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Good books about Iron Condors are by Kerry Given. The IC section here on steady options great too. An IC is exactly what I was speaking about when I said 85% chance in your favor. A classic trade is selling an IC on the SPY one (or two) SD out from the current position. and to do so 6-9 weeks ahead of expiry. You will have a defined income and defined maximum risk. Basically as long as the SPY stays within the short strikes you will make maximum profit near expiry. Heres an example (say its 1st of August of this year) you decide to trade the September SPY IC BTO 1 P SPY 255 Sep21 STO 1 P SPY 260 Sep21 STO 1 C SPY 300 Sep21 BTO 1 C SPY 305 Sep21 net credit around: 26$ which is also your max profit (just over 400$ margin is blocked) - your max loss is 470$. Note that without a cheap broker this is a loss making proposition from the word go. However your probability is very high to succeed. Switch to Friday 21st September and we see all the options expire worthless and you keep the money you collected. Its generally advisable to close at least a week before expiry but this IC was so safe that it never got challenged during the whole period it was running. The max loss was a multiple of the profit and so some people say this eating like a bird and s* like an elephant or picking up pennies before a steamroller. In the absence of knowledge on how to manage the minority of cases were things go haywire you will hit a max. loss twice a year presuming you trade every month. This loss will wipe out the sum total of your profits and so statistics takes its revenge by reverting to the mean: zero. The skill with IC is setting them up at the right time at the right width of strikes for the right premium and having a plan to avoid the max loss. I traded IC's for a year on a tiny scale (literally 1 option) to learn - I came out ahead every time. I then set up the trade at 10x the size which is what I would have been comfortable with for my portfolio - the very first time it moved against me real fast and though I avoided the max loss it wiped out all the profits before. The second one I set up - same thing - the market doesnt care about you or what went before - I recovered dont worry but its frustrating and eats at your confidence when it happens. Its always great to say you made a killing in the market but in reality that time you lost a bundle but not your shirt was more important.