3 Option trading resolutions for 2025: Shubham Agarwal!

2025 has started with a sea of change. New regulations, new stocks to trade, new challenges (with no weekly expiries on many indices) are some of the new things we need to adjust with in 2025. Every new year we all have some planned set of actions in terms of resolutions that we define for ourselves.

I will share what I feel are the 3 best resolutions that you must have for yourselves especially in terms of Options trading. This is for both surviving as well as succeeding.

Resolution #1: Spread your Trades across Options

I have written multiple times, why spreads are more effective. However, this resolution has few other utilities also. The new regulations have made it difficult to justify the returns on our investments with same profits. This is because the margins have gone up.

To counter that, every option that is sold one would need to buy a cheaper option. So, if we have sold a Call/Put we will buy a higher strike Call/ lower strike Put option along side it. This serves 2 purposes.

1. Reduces Margin of the Sell Option trade by big amount.
2. Takes care of extreme loss scenario because the maximum loss will never be more than difference between bought and sold strikes.

Resolution #2: Must Have Direction in all Trades:

Every trade is either directional or non-directional. The trade that involves both Call and Put in equal quantity and same action (buy or sell) are non-directional trades. Many of us have made a lot of money by selling both Call and Put options. It could have been intraday selling of closer strikes or positional selling of higher strike calls and lower strike Puts.

With reduction in indices that trades weekly expiries, it will be difficult to target this easy money. It was the fast-reducing value of premium in final few days that used to make us easy money.

However, now with just couple of indices with weekly expiries and rise in the margin, it will be difficult to get the same easy money.

To fight with this challenge, we all must figure out a way. We should add a hint of direction to each trade. Small example of the same can be a spread that we discussed in resolution #1. Here, we not only make money from time value related reduction in premium but also from the directional move in our favour.

Suppose we sold a Call and bought a higher strike Call via a spread. If the stock falls after that we will make money instantly rather than waiting for time to work its magic.

Resolution #3: Turn 0DTE to 1DTE

Rise in margin for the last day of expiry, rising volatility on the last day, physical settlement of stocks on the day of expiry are the few reasons. These reasons require us stop trading on 0DTE or last of expiry.

If we still want to make similar trades, I have started modifying my trades and you should too for 1DTE. This means target to trade Wednesdays instead of Thursdays (Final day of NSE expiries).