On a trend day, I put credit spreads on the side price has already left

In one line: On a downtrend day, I don't sell put credit spreads in the path price is falling toward. On a strong rally day, I don't sell call credit spreads in the path price is climbing toward. I put credit on the side price has already left behind. This post is a record of the days that rule came from.

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1. A credit spread has one way to win

A credit spread wins if price doesn't reach the short strike. It doesn't need the direction to be right. If price just goes sideways, time does the work.

So when I choose where to put one, I ask one question:

"Is my short strike standing in the path price is trying to take today?"

On a range day, that's easy to answer. Price moves back and forth between walls, and a credit spread placed outside a wall is usually out of the way. Selling credit at a wall is the textbook spot.

On a trend day, the answer changes. It's a day when price goes through walls — so a credit spread leaning on a wall ends up standing right in the path.

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2. An analogy — where to stand on the tracks

A train is moving in one direction.

• Someone standing on the track behind it is safe unless the train suddenly reverses.
• Someone standing on the track ahead of it gets hit if the train goes just a little farther.

The short strike of a credit spread is the person standing on the tracks.

Trend	In the path (track ahead)	Already passed (track behind)
Downtrend	🚫 Put credit spread — price falls toward the short put	✅ Call credit spread — price moves away
Strong rally	🚫 Call credit spread — price climbs toward the short call	✅ Put credit spread — price moves away

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3. So why does the track ahead keep pulling me in?

When I'm actually trading, the track ahead looks far more attractive. Three reasons.

① The credit looks rich. The closer price gets to the short strike, the more premium I collect. Same width, more credit — it feels like a good price. But that premium is the market pricing a high chance of getting there. It isn't a bargain; it's the price of a high probability of being tested.

② The instinct that "it's gone far enough, it has to turn." After a 30- or 40-point drop, a bounce feels due, and a visible put wall looks like where it stops. On a range day that instinct is usually right. On a trend day, those "it should stop here" levels give way one after another.

③ The walls are right there on the screen. With put and call walls visible, it feels like I have a reason — "that's support." But walls are built from positions that are already open, and trends are made by new flow coming in. On a day when new flow piles onto one side, yesterday's walls aren't tall enough.

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4. A downtrend day — three put walls, one after another (Sept. 16, 2026)

This was FOMC day (all times Pacific, PT). The morning was a 28-point range; in the hour and a half after the announcement, price moved 119 points.

06:30 – 11:00   Range (7,598 – 7,626)
11:00           ◀ FOMC statement — a hike, with room left for one more this year
11:02           1st put wall 7,600 breaks     → never reclaimed
11:37           2nd put wall 7,580 / 7,575 breaks
12:14           3rd put wall 7,525 breaks
12:27           low 7,507.77                   ← −100 points in 57 minutes

That day, looking at the same levels, two kinds of credit spreads came up — one a live trade, one a hypothetical order from my app's rules engine.

	Placement	Relative to the trend	Result
Put credit spread (rules-engine hypothetical) — leaning on the 1st put wall at 7,600	Just below price	🚫 In the path	Wall broke → max loss at expiration
Call credit spreads (live trades) — upper part of the range, 7,605–7,620	Above price at entry	✅ Already passed	Short strikes on all 7 expired out of the money

The put credit spread was a hypothetical order from the rules engine in my trading app (Billie), following its normal rules — it was not a live trade. Price reached a put wall, so it sold a put credit spread — on a range day, that's close to the textbook trade. That day was not a range day.

Something was already visible that morning. Looking only at positions opened that day, the call wall was stepping down below price — 7,585, then 7,570, then 7,555 — the only new put wall was at 7,570, and below it, nothing new was building. That was a sign the path was open. What I didn't do was connect that to "this could fall to around 7,500 in one move."

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5. A strong rally day — I kept selling call credit spreads into it (Aug. 27, 2026)

The opposite direction. Open 7,710.34 · high 7,741.27 · close 7,730.99.

06:31   net call premium   +21.6M     ← low of the day
06:32   sold call credit 7700/7705    ← SPX 7,692.79 at that moment · short 7,700 just above price = in the rally's path
06:34   sold call credit 7700/7705
06:40   net call premium  +268.3M     ← 12× in 10 minutes
12:25   net call premium  +422.6M     ← high of the day
        net put premium was negative (puts sold on net) all day

Net call premium went up twelvefold in ten minutes and never rolled over. Puts were sold on net all day. Fuel on the upside, none on the downside — a textbook rally shape.

And I sold call credit spreads in the path of that rally seven times. Every time price rose, I read it as "this has to be resistance."

	Result
7 call credit spreads sold against the trend	All 7 lost money
The two right after the open	More than half of that day's loss (54%)
Where price went	7,740, the strongest magnet all day — high 7,741.27

Looking back, that day's "already passed" side was below. Price opened above the gamma flip at 7,680 and never traded below it all day. The place for credit wasn't in the rally's path — it was the put side behind it.

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6. One more day with the same shape (June 30, 2026)

It was a positive-gamma day, and the opening price (7,444) sat below the strongest magnet strikes (7,450, then 7,470). In positive gamma, price tends to get pulled toward the magnet. So that day's path was up.

I put a call credit spread in that path, and price followed the magnet up to a high of 7,507 (+63 points). The magnet itself moved up to 7,500.

That day is where the rule came from: it later stopped being "no call credit spreads in positive gamma" and became "no credit spreads that block price's path to the magnet." It's a rule about where the path is, not about direction. (Why dealer hedging pulls price toward those strikes → Gamma flip — why the same news gets absorbed on one day and amplified on the next)

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7. How I try to recognize a trend day — what I watch

These are what I check during the session. I don't call it on any single one; the more of them line up, the more I lean toward "trend."

#	What I watch	Downtrend side	Uptrend side
1	Fuel on the breakout side	Net put premium rising	Net call premium rising
2	Does price reclaim a broken wall?	Fails to reclaim after breaking a put wall	Doesn't fall back below a call wall it broke
3	Walls built by positions opened today	New call wall stepping down below price · nothing below the new put wall	New put wall stepping up above price · nothing above the new call wall
4	Where the magnet is (positive gamma)	Magnet below price	Magnet above price
5	Direction of the macro inputs	Lining up one way (e.g., rates, oil)	Lining up one way

⚠️ #1 is necessary, not sufficient. In my records, "no fuel, no break" has held many times — "fuel means a break" has not. There were days fuel showed up and price still stopped at the wall. ⚠️ I'm not saying flow moved before price. On Sept. 16, the surge in put flow and the wall breaking happened at almost the same time. ⚠️ #3 is one day's observation so far. I'm logging it separately.

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8. Range day vs. trend day — same credit spread, different placement

This rule shouldn't read as "credit spreads are dangerous." On range days, selling credit at the walls is still my main trade. What changes is placement and how I exit.

	Range day	Trend day
Where I put credit	Outside both walls	Only on the side already passed
Credit in the path	I'll place it if it's outside the wall	🚫 I don't place it
"It's gone far enough, it'll turn"	Usually right	Walls give way one after another
Exit	All at once near the opposite wall	Trend-side positions in pieces as walls break
My most common mistake	Entering in the middle of the range	Fading the trend from inside its path

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9. My rules, written down

1. On a day I've identified as a downtrend, I don't sell put credit spreads in the path down — even when price has reached a put wall.
2. On a day I've identified as a strong rally, I don't sell call credit spreads partway up the move. The moment "this has to be resistance" crosses my mind is exactly that spot.
3. I put credit on the side price has already left. One step behind the trend, collecting time.
4. If I can't tell, I leave the path side empty. In my own trading, the cost of selling one less spread has been smaller than the cost of standing on the track ahead.

This connects to my rule against in-the-money credit spreads. A credit spread in the path turns in the money quickly, and selling more there because it "looks cheap" is what made my losses bigger. (What an in-the-money credit spread actually requires → A 9-to-1 credit spread, and what it actually asked for)

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10. What I don't know yet

• How reliably I can recognize a trend day early in the session. Sept. 16 was a clean range until the announcement; Aug. 27 showed its hand within ten minutes of the open. The timing differs from day to day.
• The examples here are three days. I'm also collecting, in the same table, days that looked like a trend and then reversed — and how credit on the "already passed" side did on those days.
• How early walls from today's new positions (#3 above) flag a trend day — I'll write that up once there's a real sample.

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※ This is a record of my own trading and the rules I built from it. It is not investment advice and not a recommendation to trade any security, strike, or strategy. The Sept. 16 put credit spread was a hypothetical fill from my app's rules engine, not a live trade. The sample is three days, and results on one day do not indicate results on any other. Credit spreads can lose more than the premium collected, and same-day options can lose the full amount at risk within one session. All times are Pacific. Your decisions and their outcomes are your own.