Four Wins, $425.92, and a Warning Not to Get Cocky

Week of Aug 31–Sep 6, 2026

Four same-day SPX credit spreads this week, four wins, all four expiring worthless in the account’s favor for a real $425.92. No drama, no stop-outs, no reopens. The /ESZ6 strangle opened the week before sat untouched the entire week, still running. A JEPQ share purchase and real JEPI/JEPQ dividends landed too, separate from the trading number and not counted in it. The account owner’s own read on the week, given directly and worth taking at face value: a solid week, a real sense that experience and a working playbook are starting to show up in the results, and an explicit refusal to let that turn into overconfidence.

The four trades

Every position this week was a same-day SPX credit spread, opened in the afternoon and left to expire rather than actively managed, and every one of them held:

Date	Trade	Result
Tue Sep 1	SPX 7690/7710 call credit spread, 1 lot, 0.60 credit	Expired worthless. +$56.56
Wed Sep 2	SPX 7705/7725 call credit spread, 2 lots, 0.75 credit	Expired worthless. +$143.12
Thu Sep 3	SPX 7630/7650 put credit spread, 2 lots, 0.60 credit	Expired worthless. +$113.12
Fri Sep 4	SPX 7660/7680 put credit spread, 2 lots, 0.60 credit	Expired worthless. +$113.12

Friday’s fill took the most work of the four: four separate orders at the 7670/7650 strikes went unfilled between 5:19 and 5:30 PM before the position finally went on at 7680/7660 for the same 0.60 credit, a small, real example of adjusting to what the market would actually give rather than forcing the original strikes. Every other day filled cleanly, most on the first or second attempt.

Why the strikes held up

Tuesday opened on a weak note, the S&P and Nasdaq both down on a softer ISM Manufacturing print, which is exactly the kind of session a call credit spread wants: the index moving away from the short 7690 call, not toward it. Wednesday and Thursday reversed into a rally as rate-hike fears eased and the ISM services number beat expectations, and the account sold into that strength too, on Wednesday’s call spread specifically, with the short 7705 strike never actually threatened as the index climbed toward it but stayed under. By Thursday the trade had flipped to the other side entirely, a put credit spread sold with the market already running higher, the safer direction to sell puts from. Friday closed out a stronger-than-expected August jobs report, 162,000 jobs added against a 55,000 estimate, which pushed rate-hike odds up and knocked the S&P down to 7,718.60 on the day. That drop was real, but it landed nowhere close to the 7680 short put strike sold that afternoon, comfortable room that a smaller cushion might not have survived.

What else happened: JEPQ and the dividends

A small addition landed outside the options side: 5 shares of JEPQ, bought Sunday evening for $300.28, adding to the same income-generating floor this account already keeps in JEPI and JEPQ. Real dividends from both funds also posted this week, a combined few dollars, kept separate from the trading total above the same way this journal always keeps dividend income out of the win/loss numbers. Neither is a trade, and neither is counted as one.

The real note to end on

Here is the account owner’s own accounting of the week, given directly and used here without softening it into something blander, because it is the actual point of this entry:

A solid week of trading. I can really see how my past experience has helped me get to this point, and working based on my playbook really gets results. But on the other hand, I don’t want to get cocky, I can lose everything in a day.

That’s not a new realization invented for this entry. It’s the same self-awareness that showed up after the revenge-trading admission in July and the “plan for both outcomes” reflection after Friday’s Fed- speech reversal in late August: real skill showing up in a real result doesn’t retire the risk that made the result possible in the first place. Four wins in a row is a genuinely good week. It is not, in the account owner’s own words, a reason to stop planning for the day it doesn’t work out that way.

Takeaway

$425.92, four for four, no stop-outs, no reopens, and a playbook that’s visibly getting more consistent to run. The number is real and worth stating plainly. So is the caution that closes it: a good week built on real experience is still one bad day from giving a lot of it back, and saying that out loud after a win, not just after a loss, is exactly the kind of discipline this journal keeps coming back to.

Frequently asked questions

How did this account do the week of September 1, 2026?

Up $425.92 in realized trading across four same-day SPX 0DTE credit spreads, Tuesday through Friday (Sep 1-4), every one of them expiring worthless in the account's favor. No /ES activity: the 2-lot /ESZ6 strangle opened August 27 sat untouched all week.

Why did this week avoid the whipsaws some other weeks have had?

Direction lined up with the market both times it mattered. Tuesday and Wednesday's call credit spreads were sold while the index stayed below both short strikes, including through a Wednesday-Thursday rally that never reached them. Thursday and Friday's put credit spreads were sold with the short strikes well below where the index actually traded, including Friday's post-jobs-report dip, which stayed comfortably above the 7680 short put.

Does a good week change anything about how this account trades going forward?

No, and that's the actual point of ending this entry on a caution rather than a victory lap. The same self-awareness that showed up after the revenge-trading admission in July and the "plan for both outcomes" reflection after the Aug 28 Fed-speech reversal is present here too: a good week from a real playbook is still one bad day away from giving a lot of it back, and the account owner said so directly rather than waiting for a loss to make the point.