38 Straight Winners, Then a $784.44 Loss: The Week Finished Down $147.64

Week of Sep 28–Oct 4, 2026

From August 11 through September 29, this record had no losing day. This week had one. Seventeen 1-lot SPX spreads went on across five trading days, fifteen of them winners, and the week still finished down $147.64, because two put spreads opened on Wednesday, September 30 were assigned at expiration. What did it was a move in the last 30 minutes of the session, the last of the third quarter, that I had never seen before and was too optimistic about. One of them lost $784.44, the largest single realized loss this account has taken, and it ended a streak of 38 winning trades in a row.

The five trading days

Date	Trades	Result
Mon Sep 28	Put 7635/7655 (0.75), put 7605/7625 (0.95), call 7720/7740 (0.60), then the same call spread again 18 minutes later (0.50)	All expired worthless. +$266.24
Tue Sep 29	Put 7610/7630 (0.55), call 7730/7750 (0.60), opened one minute apart	Both expired worthless. +$108.12
Wed Sep 30	Put 7635/7655 (0.80), call 7745/7765 (0.80), put 7640/7660 (0.70), call 7750/7770 (0.70)	Calls expired worthless, +$76.56 and +$66.56. Puts cash-settled assigned, -$274.44 and -$784.44. -$915.76
Thu Oct 1	Put 7540/7560 (0.85), put 7535/7555 (0.65)	Short legs bought back at 0.10 around 1:26 PM ET. +$70.84 and +$50.84. +$121.68
Fri Oct 2	Put 7660/7680 (0.65), put 7670/7690 (0.60), put 7630/7650 (0.70), call 7765/7785 (0.60), call 7760/7780 (0.45)	Four expired worthless. The 7630/7650 put’s short leg was bought back at 0.10 around 2:59 PM ET. +$272.08

Every spread was a single contract. Credits are in points, so 0.75 is $75 before fees. All figures are net of commissions and fees.

Wednesday: two put spreads, one expiration

Two put credit spreads went on Wednesday morning. The first, 7635/7655 for a 0.80 credit, opened at 10:34 AM ET. The second, 7640/7660 for a 0.70 credit, opened at 11:26 AM ET, 52 minutes later, with its short strike five points higher than the first. Both were 20 points wide. At expiration SPX settled near 7,651.5, which the cash-settlement amounts imply: the 7655 short put finished 3.46 points in the money and the 7660 short put finished 8.46 points in the money. The long puts at 7635 and 7640 expired worthless, so each spread lost its settlement value less the credit it had collected.

Put spread	Credit	Settlement cost	Net of credit	After fees
7635/7655	$80	$346	-$266.00	-$274.44
7640/7660	$70	$846	-$776.00	-$784.44

There was no stop order on either put spread, and the transaction log shows no buy-to-close fill on them that day. Both were held to the end and settled in cash. The two call spreads opened the same day, 7745/7765 and 7750/7770, expired worthless and returned $143.12 combined, which is why the day is -$915.76 and not worse.

The last 30 minutes

Here is what the numbers above can’t show. Wednesday was the last trading day of the third quarter, and in the final 30 minutes of the session the market moved in a way I had never seen before. I put it down to the end of the quarter. It was the first time I had been caught in that kind of move, and I was too optimistic going into it. It turned into my biggest loss on record.

It took me a day to get over it. Then I got myself together and went back to work. Thursday and Friday returned $393.76 of the $915.76 lost on Wednesday: not all of it, a little under half, with the week finishing down $147.64. The broker’s log shows where SPX ended up, settling near 7,651.5. It does not show the move itself, and this recap does not put numbers on it.

What size did here

Each put spread was 20 points wide, so one contract could lose at most $1,920 and $1,930. With both open at once, the combined worst case on the puts alone was $3,850. The realized loss on them was $1,042 before fees, about 27% of that ceiling. That is a defined-risk structure working as designed: the loss was bounded, and it was a fraction of the maximum. It also shows how a day of 1-lots adds up. Four spreads were open that afternoon, two of them on the same side, and the two puts lost on the same move. Position Sizing in a Small Options Account covers why the maximum loss, not the credit, is the number to size against.

Last week’s recap said eight winners in a row did not change the math and that the math had not been tested that week. This week tested it on one day, and the structure held.

Thursday and Friday: three early buybacks

Three of the week’s seventeen spreads were closed before expiration, all of them after Wednesday. On Thursday, October 1, resting buyback orders at 0.05 on both put spreads’ short legs were canceled and replaced at 0.10, and both filled within a minute of each other. On Friday, October 2, the 7630/7650 put’s short leg was bought back at 0.10 in the afternoon. In each case the long leg expired worthless. From August 24 through September 25, 25 of 26 SPX spreads in this record simply expired. The log shows when the buybacks happened, not why they did, and that is as far as this recap goes.

Where the record stands

At this writing, after the corrections below, the record is 83 winners and 12 losers across 95 closed trades, $5,296.25 realized. The win rate is 87.4%. Realized figures only: the open 3-lot /ESZ6 strangle from September 17 was not touched this week and sits at about +$526 on paper per the year-to-date summary. It is not counted here.

The 38-trade streak is the longest in the record by a wide margin. The earlier piece on the 14-trade streak argued that a long streak at this win rate is closer to expected than rare. The same math says a loss was always going to arrive. What a streak cannot tell you is its size, and this one was the largest so far.

A correction to the record

Reconciling this week turned up one missing trade. The Friday, September 18 SPX put spread (7555/7575, 0.60 credit, expired worthless, +$56.56) was described in the week-of-September-14 recap and counted in that week’s $794.04 total, but it had never been added to the trade log that feeds the site’s record. Every record figure published since was one trade and $56.56 short. It is fixed now, and the SPX total in the log ties to the cent with the broker’s year-to-date summary.

Takeaway

-$147.64 is a small number, and it hides what the week actually was: four green days, one very red one, and the first real test of what a bad day costs when four spreads are open at once. The loss was bigger than anything before it and still a fraction of what the structure allowed. It also came from a late-session move I had never seen and was too optimistic about, which is a different lesson from the size of the loss. Both facts belong in the record, written down before the next week starts.

Frequently asked questions

How did this account do the week of September 28, 2026?

Down $147.64 in realized trading, after commissions and fees. Seventeen 1-lot same-day SPX credit spreads ran across five trading days: fifteen winners and two losers. Monday, Tuesday, Thursday and Friday were all green, for $768.12 combined. Wednesday, September 30 was -$915.76 because two put spreads finished in the money at expiration.

What happened on Wednesday, September 30?

Two put credit spreads were cash-settled assigned at expiration. SPX settled near 7,651.5, which put the 7655 short put 3.46 points in the money and the 7660 short put 8.46 points in the money. The two spreads lost $274.44 and $784.44 after fees. The two call spreads opened the same day expired worthless for +$76.56 and +$66.56. There was no stop order on either put spread and no closing order filled; both were held to expiration. The trader's account is that the damage came from an unexpected move in the last 30 minutes of the session, the final one of the third quarter, which they had not seen before and were too optimistic about.

Did the win streak end?

Yes. Through Tuesday, September 29, this account had won 38 closed trades in a row, every closed trade since two put spreads lost on August 10. The streak ended on September 30. The $784.44 loss that day is the largest single realized loss in the record, ahead of the $393.44 /ES loss on August 4, and the -$915.76 day is the largest losing day, ahead of -$399.76 on August 10.

Did anything about how the spreads were managed change after Wednesday?

Three of the last seven spreads were closed early, all after Wednesday: both put spreads on Thursday, October 1 and one put spread on Friday, October 2 had their short legs bought back at 0.10 before expiration. From August 24 through September 25, 25 of 26 SPX spreads in this record simply expired. The data shows the timing; it does not say why, and this recap does not guess.