Options For Grownups
DISCLAIMER: This note is intended for US recipients only and, in particular, is not directed at, nor intended to be relied upon by any UK recipients. Any information or analysis in this note is not an offer to sell or the solicitation of an offer to buy any securities. Nothing in this note is intended to be investment advice and nor should it be relied upon to make investment decisions. Read our full disclaimer, here.
A Statistical Edge
by Alex King, CEO, Cestrian Capital Research, Inc.
We host a superb options service here at Cestrian. Superb. It’s not like any other options service we’ve seen.
Jay’s Options is run by Jay Urbain, Ph.D, a computer scientist and statistician. Like each and every one of our team, he doesn’t come from a public equities background. (The reason our work is different is because our people are different).
I asked Jay to write something here about how the service has been going. We’re raising the price of the service on 2 September, so you have from now until then to sign up at the current low prices.
Today you pay just $1199/yr (independent investors) or $1999/yr (investment professionals). This rises to $1999/yr for independents and $3999/yr for professionals on 2 September. Monthly subscriptions are also available. We don’t raise prices for existing members - you keep the price you join at for as long as you remain a subscriber.
(You can jump right to the signup page here if you want to).
I’ll hand you over to Jay now.
Jay’s Options - Trading
by Jay Urbain, Ph.D
Most of our option trading is for premium generation, but we also do some speculation, i.e., long/short positions with options or stock.
Selling options has a statistical edge over buying options. Our sweet spot is selling options between 0 and 14 days to expiration. But you have to adapt to what the market gives you. For example, since "Liberation Day" and the frequent event-risk, we have developed effective shorter-term trading strategies.
We use technical analysis and have developed a number of tools to analyze volatility and market-maker option positioning that helps us select profitable strike prices. We also use tools to analyze order flow. Analysis using these tools for the major indices are posted each morning and used daily to monitor our positions.
Most of our premium trades are Bull Put (credit) spreads, Put Broken-Wing-Butterflies, or Iron Condors. We consider calendars when trading volatility.
We also day and swing trade stocks using options or going long/short the stocks. And we put a lot of effort into developing scanning methods for identifying bullish setups for high growth stocks.
We do Zoom calls to chat about different strategies based on request.
I publish the trades I take personally, in real time, so that our subscribers can see what I am doing with the ideas we publish. My personal performance using the work published in the service has exceeded 100% annually in each of the last 3 years. My personal performance has significantly exceeded that this year. In each of 2023 and 2024 I had 2 losing and 10 profitable months. In 2025 I have not yet had a losing month.
Below are my 0-DTE premium selling strategy stats for the last 3+ months. Despite the low implied volatility environment and day to day event chaos, the results have been relatively consistent and profitable. We use a similar strategy when selling longer term premium stretched out over multiple days.
0-DTE August (partial month):
- 15 trading days
- Winning trades: 70%
- Winning days: 70%
0-DTE July
- 22 trading days
- Winning trades: 75%
- Winning days: 86%
0-DTE June
- 16 trading days
- Winning trades: 75%
- Winning days: 88%
0-DTE Stats for May
- 20 trading days
- Winning trades: 75%
- Winning days: 80%
Want To Join?
If you have questions about the service, you can post them as comments to this article (if you’re at least a free, registered user of this site) or you can DM me in the Cestrian Slack environment if you’re a member of any of Cestrian’s real-time services.
Don’t forget, prices rise 2 September.
Cestrian Capital Research, Inc - 26 August 2025