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Over the years, I've made many mistakes when trading calendars - some really silly and basic ones, some I'm proud of, but most I'm ashamed to admit. Basically, I screwed-up often and consistently. So, one of the things I started to do to reduce this, was to actually keep a track of my mistakes. Emotionally, it was very easy to just "overlook" the mistakes I made and move onto the next trade. I think this is called Avoidance or Denial. I did both. And I did them very well. But writing down my cock-ups was tough, because I was looking in the mirror and having to answer to myself. Not an easy task, as the ego would get in the way, but it was a task which I found immensely useful. Sometimes, in trading, as in many other things, simple and basic tweaks can have a significant impact on results. So, I created a simple page in my Excel journal, just for my errors. I display below the entry from Feb '21. It's nothing ground-breaking; it's simply a list of the types of mistakes I made, how often I made them and what stocks were involved. (This is just for Calendar trades.) Just for clarity, the descriptions are as follows : 1. Not reading the Notes/Journal before trading. I keep a journal not just for the trades I take, but I include a section where I describe what my experience was with that stock for that cycle. A summary, if you like. And the aim is to read the journal summary before I open a new trade the next cycle. 2. Buying too far from ATM Self-explanatory. 3. Looking over the cliff. If I have a cal at say the 250 strike and the stock moves up to 260, then I'm still OK. The stock moves up to 265 a day later and I'm still kinda okay-ish. But I'm now getting close to the "tipping point" - any further rise in the stock price now will accelerate the loss in my cals, asymmetrically. By not taking action when the stock is at 265, I'm "looking over the cliff". Looking at large impending losses if the stock continues its upward trend and if I take no action (eg closing for B/E or small loss; opening a new leg at the higher stock price etc). 4. Under/Over-allocating. Self-explanatory. One of the best practices in trading (I found) was proper position sizing. 5. Mon/Tue - not closing soon after market open. This is a personal observation - if the T-0 was Mon or Tue, I found that my cals often fell in value as a day progressed. So, I felt it important for those situations to close early in the day. 6. Holding low-volume stocks till T-0 As mentioned in other posts, it's possible to get "stuck" with cals on T-0 where there is very little volume/OI. So, the aim for me, is to try and close them by T-1. 7. Not closing half at 30%. Oh yes, good old fashioned Greed. A classic case in Feb '21 was AMZN - my cals were 30%+, but I held on - the next two days, the market shot up, AMZN moved a lot, IV fell sharply, and my cals were now showing a -5% loss. Nice. I had grabbed defeat from the jaws of victory. 8. Holding through earnings. This is a cardinal sin which I committed many times by forgetting to close the trade on T-0. To get around this, nowadays, every time I enter a trade, I immediately put a 'Close' alert in my MS Office Calendar. As you can see, I made a total of 13 mistakes on my calendar trades in that month - that's waaaaay too large a number, and this resulted in me making a loss of the whole month - my first loss after 14 consecutive profitable months. Even just doing the basics right - eg. allocation - would have eliminated 3 mistakes. And closing the AMZN calendar for 30% profit, instead of -5% loss would have made a $$$ difference to my final returns. This list is not definitive by any means - it's just my own personal list. Every trader will have their own one. And that list will be different for different types of trades (eg. straddles will have their own peculiarities). I thought I would share the importance of keeping some sort of written records of the lessons learnt - it's not a sexy part of trading, and it's never easy admitting our mistakes (even to ourselves), but the more we can make trading mechanical, logical, mathematical and the less we make it emotional, egoistical and impulsive, the more chance we have of being profitable. Happy trading!

@Jesal You should have an arrow at the bottom of that popup box that shows more options when clicked and it will have 'Combinations'. Once you use 'Combinations' a few times, it will show up without the need for clicking the arrow at the bottom. Here's an example of the arrow.