This cycle closed for a $458.04 profit, the largest single win of the record’s first five months, and nobody was awake when it happened.
Result
+$458.04
2 contracts, held 21 days, Mar 18 to Apr 8, 2026
Entry credit
7.90 pts
Nearly double trade #1's 4.15, for the same shape
Exit debit
3.15 pts
Filled by a resting GTC order at 4:16 AM
The trade
Sold March 18, 2026, minutes after trade #1 was closed: 2 contracts of the /ESM6 May 8 strangle, short the 4500 put and the 7600 call, for a 7.90 credit. Same put strike as the first trade, call pulled in 200 points, and a credit almost twice as large. Nothing about the account’s approach had changed; the price of the approach had. Three weeks into a war, with oil supply through Hormuz in the headlines daily, the market was paying roughly double for someone to underwrite a range.
What happened while it was on
The market bottomed. The entry landed in the last stretch of the selloff, the S&P logged its final losing week around March 20, and then the recovery run began. For a strangle short both tails, a market climbing steadily out of a hole is close to ideal: the put side deflates because price is rising, the call side deflates because panic is leaving the options. The position was never touched, per the pattern. The two quiet weeks in the middle are covered in the Mar 23 to Apr 5 entry.
The close
A good-til-canceled buyback rested at 3.15, and the overnight session filled it at 4:16 AM on Wednesday, April 8. Sold 7.90, bought 3.15, kept $458.04 after fees. The same-day journal entry covers the replacement trade opened hours later, at an even richer credit, which did not end as well.
What it taught
The win itself was the same patience as trade #1. The information was in the entry price: volatility is a wage, and it doubles exactly when the job gets more dangerous. The record’s next entry is what the danger part looks like when it stops being theoretical.