Trade #1: A 2-Lot /ES Strangle, Held Through the Start of a War

This cycle closed for a $233.04 profit, and it is the first entry in the record. Everything this journal became traces back to the shape of this one order: two contracts, strikes very far apart, seven and a half weeks of runway, and then patience.

The trade

Sold Wednesday, February 18, 2026: 2 contracts of the /ESM6 April 10 short strangle, short the 4500 put, short the 7800 call, 4.15 credit. With the index in the mid-6,000s, both strikes sat enormous distances away. The position needed the S&P to do anything except leave a several-thousand-point range in seven weeks.

The record doesn’t preserve why /ES futures options were the starting instrument or why these strikes; that reasoning gap is flagged in the week-one summary too. What the record does show is that this wasn’t a one-off: the same structure repeats for months afterward, so whatever the plan was, this was it.

What happened while it was on

Nine days after entry, a war started. February 28, 2026: the Middle East conflict broke out, oil began one of the largest runs in market history, and equities strung together four straight losing weeks. The full stretch is covered in the merged quiet-weeks entry, and the summary of what this position did about all of it is: nothing. No adjustment, no defensive order, not one ticket between entry and exit. The index sold off, and never came remotely near 4500.

The close

Wednesday, March 18: bought back at 1.65 against the 4.15 collected, keeping $233.04 after commissions and fees. The same day, a new strangle went on at nearly double the credit, which is the next chapter of the record.

What it taught

Trade #1 set the template and the temperament: sell wide, size small, let resting orders and time do the work, and don’t confuse a scary tape with a threatened position. The account would go on to break several of its own unwritten rules later, and those entries are in this journal too. This one it kept.