2024 was a profitable options trading year for me. However, my options trading results were not as good as the previous two years. My account grew by 23.5% in 2024, as opposed to 48% in 2022 and 30% in 2023.

I trade several options strategies, but in 2024, only two of them contributed significantly to the overall results. The other strategies, in total, ended up around breakeven, some with small losses, some with small wins.

So what were the two profitable strategies?

They have both been described on this website.

0DTE Breakeven Iron Condor – my main strategy – represented 66.9% of my realized profits.

ITM Covered Call represented 29% of my realized profits.

Other strategies contributed to only 4% of my realized profits.

So let’s dig into the two most profitable strategies – and study how they performed for me in 2024.

0DTE Breakeven Iron Condor

This is my bread and butter strategy – and I have written and talked about it several times.

The strategy consists of selling Iron Condors on SPX throughout the day. The stop loss is set separately on each side equal to the total premium collected, hence the term “Breakeven”.

• Find a detailed description of how I trade 0DTE Breakeven Iron Condor in this article.

Watch my discussion about the strategy with Icelandic retail trader David Berndsen in this video:

The video was produced with Streamyard – an easy-to-use and amazing tool for live streaming and recording.

The 2024 results of 0DTE Breakeven Iron Condor

I measure the results of this strategy in two ways:

• Average net P/L per trade. This measurement is the net profit/loss of a trade as a percentage of the total risk in that trade (the width of the biggest wing minus the premium collected)
• Average Premium Capture Rate. This measurement is the net profit/loss of a trade as a percentage of how much premium I collected when the trade was opened.

The two measurements follow each other closely – and it is a matter of preference which to use. I find that both work well to compare the performance of the strategy over time.

In 2024 the average net P/L per trade was 0.17%. The average Premium Capture Rate was 3.35%.

Although profitable, this is the worst performing year I have had with this strategy since I started trading it in April 2021. In fact, the results have weakened year by year. Does it worry me? Not as long as the strategy continues to make money. All options trading strategies will have their ups and downs.

This graphs shows the average P/L per month since I started trading the strategy.

You will notice I have had five losing months in total. Two of them were in 2024.

Here is the same graph using Premiu Capture Rate as measurement:

How the results vary by opening hour and weekday

I place my trades throughout the day – and trade almost all days. The exceptions are usually coincidental, for instance that I have a personal program that makes it hard to trade.

This graph shows how the strategy has performed depending on the opening hours of the trades since May 2021. As you see, most of my profits have come during the last hours of trading. The noon hour EST is the only opening hour with consistent losses.

So how did the results in 2024 compare to the long-term average? Here is the graph:

As we see, it has primarily been the first 2 1/2 hours of trading as well as the last hour before the market closes that have been less profitable. I still lost money with trades opened during the lunch hour, but less than the long-term average.

What then about the weekdays? Are some some weekdays more profitable than others?

For weekdays I only have data from 2022. Here is the graph for the full period:

We see that Mondays and Fridays are the most profitable weekdays, while Thursdays on average are breakeven days.

Did this change in 2024? Yes, the picture was a bit different. Here is the graph:

In 2024 I lost money on this strategy both on Wednesdays and Thursdays. Mondays and Fridays were still the most profitable.

So how can I use these data about opening hours and weekdays? The challenge, of course, is that the market keeps changing. What works one month, may not work the next.

But one approach I might follow is to allocate more capital on Mondays and Fridays, and less on Thursday, And correspondingly trade with smaller positions during the first hours of the day.

Summing up 0DTE Breakeven Iron Condor

I am, of course, not happy that my results are weaker than in the previous years. And 0.17% average net profit P/L per trade may seem quite low.

However, if we multiply 0.17% with 250 trading days, we have an annual return of 42.5%.

If I measure my profit of the year as a percentage of my average risked capital per day, I get a similar number: 41.7%.

I rarely use more than half of my total buying power on any single trading day. Taking this into consideration, the strategy was yielding around 20% last year, which is still pretty good, I think.

In the Money (ITM) Covered Call

Now let’s move to the second profitable strategy: ITM Covered Call.

This strategy is a pure theta play. It involves buying 100 shares of a stock and then selling an In The Money covered call against it with expiration about 14 days out. With this strategy you expect the shares to be taken away when the option expires.

I did 35 trades with this strategy in 2024. All of them were winners. I have still not realized a single loss with ITM Covered Calls.

I was inspired by Brian Terry in the Facebook group Conservative Covered Calls to start this strategy.

Watch my interview with Brian about ITM Covered Calls to learn the specifics of the strategy:

The video was produced with Streamyard – an easy-to-use and amazing tool for live streaming and recording.

You can also read a text summary of the video in this article.

The typical trade lasts only about two weeks. But because of a couple of trades that went on for months before I could turn a profit, the average trade length in 2024 was 26 days.

The average trade had a net profit 2%. The annualized return in 2024 with was 27.7% as measured against the risked capital and the length of the trades.

I am very happy with these results, especially as it is a rather conservative and not so volatile strategy.

It does come with risks, though. The biggest risk, as I see it, is if we get a major down-turn in the market. Because of this, I only allocate a smaller portion of my account to ITM Covered Calls.

Summing up the options trading results of 2024

All in all, I had hoped for better options trading results. However, growing the account 23.4% is not bad.

I am now in the process of designing my trading plan for 2025. Both 0DTE Breakeven Iron Condor and ITM Covered Call will for sure play a core role. I will also continue to experiments with new strategies, for instance the Delta Neutral Strategy.

And I will focus on developing Theta Profits – both on this website and on YouTube. I have found that producing content, such as interviews with other retail traders, is a great way to learn more and improve as an options trader.