Can you earn $1000 a week trading options?
My first real go at Options Trading
I’ve been an investor for years, doing dollar cost averaging S&P, putting into my 401k, and the usual high yield savings. But 2023 I decided to start trading. I tried day trading, but it cost more attention than I had available with a full-time job. Swing trading became more my speed, and I estimate I was around 15-20% gains in 2023. Nothing amazing, considering how many AI missed opportunities were there!
I only started trading options in December. I kept my volume low, but made almost $1,000 that month. With the new year, I decided to vary my positions a lot more and learned a ton in January. I was net positive, but really I’ll call it a wash in my mind. February is when I got serious. My goal, can I take my portfolio and cash reserves and get $1,000 in one week?
The tl;dr answer: yes. And some!
Ignoring my open positions, I decided to use the following stocks
SOFI 0.00%↑ as I own 5,000 shares, my 50 contracts can reach a good amount.
SQ 0.00%↑ I’m taking as an average 70% on existing call expiring the 23rd.
TEAM 0.00%↑ I think they have strong fundamentals, and the market volatility after earnings, plus low liquidity, means they can have large swings in the right direction for those that wait.
AAPL 0.00%↑ tried and true, they’ve been hovering between $180-$200 with open interest showing a wall at $190.
AMD 0.00%↑ this was not part of the plan, but the silicon craze suggested they’d bounce back from their dip, and it worked out!
One thing to appreciate in options trading is to close your position early. You may not get the full premium you wanted, but it’s better to have a certain amount of value and open a new position than hang on the one you originally made!
This turned out to earn me 2 TEAM options during the week bringing in over $350.
The random AMD I closed in one day for $150.
I’m averaging $200 from my long running SQ call options, now producing $700 for the week.
I almost felt like AAPL was going to jump $190, but it dropped back to $188 and I closed early for $92 profit. Now at $800 / week.
For SOFI I had both my covered call and 10 contract put open. The put was for the following week, and at the same $8 strike. SOFI jumped the $8 wall and I was able to close my put over a week early for over $400. There we go, $1,200 in one week!
I rolled my SOFI calls to next week instead of closing, keeping the $8 strike and will be net $1,250 ($625/week?), depending on how next week turns out. I suspect it’ll come down under $8 and I’ll close early, but that’ll go into my monthly review! Worst case, I eat a loss if rolling is unsuccessful, because 5000 shares is better to keep than the loss on my calls.
Was this smart? Was there a strategy? Yes and no.
I’m still playing intuitively here than, say, sticking to a Wheel strategy on a single stock or something. This did take more attention than I typically want, but it was still mostly just keeping an eye on alerts, news, and fiddling on my phone while working a full-time job.
I setup another week with most of my positions reset on Friday. I estimate $1,500 to even $2,000! It may not be consistent every week, but that’s what I’m trying to build: a routine I can stick to that will bring me in at least $1,000 a week. If so, this amounts to about 50% or more rate of return on invested capital.
This was just one man’s experience. Let me know what you think and what your experiences have been.