Hey everyone -- back with the Q2 Trading Review. Here's the link to my prior post: [https://www.reddit.com/r/options/comments/1sa3zrk/q1\_2026\_trading\_review/](https://www.reddit.com/r/options/comments/1sa3zrk/q1_2026_trading_review/)
Coming out of Q1 I was cautiously optimistic that the 2-part strategy would continue to be profitable. It performed well in the wake of volatility from the Iran conflict, but with that dwindling coming out of April, I saw performance lag a bit as a few long butterfly days closed where they opened, and had a couple outsized moves on the Iron Condor days. Additionally, I set out to find a new trade that wasn't at entry that could compliment my daily entries. I thought I found this in an end of day iron condor, and it ended up being a detractor from my portfolio.
I've added two more components to my trading this quarter:
1. Creating bots for XLK and XLI to sell put credit spreads based on a historical SMA cross over. These are 5 wide, .35 - .4 put spreads. It's only a small sample so far, but it's trending well with the 7 trades I've implemented
2. Getting back on the horse for discretionary trading. Last quarter I got crushed on MSFT and GOOGL diagonals, and exited them near the bottom off the Iran War at \~-50%. As any traders' luck would have it, if I held onto those positions for another month I would have been up \~65% on those trades. Classic. I am going to look for stocks I'm interested in owning & running a covered strangle on for the lifetime of ownership. If I had more cash, I'd honestly consider selling puts on MSFT at this point, but that would take up too much of my account size
Summary of Q2:
* Starting account balance - $44,347 (mix of cash, VTI Shares, \~$120 in penny stocks, and open spreads & puts
* Ending account balance - $51,699
* Total Trades - 66
* Win Rate - 66.7%
* SPX 0DTE P&L
* Core 2 - $7,093.20
* R&D positions ($3,798.60, RIP lol)
* Non-SPX Option P&L - $725.46
* Total Options P&L - $4,020.20
* Total Fees - 128.60
* Tradier Pro - $105 ($35 per month)
* Total Commissions - $23.60
* Slippage - I didn't spend much time this quarter looking into slippage & execution. I tried a V1 of gathering data to analyze and tbh, this is something I should spend more time on, but I'm fine prioritizing other items that have a better ROI in the meantime.
Things that went well that were not a surprise:
* The performance of the core 2-part trades. The backtests & forward tests have been robust enough and I believe that I'm still capturing the change in overnight risk premia. It may not be as pronounced as it was in Q1, but it's something I still plan to trade as the core of my portfolio.
Things that went well that were a surprise:
* Though it's a small sample, I am happy that the XLK & XLI bots are off to a successful start. I looked at the strategy through my own set of backtesting with Cursor & Massive, so went it to it thinking it was just hope, cope and dreams. We're still in the early stages though so more to come.
Things that didn't go well that weren't a surprise:
* I continue to exit trades early (19 of 66). Given some of the iron condors are still \~10% of account size, I have a bit of emotion tied to not having a 10% drawdown in a single day. Naturally, I would have been up \~$1,900 more if all 0 DTE trades were held until expiration. On the days the entry Iron Condors & EOD Condors were traded, max loss risk was \~20%, so was not a fan of trading those two together.
Things that didn't go well that were a surprise:
* Implementing the new 0 DTE SPX Strategy. I fell into a common trap of building a backtest and 'looking for low-correlated trades' that had positive expected value and would help smooth the equity curve. On paper I found one, but in reality, it was something where my entry filter was just noisy curve fitting and it ultimately didn't pan out well. I cut the strategy early and it's continued to perform poorly this quarter in the backtest.
Goals for Q3
* Open a second account for a new 0DTE bot. It's with a different provider than my current one, and it doesn't have the ability to see existing legs for entering/exiting positions. Going to look to fund it with \~10 - 15k and see how it performs. It's similar to Dale Perryman's Iron Butterfly strategy
* Continue trading the Core 2-Part system
* Evaluate 3 - 20 DTE SPX positions, including calendars or long vol
* Idk put in werk, make money
I'm happy to discuss or answer any questions.
Matplotlib pics below: