Every trading strategy, explained properly.
Payoff diagrams, Greek exposure, maximum profit and loss — stated as a formula and computed as a number — for every option and futures strategy worth knowing. Risk before reward, on every page. Worked in NIFTY and BANKNIFTY. No calls, no rankings, no promises.
What is a trading strategy? A trading strategy is a pre-defined set of rules for entering, sizing, managing and exiting a position, chosen to express a specific view under specific market conditions. In derivatives it is usually a named combination of legs — a bull call spread, an iron condor — whose payoff, risk and Greek exposure follow from its structure rather than from the trader's intent. A strategy does not predict. It shapes what happens to your capital when the market does what it was always going to do.
Why strategies succeed
A strategy works when the condition it assumes actually holds, and when it is sized so that being wrong is survivable while it does. That is the whole of it. A bull call spread does not "work" because it is clever; it works when the underlying rises enough, before expiry, by more than the debit paid. An iron condor works when the underlying stays inside a range it never promised to stay inside.
Success in derivatives is mostly the absence of ruin. The structure decides the shape of your outcomes; position size decides whether you are still there to collect them.
Why strategies fail
Three reasons, in order of how often they matter. The regime ends. Trend-following bleeds in a chop; mean-reversion is destroyed by the one trend. Nothing tells you in advance which you are in. The tail was not sized for. A short-premium position collects small credits for months and returns them all in an hour, because theta was never free — it was the price paid for carrying gamma. The costs were ignored. A spread whose maximum profit is ₹89 per unit pays eight bid-ask spreads round trip, plus brokerage, STT, exchange charges, stamp duty and GST.
SEBI's published studies of the equity derivatives segment have found that a large majority of individual traders lose money. Treat that as the prior against which every page on this site should be read.
Where to start
Three routes through the library, depending on what you already know. Each is a reading order, not a curriculum you must finish.
Understand what you are being sold
- Long Call and Long Put — what a premium buys, and why being right about direction is not enough.
- Buying vs Selling Options — the asymmetry that governs everything after it.
- Defined vs Undefined Risk — the site's central distinction. A covered call is not defined-risk.
- Bull Call Spread — the first structure with a known worst case.
- Position Sizing — read this before your first trade, not after your first loss.
Trade structure, not direction
- Spread strategies — financing one option with another; the four verticals.
- Iron Condor and Iron Butterfly, then the comparison.
- Volatility strategies — implied volatility is a price, not a forecast.
- The Greek-sign matrix — see why gamma and theta always carry opposite signs.
- Adjustments and Rolling — why neither is a repair.
Where the edges and the traps are
- Calendar and Diagonal — long vega and long theta at once, and what kills them.
- Ratio spreads vs backspreads — one is undefined risk, the other is not.
- Box Spread — an arbitrage-locked payoff that costs more to trade than it returns.
- Expiry — theta accelerates, gamma explodes, and gamma wins.
- Risk of Ruin — why a high win rate makes short-premium strategies more dangerous, not less.
Seven families
Every strategy is built from the same handful of pieces. The family tells you where the money comes from and where the risk lives.
Option Buying
Defined riskYou pay a premium for a right. The loss is capped at what you paid; time decay works against you every single day.
Option Selling
Undefined riskYou collect a premium for an obligation. Time works for you — until it doesn't. Several of these have no structural cap on loss.
Spreads
StructureFinance one option with another. This is where options stop being lottery tickets and start being instruments.
Neutral
RangeNo direction required. A view on where price won't go, with both the profit and the loss known before you enter.
Volatility
How muchTrade the magnitude of the move, not its direction. You are taking a position on the option chain's own forecast.
Futures
LeverageNo premium, no theta, no vega — just linear exposure and leverage. What differs is the market regime each approach assumes.
Expiry
GammaThe day the maths changes. Theta accelerates, gamma explodes, and the second one grows faster than the first.
Risk Management
Read firstSizing, ruin, drawdown, allocation, exits. What decides whether you survive being wrong long enough for the view to matter.
Why you can trust the numbers
Not because we say so. Because of how they are produced.
Computed, never typed
Every maximum profit, maximum loss, breakeven and Greek sign on this site is calculated by one pricing engine from one arbitrage-consistent option chain. The cheat sheet cannot disagree with the strategy page, because both read the same data.
The model is disclosed
Payoffs at expiry need no model. Everything else uses Black–Scholes with each leg's implied volatility solved from its own quoted premium. Methodology states exactly where that model is wrong, and it is wrong in three specific ways.
Risk before reward
Every page states its maximum loss — as a formula and as a rupee number — before it states its maximum profit. Undefined-risk strategies carry an inline warning above the fold, not a footnote.
No claims, ever
No win rates. No backtests. No historical returns. No "best" or "safest" strategy. Those claims require assumptions that turn a reference work into a marketing document. Read the Editorial Policy.
The pairs everyone confuses
Two strategies can look almost identical on a payoff chart and behave completely differently in a live market. These pages put them side by side.
Iron Condor vs Iron Butterfly
Four strikes or three. One collects 3.7× the credit; the other has a profit plateau instead of a point. Neither is superior.
Defined vs Undefined Risk
The site's central distinction, stated exactly. A covered call is undefined-risk. A long straddle is defined-risk. Both surprise people.
Buying vs Selling Options
Buyers lose slowly and often. Sellers win slowly and often, then lose catastrophically. Positive skew against negative skew.
Debit vs Credit Spread
"Credit spreads are better because you keep the premium." The arithmetic says otherwise. What actually differs is vega, theta and margin.
Straddle vs Strangle
One needs a 3.1% move, the other 3.4% and 44% less capital. Both are destroyed by the same thing: implied volatility falling.
Covered Call vs Cash-Secured Put
They are the same trade. Put-call parity says so. Neither is an income strategy; both are short-put risk with a premium attached.
Interactive tools
Everything runs in your browser, on the same pricing engine that drew every diagram on this site. Nothing you type is transmitted, logged or stored.
Strategy Finder
WizardFive questions — view, risk cap, volatility, horizon, capital — narrow all documented strategies to a shortlist worth reading. It will not tell you what to trade.
Payoff & P/L Generator
CalculatorBuild any multi-leg position — including calendars, with a separate expiry per leg — and download the payoff diagram as SVG.
Greeks Exposure Viewer
CalculatorNet delta, gamma, theta, vega and rho for the whole position, plotted across every underlying price. Watch the signs flip.
Volatility & Time Simulators
CalculatorFreeze the underlying and move implied volatility alone, or freeze everything and let only the clock run. Isolate vega from delta from theta.
Position Size Calculator
CalculatorFixed-fractional sizing against a structure's maximum loss. If it returns zero lots, that is the answer, and it is the most useful output on this site.
Cheat Sheet & Matrix
ReferenceEvery strategy on one page — risk type, cash flow, max profit, max loss — plus a matrix of computed Greek signs and a decision tree.