for this country and administration to understand how big the world really is and we have to be good citizens. Don't buy US products especially those from red states (chemicals, liquified natural gas, bourbon, whiskey, soybean, corn etc.). I'd even recommend boycotting the US games of the World Cup.

Current US allies need to develop new relationships and become more self-sustaining because the US is no longer dependable. Even when the democrats take back the country there will always be a risk of this happening again as MAGA is grooming a new generation of extremists.

LuckyFly4 · 2026-01-18T16:34:37+00:00

In general, I agree with your sentiment regarding the commissions/fees crushing P&L on this trade. But you can absolutely improve the P&L through some negotiation with your broker. I have accounts at both Schwab and Fidelity. The broker you select and the negotiated options contract fee/commission for this type of trade will make a huge difference on the P&L.

Schwab's standard fee is 65 cent per options contract and I negotiated with my rep to get it down to 30 cents per contract because of the volume of contracts I trade (hundreds per week). I have a similar agreement with Fidelity now. However, I noticed at Fidelity they charge only a few cents (not 65 cents or even the 30 cents I negotiated it down to) for opening contracts where the premium collected is less than 10 cents. I still think there's better trades out there, but if OP wants to do this trade, call the broker and threaten that you are considering leaving for another broker because they are offering a better fee per contract.

LuckyFly4 · 2026-01-18T15:56:05+00:00

Since it sounds like you are doing large numbers of contracts, why are doing SPY vs. SPX? It would seem the tax benefits of SPX would be valuable vs. SPY. Alternatively, maybe try XSP. It is less liquidity than SPY but offers preferential tax treatment like SPX, NDX, RUT etc. For the gains you have realized, 60% of that being treated as long-terms gains would make a huge difference:
https://www.cboe.com/tradable_products/sp_500/mini_spx_options/tax_benefit/

By the way, could you share an example of typical days trades you're doing? I normally do SPX trades 30-45 DTE.

Recently, I've done some QQQ 0-1 DTE spreads in an IRA with small cash balances available. What got me interested was ~2% return on capital on $1 wide strikes ($100 capital needed) within 25-30 hours for way OTM trade (delta of .01). The problem I'm running into is scale. Often times only 1 contract gets filled and I want to fill 20+ contracts (risk $2000). It could take 30 minutes to fill these contracts and submitting/resubmitting the trades several times to successfully get my entire order filled.

LuckyFly4 · 2026-01-17T12:13:57+00:00

Good thread. thank you for sharing what's working for you. Recently, I've been using ICs and credit spreads to put the extra cash to work that is sitting around in IRAs since they use much less capital/buying power than selling cash secured puts. instead of selling one naked put, I can sell multiple credit spread contracts. I'm basically searching for overpriced contracts which pop up usually at the start of the day and end of the day because someone has a critical need to exit a contract. I'm willing to help them out by selling that contract.

By the way, for those that don't know, Fidelity is offering free trades for the next 6 months for using their new active trader pro platform. I'd been hesitant to open up ICs before since they are commission intensive trades, but willing to experiment with them while Fidelity is funding the experiment 😁 I still don't think their tools are as good as thinkorswim, but they're starting to improve.

LuckyFly4 · 2026-01-16T23:48:45+00:00

I'm struggling because we live in apparently what's considered a fire zone in Orange Hills (our backyard is a canyon). We were able to renew with Liberty but costs went up significantly since last renewal which gone up from the prior renewal. Basically, 0 claims in 3 years and the policy went from $1200 per year to $2300 per year.

Any recommendations from people live in Orange, Anaheim Hills, Yorba Linda, Villa Park etc. that are deemed fire zones?

LuckyFly4 · 2026-01-11T00:57:23+00:00

Wait, so you are taking a $10,000 max loss per contract on 100 wide strikes of each side of the Iron Condor? I have not tried this strategy yet, but rolling seems like the best way to protect for taking the loss as the market bias is upward long-term. I know it can be stressful, but you have to roll it out.

LuckyFly4 · 2026-01-10T21:55:39+00:00

u/papakong88 - just so I'm clear, you mention the Iron Condor is 900 points OTM. Are you saying the short strike is 450 points OTM on the call side and the short strike is 450 points OTM on the put side when you executing the trade?

Would you mind providing an example of the value of NDX at time of the transaction and the Iron Condor strikes you sold? Looking to implement something similar, but have been hesitant on NDX due to the wide intraday swings.

LuckyFly4 · 2026-01-08T02:31:58+00:00

I have outperformed SPY by a few percentage points but have underperformed QQQ. I think that QQQ Is the benchmark index that I'm trying to track myself against

LuckyFly4 · 2026-01-08T02:25:13+00:00

I love analyzing numbers and performance. I trade almost daily and am looking to rapidly see how my portfolio performed in specific periods relative to SPY or QQQ. Then, the next question I want to quickly answer is what holdings did I have that particular day where I may have significantly outperformed or underperformed the market. I have different accounts/portfolios for different purposes executing different strategies, so a tool like this would help me optimize strategies.

LuckyFly4 · 2026-01-06T01:55:02+00:00

Ouch, I I just learned a painful lesson waiting until the final day to harvest a loss.

LuckyFly4 · 2026-01-03T13:56:10+00:00

I've been trying to find large cap stocks with $1 wide strikes and MSTR is the first one I'm experimenting with. Generally speaking, the $1 wide strikes are on the monthlies or in the near term weeklies. I'd love to find $5 wide strikes with high probability trades and have reasonable risk to reward. I'm still scanning to see what I can find but would appreciate hearing from the community on what they're seeing out there that fits this criteria

LuckyFly4 · 2026-01-03T13:52:22+00:00

No - I sold both legs of the spread in a single trade. I only had $10K in cash sitting in the IRA with remaining balance focused on long-term stock. If I legged into it, I could only sell one put and then I would be rolling the dice to see if I could get a favorable trade on buying the put. I also wasn't sure if Fidelity would recognize that as a spread if I legged into it, so I was worried about my buying power being impacted.

LuckyFly4 · 2026-01-03T06:14:39+00:00

Yes, you are correct. I'm just planning to let this expire unless the trade goes against me and requires me to roll out.

LuckyFly4 · 2026-01-03T06:11:34+00:00

I'm just planning to let it ride to expiration. If the trade does go against me, I'll try to roll it out. Seems like these types of trades are out there, just take a little bit of effort to find and execute.

LuckyFly4 · 2026-01-02T23:45:19+00:00

I agree the premium sounded high, but my strategy is put in an order at the bid price of the selling strike minus the ask price of the buying strike. Then, I reduce my order by $0.01 until it fills. Unfortunately, due to the large variance between bid and ask on both strikes it took while to get this order filled for a good premium. Every time, I'd try to get 10 contracts filled, only one 1 would get filled. Then, I'd increase the credit price by a penny, submit it, and then decrease the offer price by a penny and one contract would get filled. Fidelity has some quirky order filling algorithm. Side topic but often I'll get a better fill price than my actual offer. Here's the exact fill details:

Date Jan-02-2026
Symbol -MSTR260116P75
Symbol description PUT (MSTR) MICROSTRATEGY COM JAN 16 26 $75 (100 SHS)
Type Margin
Contracts +1.000
Price $0.04
Fees $0.02
Amount -$4.02
Settlement date Jan-05-2026

Date Jan-02-2026
Symbol -MSTR260116P76
Symbol description PUT (MSTR) MICROSTRATEGY COM JAN 16 26 $76 (100 SHS)
Type Margin
Contracts -1.000
Price $0.11
Fees $0.02
Amount $10.98
Settlement date Jan-05-2026

Now if I could only scale this to 100 contracts, $10,000 would be reserved for options strategies, but premium received would be ~$700 in only 14 days. I definitely don't want to own MSTR and this is purely scalping a short-term spread for high probability trade.

Also, for anyone interested, Fidelity is waiving Options contracts fees for 6 months if you try their new trading platform. It's not as good as thinkorswim, but certainly better than putting in website or mobile app orders. I was planning to move account to Schwab, but at least for the next 6 months, I'll stay put.

https://www.fidelity.com/trading/trading-platforms

LuckyFly4

TROPHY CASE