A Two-Month Position Closed for Good, and a Deliberate Stretch to Three Lots

Week of Sep 14–Sep 20, 2026

Three of the four trading days this week looked like most other weeks on this record: a same-day SPX credit spread, sold mid-morning, expired worthless by the close. The fourth trading day is the one worth reading this entry for. Thursday carried no SPX cycle at all. Instead, a position that had been open since late August closed for good, and about an hour later this account opened its first 3-contract /ES position ever, a real size increase, reasoned through and accepted with its tradeoff named before the order went in rather than learned the hard way afterward.

The four trading days

Date	Trade	Result
Mon Sep 14	SPX 7635/7655 call credit spread, 2 lots, 0.70 credit, opened 10:27am ET	Expired worthless. +$133.12
Tue Sep 15	SPX 7510/7530 put credit spread, 2 lots, 0.45 credit, opened 11:06am ET	Expired worthless. +$83.12
Wed Sep 16	SPX 7690/7710 call credit spread, 2 lots, 0.75 credit, opened 10:51am ET, hours ahead of the Fed’s 2:00pm ET decision	Expired worthless. +$143.12
Thu Sep 17	No SPX cycle. /ESZ6 Oct 12 strangle (opened Aug 27) closed; new /ESZ6 Nov 6 strangle opened	+$378.12 realized; new position still open
Fri Sep 18	SPX 7555/7575 put credit spread, 1 lot, 0.60 credit, opened 10:11am ET	Expired worthless. +$56.56

Wednesday’s spread is worth a second look given what came after it. The Federal Reserve raised its target rate a quarter point to 3.75-4.00 percent that afternoon, a unanimous 12-0 vote, and Chair Kevin Warsh’s press conference read as more hawkish than the market wanted, part of why the Dow fell over 600 points that day while the S&P 500 and Nasdaq held closer to flat. None of that mattered to this specific position by the time it happened: the call credit spread had already been resting since mid-morning, short the 7690 strike against an index that closed the day at 7,551.81, comfortably below it either way. The trade wasn’t a bet on the Fed; it just happened to share a calendar date with one, and it expired the same way it would have on an ordinary Wednesday.

The /ESZ6 position that finally closed

The 2-lot /ESZ6 strangle opened August 27, short the 6200 put and the 8600 call for a 6.60 combined credit, ran for three full weeks without a single adjustment. Thursday, September 17, it closed in one shot: bought back for a 2.65 combined debit, a real +$378.12 across the position’s entire life, no partial exits or rolls involved this time, just one credit in and one debit out. It is the cleanest full lifecycle on this record for a multi-week /ES position, and it had never been written up before now.

A real, reasoned stretch to three contracts

About an hour after that close, at 10:11am ET, a new /ESZ6 strangle went on, short the 5700 put and the 8600 call for the Nov 6 expiry, 6.50 combined credit, 962.34 net after fees. The size is the actual news here: three contracts, the first time this account has ever run that many /ES contracts at once.

This isn’t the same story as the account’s only other size-up mistake, a 4-lot strangle back in May that was cut for a loss about 20 hours after a reach for size with no real plan behind it. This time the reasoning came first, in the trader’s own words: “It was still a bit of a stretch, and would prevent me from running 0DTE for the next couple of days if I want to keep a good BP range, but I wanted to give it a try.” That’s a real tradeoff, named before the trade went on, not discovered afterward: less same-day SPX capacity for a few days, accepted on purpose, in exchange for a larger position at a point where the account itself had grown enough to make the attempt reasonable. The account was, in the trader’s own words, at or kind of reaching the $25,000 mark around this stretch; no exact snapshot balance from that specific day is on hand to pin the figure more precisely than that, so this entry uses the trader’s own hedged framing rather than a number this site can’t independently confirm.

The account’s general position-sizing framework still applies here: the discipline isn’t a fixed lot count that never moves, it’s sizing that gets reasoned through relative to the account’s actual current size, with the tradeoff stated up front. Three lots on a roughly $25,000 account is a different equation than three lots was back in May on a smaller one, and the honest test of whether this was a good decision isn’t whether it worked immediately; it’s whether the reasoning behind it holds up, which is exactly why it’s written down here rather than somewhere it can be quietly forgotten.

Takeaway

$794.04 for the week, four clean SPX cycles doing what they normally do, and one real event underneath all of it: a two-month-old position finally closed clean, and this account deliberately got bigger for the first time with its own reasoning on the record before the outcome was known. That’s the actual point of writing this one up, not the dollar total.

Frequently asked questions

How did this account do the week of September 14, 2026?

Up $794.04 in realized trading. Four SPX 0DTE credit spreads ran Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, and Friday, all expiring worthless. Thursday carried no SPX cycle at all; instead, the 2-lot /ESZ6 strangle opened back on August 27 closed for a real +$378.12, and about an hour later a new, larger 3-lot /ESZ6 strangle went on, the account's first-ever 3-contract futures position.

What happened to the /ESZ6 strangle from August?

It closed in full on Thursday, September 17, one continuous position with no partial closes this time: 6.60 combined credit collected on August 27, bought back for a 2.65 combined debit almost three weeks later, netting a real +$378.12 across its whole life.

Why did the account size up to three /ES contracts?

Because the account itself had grown enough to make the attempt reasonable, not because of a hot streak or a strong opinion on the market. The trader's own framing going in was that it was still a bit of a stretch, and would reduce available buying power for same-day SPX trades over the following few days, a real, named tradeoff accepted up front rather than discovered afterward.

Was Wednesday's trade affected by the Fed's rate decision?

The position was opened hours before the announcement and wasn't managed around it. A same-day SPX call credit spread went on at 10:51am ET; the Fed's 2:00pm ET statement and the press conference that followed came well after the trade was already resting. The spread expired worthless that evening regardless of what the market did in between.