QQQ Weekly Short Strangle by DTE

A once-a-week premium trade on QQQ, timed by days to expiry (DTE) rather than by weekday. When the Friday weekly expiry is 4 or 3 calendar days away (normally Monday, or Tuesday after a Monday holiday), between 10:45 and 11:00 on Tradetron's US clock and only while flat, it sells the QQQ call nearest 0.16 delta and the put nearest -0.16 delta on that weekly expiry. It takes profit when the pair can be bought back for 50% of the credit, stops out when the pair costs 2x the credit (a loss about equal to the credit), and otherwise closes at 15:30 one day before expiry, so it never holds into expiry day or assignment. Undefined risk (naked short options): capital is the Reg-T margin on a naked QQQ strangle: 20% of QQQ's price less the out-of-the-money amount on the larger side, plus both premiums, about $14,500 per multiplier with QQQ near 760 (some brokers apply 15% to broad-based ETF options, which needs less). Times are US Eastern; the backtest uses Eastern wall-clock time all year. Tradetron's live US clock (Time XCBO) is a fixed UTC-4, so from November to March a live deployment acts one hour earlier in Eastern time.

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