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Yes I did - this post is not so glorious as the first - an expensive lesson but useful nonetheless. What I did is to go back to what Jeff Augen said - he claimed that by looking at the open interest you could see where things would be pinning roughly a week ahead. Essentially he proposed: selling straddles as of the Friday a week before expiry; closing that on Thursday before expiry or Friday morning of expiry; alternatively selling new straddles Thursday evening and closing in the first half hour doing a ratio trades as of the morning c.q. the midday lull and closing at the last minute. In my defence for what follows I want to underline that it in my own analysis I had hitherto been unable to determine the strike of the pin before midday on Friday based on the minute by minute data I had examined. Nevertheless you cant learn if you do not experiment and so I proverbially 'went for it'. Admittedly by the time I was ready to act it was Tuesday so here is the blow by blow: TUESDAY - open interest was massively in favour of the 210 strike particularly in the puts OS 5 C AUG17 210 @ 1.04$ OS 5 P AUG17 210 @ 1.28$ I hedged this with C 217.50/P.202.50 to avoid excessive margin pressure those cost 0.16$ together WEDNESDAY: this was the day the market tanked and to my surprise the AAPL stock held around 210$. I wasnt sure whether this could be realistically put down to pinning behaviour but seeing the straddle was showing a profit at the end of the day I stick with it. There wasnt a real piece of news that explained AAPL behaviour otherwise except that generally I think the market (and me) are bullish on AAPL. THURSDAY: Market recovers and AAPL rips upwards and Jeff's purported 'tell indicator' of the pinning strike moves to 212.50$ - I kept a close look on the OV and traded volumes and this move was quite consistent with AAPL moving upwards. Clearly the market moves their strikes even still on the Thursday. This was very evident on the calls less on the puts - by about 2PM my pain threshold for the straddles was reached as the stock traded just over 212.50$ and the OV in the 212.50 strike now exceeded the 210 strike. So I moved the straddle but not the hedges: CB 5 C AUG17 210 @ 3.65$ CB 5 P AUG17 210 @ 0.10$ OS 5 C AUG17 212.50 @ 1.44$ OS 5 P AUG17 212.50 @ 0.43 My strategy was to close this either on Thursday evening if that made sense or Friday morning in the first half hour as per Jeff's recommendations. The stock meanwhile showed no tendency to stop at all it closed 213.48$ which put it quite close to a presumption of ending 215$ (Jeff purports pinning tends to go to the higher end) however after the roaring AAPL time it was equally reasonable to presume that the stock would drop on Friday. So I decided to wait and see. FRIDAY: The stock opened lower but that was only for a couple of minutes before it went up to 215$. Here is a moment where I probably acted too quickly. Again with a lag of a few hours the OV moves to the next strike without fail - its a lagging indicator not a leading one. I should have closed the straddle and waited for the midday lull. Instead I concluded that 215$ was going to be the pin for the day (at 9.45 AM) and constructed the strategy as a consequence and doing so overagressively: CB 5 C AUG17 212.50 @ 2.44$ CB 5 P AUG17 212.50 @ 0.03 OB 4 C AUG17 212.50 @ 2.55$ OS 12 C AUG17 215 @ 0.60 The problem with this move is that the stock really was still in full movement at that moment, it trended up right into midday to 217.31$. I sat still whilst this happened pondering that had not been a smart move. By 2 PM I figured that things had stabilised and that the position would need adapting again: CB 12 C AUG17 215 @ 2.46 (ouch) CS 5 C AUG17 217.50 @ 0.34$ (taking what little there was from the hedge) OB 15 C AUG17 220 @ 0.02$ (new hedge) OS 15 C AUG17 217.50 @ 0.29$ (unlucky there - just a little through as I set that up) From this moment on everything went more or less ok - except it turned out that its quite difficult to time your exit. The stock moved about A LOT and its clear different forces were being exerted on it. It closed perfectly pinned at 217.58$ and I had opportunity to close the open calls 217.50 for 0.11$ but as the seconds ticked away I closed around 15.58 at a bad time: OS 15 C AUG17 217.50 @ 0.22$ CS 4 C AUG17 212.50 @ 5.15 Remaining hedges expiring worthless. I wanted to buy a straddle at that moment as Jeff indicates a pinned stock tends to make a big move on Monday, however when I put that through it seems that in the last minutes TW doesn't place the order - I did put down the value of the mid of the straddle which is 4.30 for the AUG24 217.50 to be sold on Monday. As said I couldn't execute that however so that's a paper trade. Conclusion: A big fat minus of $1740 including commissions. Although possibly closer analysis of the stock during the week would bear out differently I dont see how I could have predicted the pinning strike (using Jeff's suggestions) before midday Friday which is consistent with my previous experience in this respect. In Jeff's defence he does say that you should observe whether the stock seems to be pinning and with AAPL roaring through the week clearly that should have dissuaded me from trading before Friday 12 PM . The loss was exacerbated by moving too quickly in the morning of Friday and being too aggressive in the ratio - the losses on the straddles as a whole werent terribly awful and had the ratio been 3:1 or 2:1 even the 215$ OS calls would have been bearable. My main takeaways: pinning was evident and as of midday the stock - despite wobbling about was clearly going for 217.50 - it was perfectly feasible to trade during that period. Just dont expect to be selling 1$+ in premium - the buffering effect of the ratio is really quite useful (see the 212.50 long calls that compensated for at least part of the 215 ill advised ratio trade of the early morning; the trades should preferably be closed ahead of the last minutes - they are very hectic and it seems the broker doesnt always deliver in that period. Probably you need to put in a low GTC close - it will hit it but so fast that you cant input a trade yourself; with AAPL over 200 and the strikes 2.50 apart there is better room for manoeuvrer to set up pinning trades than before. When the strikes are 1$ apart its sometimes hard to find valid amounts of credit to sell I am going to go back to my minute to minute data and look at all Friday weekly expirations. Not discouraged by this outcome - you need to pay a little to gain understanding and though things were quite hectic at moments I am satisfied I closed the loss making positions and adapted without hesitation (the classic mistake would have been to hold on to the original straddle - the minus would have been in the order of 3K+). Strapping on the helmet and going straight back in was a mistake. To be continued.