IWM
iShares Russell 2000 ETF
stock NYSE ETF

everything can go green as long as i am concerned as long as IWM drills and I don't even have any puts open

No. My suggestion is what any options seller will tell you: make positions up to 5% of your account size. For a 100k portfolio that means you shouldn’t risk more than 5k, that is not the buying power reduction to open a trade, that’s the amount of capital it will require if that position is ATM or slightly ITM. Imagine selling a 550 SPY put for 18th of September, maybe it needs like 12k of buying power to open, so you decide to sell 20 of those. If SPY drops from 750 to 700, IV will rise, margin will recalculate (since the secondary greek vomma accelerated vega for far OTM options) and suddenly you don’t need 12k you need 20k per lot meaning a margin requirement of 400k. Going from 240k to 400k is what you are risking here. Note that SPY is 150 points away from your strike, you are super safe, most probably it will expire worthless, but since you got 20 of these suckers the margin expansion will blow you up. So don’t concentrate into one strategy, one expiration and one holding. You can sell strangles on TLT, GLD, USO, IWM, SPY, DIA. 6 strangles, somewhat uncorrelated assets and probably with different DTEs. That keeps you safe.

IWM getting cooked. Easy puts.

IWM is legit retarded

QQQ trades until 4:15 EST
Please note the following options will trade from 9:30 a.m. ET to 4:15 p.m. ET: DBA, DBB, DBC, DBO, DIA, EEM, EFA, EWY, EWZ, FXI, GLD, HYG, IBIT, IEF, IVV, IWM, IWN, IWO, IYR, KBE, KRE, KWEB, LQD, MDY, MOO, NDX, NDXP, OEF, QQQ, RSP, SLV, SMH, SOXL, SOXX, SPY, SVIX, SVXY, TIP, TLT, UNG, UUP, UVIX, UVXY, VIXM, VIXY, VOO, VXX, VXZ, XHB, XLB, XLC, XLE, XLF, XLI, XLK, XLP, XLRE, XLU, XLV, XLY, XME, XND, XOP, and XRT
Source: https://www.nasdaqtrader.com/Trader.aspx?id=optionshours

500 vs total market is an argument that hasn't resolved itself, and probably never will. [Historically, 500 outperforms total market, but only by a little bit, and everyone's got their argument as to which one will win in the future.](https://totalrealreturns.com/n/FXAIX,FSKAX)
There are also "extended market" funds which are basically total market minus the 500 (FSMAX) and the debate between holding total market vs holding, say, 75% 500 and 25% extended market is a hot one. Historically, fund managers would hold "large cap" (500) "medium cap" (the next 400 per S&P) and "small cap" (the next 600 per S&P) in specific ratios. "Extended market" was a simplification of that because mid-cap and small-cap behave pretty similarly. (There's also the Russell 1000/2000 split, where Russell divides the top 3000 companies differently, and Russell 2000 kind of took over as the small-cap go-to, which left an awkward 100-company hole in between the S&P 400 and the Russell 2000. "Extended market" solves that too.)
Ultimately, the thing to realize here is the people arguing over these things are arguing over the last percentage point of optimization and neither side is going to be able to conclusively prove themselves right. When IWM (the go-to Russell 2000 ETF for traders) outperforms SPY (the go-to S&P 500 ETF for traders), total market looks better than S&P500, and being overweight extended market (relative to the amount in total market) looks better than total market. When SPY is winning, total market looks worse and being overweight extended market looks worse than that. Note that you should not buy and hold IWM or SPY as they have higher expense ratios and aren't really meant to be held long term by investors. The Fidelity, Vanguard, etc. funds with low expense ratios are better choices for the same basket of stocks.

Are you still using your 5min ORB entry along with what you mentioned?
I day trade options on ETFs and do SPY also but later in the day. Only moved to IWM 0dte this year and trading open and posting the trades daily on this subreddit when I can.

What's the expiration?
I have IWM puts expiring Friday at close and rolling the dice.
That article about a proposed ceasefire from this morning was fake af

The IWM pisses me off so much… can buy puts on anything you want but apparently the IWM never falls

IWM is 13c away from my puts being ITM and somehow I am negative

ANNNNNDDDDD this is why I quit buying weekly IWM, and SPY options. Would've been extremely wrong in today's price action.

IWM for one which is small caps destroyed qqq at that time. Size and value factors in general did that. The market is cyclical. I recommend you look into factors like this. Quality Value size and momentum. Theres a method to the madness. Tech ETFs are thematic I view vgt the same light as dram

Just opened a jade lizard on QQQ.
Gonna STO a $280 IWM put if it drops a bit more.

Recently graduated from a Reg-T to a PM account. What are some differences, warning, and other advice y’all have when it comes to selling options under this new system? Is it pretty much the same (more leverage but need to watch for Cap Req)?
Some details:
\\\\- typically I do OTM CSPs on the index (SPY or QQQ, occasionally IWM). Not opposed to moving into other tickers/individual stocks, but not preferable. May get into selling OTM calls too,but haven’t researched/experimented enough yet to pull the trigger.
\\\\- Recently got into long dated straddle(or strip/strap if bearish/bullish bias) as a backbone, with shorter dated puts and calls being sold. Would adjust the backbone as the market moves, as well as the sold legs depending on market vol & direction. From what I understand, this reduces the Cap Req for PM? I think there’s a YT vid out there describing it. Did it small scale on IWM and worked out well under Reg-T
\\\\- Considering also selling strangles (which I suppose is like doing a OTM put and OTM call at the same time 🤷🏻‍♂️).
Any other strats, critiques, or other advice for this new environment is welcome. Thanks 🙏

On the durability question: this reads more like a structural feature for IWM specifically, less so for SPY.
If IWM was negative gamma every single day for three weeks while the Russell was basically flat, dealers never got a realized move that would force them to buy back that short gamma. So the reading isn’t waiting on a catalyst to resolve, it’s just the ambient state until put demand in that wrapper actually changes. That’s a different animal from a one-print artifact.
SPY is more likely to be the one-print case you’re worried about. Right after monthly OpEx, a chunk of positive gamma from the expiring contracts rolls off before the next cycle’s positioning gets rebuilt, so the print right after tends to look more negative than the underlying trend really is. I’d want to see it hold for a week or so past the 17th before trusting the direction, especially with the July 29 FOMC pulling fresh hedging demand into near dated strikes right now.
The split you’re seeing between the wrappers and the six names that weight them is consistent with a crowded dispersion setup: index level downside protection getting bought while the concentrated single names get call flow written against them. Those two tend to show up together, and it’s been a persistent pattern this cycle given how top heavy SPY and QQQ both are.

I run a modeled dealer-gamma surface across the big index ETFs and the largest single names every day, and Friday's close showed a split I do not see often, so I figured this crowd would find it interesting.

As of Friday July 17 (first snapshot after monthly OpEx):

Index ETFs, all negative gamma, all below their zero-gamma flip:
\- SPY: net dealer gamma about -$8.7B, spot 743.29 vs flip about 751.7
\- QQQ: about -$5.1B, spot 695.33 vs flip about 717.4
\- IWM: about -$1.6B, spot 294.04 vs flip about 305.7

The six biggest components, all positive gamma:
\- AAPL +$1.0B, META +$0.85B, MSFT +$0.65B, NVDA +$0.47B, AMZN +$0.40B, GOOGL +$0.18B

So the wrappers are set up to amplify a move (dealers short gamma, hedging is pro-cyclical) while the stocks that make up most of their weight are set up to damp one (dealers long gamma). The usual explanation: index put-hedging keeps dealers short gamma at the index level, single-name call flow keeps them long gamma in the components.

Method: I model this from the listed options chain under an assumed dealer-positioning convention, so it is an estimate, not measured positioning. I snapshot it daily and rank each name against its own recent history.

The honest caveats, because they matter here:
1. Friday was July monthly OpEx, and this is the first snapshot after it, so part of SPY's swing (it was around +$5B a week ago) is just expiring positive-gamma July positions rolling off, not a fresh surge in hedging.
2. I have only tracked this surface for about three weeks, so I cannot call any single reading a record.
3. IWM has been negative gamma every single day in that window and the Russell 2000 was basically flat on the week, so negative gamma is a condition, not a forecast. It shapes how a move gets transmitted if a catalyst hits, it does not force one, into a data-heavy stretch that ends at the July 29 Fed.

Curious whether people here read the post-OpEx negative index gamma as durable, or a one-print reset that reverts as August positioning builds.

data + full method: [https://kresmion.com/daily-brief/2026-07-20?ref=reddit](https://kresmion.com/daily-brief/2026-07-20?ref=reddit)
https://preview.redd.it/qk7t9u66pdeh1.png?width=1608&format=png&auto=webp&s=02b7fab0a2c208a6a9e68bee79209035ce54483f