Stop Donating · Options

Stop donating
to the options desk.

0DTE contracts are the most exciting product a broker sells you. Excitement and expected value are not the same number.

Before you read another word

I'm not going to promise you returns. I'm not posting P&L screenshots. I have no idea whether you'll ever trade profitably — and anyone who claims they do is guessing at best.

What I can do is show you exactly where the account goes. Then you decide what to do about it.

The numbers

~22Straight losses to −20% at 1% riskSurvivable. This is the point of sizing.
~4Straight losses to −20% at 5% riskOne bad week ends the account.
2:1Minimum reward-to-risk worth takingBelow this, you need a very high hit rate.
3 tapsFrom idle to position on most appsVersus five or more to see annual P/L.

The size is the trade

Most people lose on options not because the direction was wrong but because the position was too large for the volatility they signed up for. A 0DTE contract can lose most of its value in an afternoon on a move that would be a rounding error in the underlying.

The interface does not help. Every modern brokerage app is engineered for order flow — three taps to open a position, considerably more to see what your year actually looks like. That asymmetry is a product decision, not an accident.

The fix is unglamorous: decide size and stop away from the screen, before you open the app, and treat the app as an execution tool rather than a decision tool. An interface can only influence decisions you are still making while looking at it.

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Read the full breakdown

Article0DTE options: the honest mathArticlePosition sizing, worked outArticleWhat your brokerage app is optimizing forFree toolCompounding and risk calculators