Do the posted option trades in Zero to Profit, Vol. 2 make money for a reader who follows them?
If a reader bought every option trade posted in the book's journal at the next real ask and sold at the bid, would they have made money from 2023 to January 2026?
No. Following the 1,009 posted option trades (calls and puts) lost money under both exit rules: -$13,979 when selling on the author's sell posts, and -$11,799 under a fixed rule of half off at +100% and all out at -50%, one contract each. Both stayed negative at zero and at double commissions. The hit rate was about 30%, and the winners were not big enough to pay for the losers. The main cause is the entry gap: a minute after a post, the ask was already above the posted price on 90% of trades (median $0.06). One squeeze-day fill accounts for about $9,000-$10,000 of the loss, and both rules still lose without it.
Backtested by QS Desk
Pre-registration
The rules for reading trades from the posts, the fills, the costs and the verdict were written down before any result was seen. Two exit rules were judged as two trials: (A) sell when the author posts a sell, and (B) take half off at +100% and exit everything at -50%. Entries fill at the first ask after the post and exits at the bid, at $0.65 per contract per side. The verdict needs positive P&L and a positive weekly-bootstrap lower bound. Three amendments were made before any result: a parser fix that added 84 posts, a switch from trade prints to real bid/ask quotes with the counted window widened to January 2023 (made after a trade-print run was stopped partway, before it printed a result), and the pinned data snapshot. Counted window: January 2023 to January 2026. 2022 is not tested, and 2 ambiguous posts are excluded.
Registered 2026-11-02Amendments
- 2026-11-02 Parser fix before any result: an expiry glued to a dollar amount is read, adding 84 posts; 2 ambiguous posts stay excluded. approved: Recorded before any result; merged with the qs-desk admin's review
- 2026-11-02 Counted fills move from trade prints to real bid/ask quotes, and the window widens to January 2023. The trade-print run had been stopped partway, before any result. approved: qs-desk admin's ruling, 2026-11-02
- 2026-11-03 The data snapshot for the counted run pinned before the run. approved: Recorded before the counted run; merged with the qs-desk admin's review
Trials · 2 trials · 0 passed
| Trial | Verdict | |
|---|---|---|
| A: follow the sell posts | FAIL | counted |
| B: half at +100%, all at −50% | FAIL | counted |
| A: follow the sell posts | FAIL | not counted |
| B: half at +100%, all at −50% | FAIL | not counted |
Limitations
- The book is an edited compilation; trades left out of it cannot be tested.
- One contract per trade; the author's real sizing and account P&L are not in the posts.
- Fills use 1-minute quotes: buy at the ask, sell at the bid. A real fill inside the minute could differ.
- There was no quote-sanity rule, so one stub ask during a trading halt (about $9,000-$10,000 of loss) is kept in the counted result.
- Arm A's exits come from a fixed keyword rule on the sell posts.
- 13 entries were refused (11 malformed expiries, 2 with no two-sided quote), and posts from 2022 were not tested.
The numbers: every trial's checks, metrics, curve and yearly results, and the provenance
1 published version · current 5e3ec5e1c17916ef, published 2026-11-06