The Confessional: I Traded 0DTE Options Every Day for a Year
Reader-submitted, anonymized, lightly edited, heavily relatable. First in a series we will regret.
Editor's note: The Confessional is a recurring series of anonymized reader submissions. Composite details, real pain.
It started as a hedge. It always starts as a hedge. One SPX put on a Friday, just in case. It expired worthless and I felt nothing, which in hindsight was the first symptom.
By month three I had a routine. Coffee, premarket scan, pick a direction, size it wrong. I was up 40% for the year at one point in October. I screenshotted everything. I told a coworker I had found my edge. My edge was that the market had gone up for four consecutive months.
The January CPI print took back six weeks of gains in eleven minutes. I did what every 0DTE trader does after a loss like that: doubled the size to make it back by Friday. You know how this part goes. Everyone knows how this part goes. Knowing how this part goes changes nothing, which is the entire business model of zero-dated options.
Final accounting for the year: down 22%, would have been up 31% holding the index. My broker sent me a mug in December. I earned that mug. I am the mug.
I still trade them, but smaller, and only on Fed days. This is what recovery looks like in this hobby. Send your confessions to the desk via X. We do not judge, we publish.