First Day

 This is the day 1 of trading. Today is second december and it is the expiry for options today. So, let's see what is my thought process today. I have been having this feeling that the market is really not going anywhere for quite some time, probably an year. It has been trading in a range. So let's evaluate that assumption today.

Here is the one year chart of NIFTY.

One year NIFTY Chart

 Looking at a one year chart, the NIFTY does look range bound. It is a large range though. If we look at last one month chart, it is much more of a narrow range.

One month NIFTY Chart

In last one month, the NIFTY has traded in a range of ± 2%. I would call it a non-directional as of now. Since this is the first trade, I have started with an amount of ₹ 1,00,000/-. I am betting that this market will remain range bound over next 2-3 weeks. So the plan is to have a Iron Condor spread and try to book profit within next 2-3 weeks. 

As part of this trading experience, I am looking at a returns of 3% per month, so assuming there will be some wins and some losses, I am always going to try for 5% returns.

Let's look at the option chain available for NIFTY for the next month expiry which is on 32-December, 2025.

Strategy structure

To create call and put shorts, we will target a delta of 25. That implies 26750 call and 25700 put. The we buy the options at a gap of 200 to complete the Iron Condor.

As we know the profits in a Iron Condor are coming from premium collection from short options. Since we have chose far out of the money positions, the premium collected is also low and our maximum gain is limited. Our loss is higher because we have only put a spread of ₹ 200 on both ends. 

Our strategy is to square off this trade anytime we cross 3%. Since this is a index trade, there is no assignment risk, so if we keep it till expiry and the trade goes our way, i.e. the NIFTY stays between 25800 and 26650, we will make ₹ 5,389. If we let the options expire and the price doesn't go our way, we will lose ₹ 9,611.

I tried placing this order throug sensibull and one of the legs failed, I had to manually add that leg using my broker directly. So here is the status.

Now the waiting game begins. The final margin consumed on this order is approximately the same that I mentioned earlier, i.e. it is around ₹ 95,000.