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I would have lost over half a million had not gotten out Monday. I believe the grace of God helped me liquidate near 1000 flys on Monday one day before the break out. Sorry to everyone for the worst trade in history. On the bright side, I believe this loss made me a better person. It nearly took everything away from me and taught me not to take anything in life for granted because it all can be gone with one press of a button (in my case, many presses). It's only money. My biggest fear was this trade was going to take away my health, friends and family. A loss that would have ended everything. I know we traders want to make money trading, but I think if we focus too much on money, the more we tend lose it. Good trading is all about the process and not the money.

@clipsnation183This is obviously very unpleasant and expensive experience, but hopefully it will have some positive side if you can learn from it. And this is exactly why the first advice I give all traders is about position sizing. You think it is just a cliche - till you experience it first hand. I believe those lessons make us better traders, but I know at this point it's hard to see it this way. Your key points are very good, very few traders would be mature enough to come to those conclusions instead of blaming someone else on their mistake. The best advice I can give you at this point: don't try to "make it back". By doing this you will start taking more risk, which might lead to more losses. Just continue to do what works for you, and the recover will come.

I would be interested to know if anyone who sold any of these spreads, for greater than it's maximum value, has actually bought the spread back, and closed out the trade? And, if so, at what price? Since we know that it isn't that difficult to sell these spreads for greater than their "maximum value", everything now rests on the reliability of this specific market to allow one to close out the trade at some point prior to expiration. It is true that "theoretically", if you sell a $10 wide spread ( any spread), for $11, there is a "theoretical" profit, of at least $1.00 "at expiration". I haven't done any trades here so I don't know the answer to this but I suspect there might be a risk factor that is priced into any spread. What we need to see is how easy it is, or if it is possible at all, to buy back these spreads, and at what price. Here is an example of the kind of risk that is involved. The stock is at $110, so you sell a $120/$130 call vertical for $11 with 2 weeks to expiration, to keep the spread OTM. Well that is $1.00 of "free" money, right? Only the market can answer that question. Now you place an order to buy it back for $9.50 to take your profit,and not get too greedy. A few days go by and you don't get filled, so you now bid "max value" ($10) to buy it back. A few more days pass and you don't get filled...Uh oh! So, you think "well of course I can buy it back for "greater" than max value, who wouldn't sell that?"....so you bid $10.25. You can't even buy it back at a premium. If this were to happen, the only thing you have left to give you any comfort, is that "at expiration" the spread cannot be more than $10. But, do you really want to hold this through expiration? The one thing we know with certainty is that this particular stock, at this particular time, can be at virtually ANY price at expiration (ok, maybe not $5000!) It can easily be at $150, $90, $125 etc. So selling spreads that are far OTM now, might be halfway between strikes in a few days, or at expiration. If you hold until expiration, and the price happens to be at $125, right between your 2 strikes, what are you going to do? Now assignment risk is very real...even worse, non assignment risk is just as real. If you wait until the close, on expiration day, and at 4PM the stock is $125, there is automatic exercise unless the call holder ( of your short $120 calls) notifies their broker by 4:30PM that they do not want it to be exercised. We know what can happen to this kind of stock in after hours trading. It may close at $125 at the 4PM close, but by 4:15pm, be trading at $118. So, what do you do? Are you going to be assigned, or not? Do you buy back the stock assuming that you will assigned through automatic exercise. So you buy the stock at the (4PM) close at $125 to cover the short calls, and by 4:30 it is trading at $118 and your short ($120) calls are not exercised, and you are holding outright long stock that can easily open at $95 ( or anywhere) on Monday. I know this might seem like a wild, far fetched, stretch of the imagination. But this is not MSFT or IBM, it is a very unusual animal right now. Given the nature of this environment, it might be possible that , because of the very real risks involved in taking any position, the market makers might have built in a "risk premium" to these trades to compensate for the risks associated with taking a given side of the trade. They may have decided that .50 cents (selling a $10 wide spread for $10.50) is not enough to take on that level of risk. So, they might have created a "market" for these spreads, and it might look something like 5% bid / 15% ask, above a spread's maximum value. If that were the case , then a $10 spread would be $10.50 bid / $11.50 ask, just to give an example. Like I said, I haven't taken any positions in these options, for some of the reasons I have mentioned, so I don't know the answer from personal experience. Maybe there is very little risk, and I am just imagining an extreme worst case scenario. This is why my initial question would put an answer to all of this. For those of you , who have sold a spread for greater than it's "maximum value", have you been able to buy that spread back? And, if so...at what price? We know you can sell these spreads, but how reliable is the market to be able to buy that spread back, well before expiration, because you really do not want to get anywhere near expiration with these. I don't think there is any risk of "early assignment" as there is such a HUGE amount of extrinsic value in all of them, and I doubt anyone is just going to give up $4.00 of time premium for an early exercise, but who knows. It is the other kinds of risks that I mentioned which should be a concern. What you can count on is that whatever applies to a "normal" stock, under "normal" conditions, probably does not apply in this case, at this time.