Eleven strategies that sell fear on schedule —
and never hold it overnight.

A research program on S&P 500 index options that expire the same day: eight defined-risk decay structures and three event-driven premium sales, spanning the session from the opening range to the final 48 minutes. Every position opens and closes within one day, so the book is flat every night by construction — and every one of the 28 backtested months, including the 2026 correction, closed profitable. All figures are net of itemized costs, on exchange minute data, replicated on three markets.

Core program — defined-risk structures

The engine of the book: eight daily appointments — 09:35, 11:00, 11:30, noon and 14:00 at the money; 10:30, 13:00 and 15:00 at the volume wall — each selling a straddle wrapped in protective wings. Maximum loss fixed at entry, ~$21k margin per trade, the smoothest curves in the program. Each name links to its full page: logic, own equity curve, every trade.

Satellite strategies — event-driven diversifiers

Three event-driven strategies that earn from different weather than the core — Range Break is the program's only morning engine and is correlation-zero to everything else. Their monthly grids show more red — that is their nature, not a defect: Premium Momentum wins a third of its trades at 3:1 size and made its best money in the 2025 and 2026 correction months, exactly when decay strategies rest. They are carried at satellite size for the smoothing they buy, and remain under extended live evaluation.

Combined program — the SPX production book

This curve is the eleven strategies on SPX at one contract each — the production configuration. Its total equals the SPX tab's strategy totals below by construction; the SPY and QQQ tabs show the same frozen rules replicated on those markets at their own contract sizes (validation, not addition).

2024: $194,589 · 2025: $550,058 · 2026 (Jan–Sep): $372,387 · Total: $1,117,034 — one contract per strategy, AFTER paying $19,520 in commissions and fees (itemized on every strategy page).

Capital requirements

The eight structure strategies are defined-risk: their margin is their exact maximum loss, fixed at entry. The three event strategies sell single options, margined per trade under both regimes.

The one-line answer: to earn $478,729 a year at 1× scale, you need an account of $445,000 (with portfolio margin) — or $858,000 on a standard account — or $238,000 if you run only the eight defined-risk structures.

How often is that much margin actually used? On the portfolio-margin basis the median trading day ties up $151,172, 95% of days stay under $247,569, and the $333,985 worst day occurred 1 time(s) in 551 sessions. On the Reg-T basis: median $323,568, 95th percentile $479,199, peak $643,489 reached 1 time(s). The account is sized to the worst day plus a 25% buffer — most days it sits largely unused, which is exactly the discipline an allocator wants to see.

Worst-day margin is not an estimate: it is the maximum, over all 551 sessions, of the sum of each open position's per-trade margin — defined-risk structures at their exact capped loss, single legs at the TIMS −8%/+6% index stress (portfolio margin) or the published CBOE Reg-T formula. Every per-trade value appears in the blotters.

Scale it to your size

Every figure scales linearly with contract count. Pick the row that matches your capital; the program is identical at every size — same trades, same days, same rules. (SPX 0DTE volume exceeds 1.5 million contracts a day; even the 100× row participates in under 0.1% of it.)

Below 1×: the same program on SPY at 1/10th size — see “Starting small” below.

Why does the return look so high?

Starting small: the SPY route

Every strategy trades identically on SPY options — the S&P 500 ETF at exactly 1/10th SPX size, with the same daily expirations. A $25,000–$50,000 account runs the defined-risk structures at ≈ $2,000 margin each and the singles at ≈ $15,000, earning ≈ 1/10th of the dollar figures above at the same rates of return. Every strategy was validated independently on all three markets; the small account runs the identical program, only smaller.

A note on per-trade returns. This site never annualizes the return on a single trade's margin — a position held four hours would produce absurd compounded figures. The only annualized return quoted is the program's, on the full account that carries its worst day.

The Fed-day dividend

The program deliberately trades into FOMC announcement days. Fed-day option premium runs roughly double normal (32 vs 16 index points of credit at 14:15), and when the 2:00pm statement resolves the uncertainty, that premium collapses into the sellers’ hands: across the sample, the structure strategies averaged 3–7× their normal profit on FOMC days with near-perfect win rates (e.g. Afternoon Pin +$1,698 vs +$227; Magnet +$2,522 vs +$661). The richness throttle sizes these days up automatically — doubled premium is its trigger.

Sizing intelligence — the richness throttle

Premium richness at entry (credit ÷ spot) predicts outcomes monotonically across every structure strategy. A certified sizing rule exploits it: 0.5× size on the leanest third of entries, 2× on the richest — thresholds frozen on the first 17 months, judged on the rest, replicated on three markets. All headline figures on this site remain UN-throttled (1×); the throttle is shown as the certified enhancement it is.

Results by market

The rules were frozen on SPY data and re-run, unmodified, on two markets never used in development — QQQ and SPX itself. Every strategy stayed profitable on all three. SPX carries the production wings; SPY and QQQ figures are the frozen-rule replications (straddles unwinged, 1/10th contract size on SPY/QQQ).

Radiant Research is a research demonstration by the V6 systematic trading project. All results are backtested on historical exchange data (Jun 2024 – Sep 2026 for SPX), net of modelled commissions, exchange and regulatory fees and half the bid–ask spread. They are not live results, not a solicitation, and not investment advice. Options involve substantial risk of loss.