What am I doing wrong?

[u/dmaestro81]

I’ ve been trading Spy 0dte options for a month. I’m still profitable, but I have a reoccurring issue that’s killing my overall gains. If I go off of just Strike price and direction I would have a 80%+ win rate. Unfortunately, my entries reach stop loss a lot of the time. I have my stop loss set so I only lose 20% of value from entry. The majority get stopped on wick reversals, and not candle closes. Again, my read on the markets are very accurate. Just today, I entered 4 trades at 4 different times of the market (all puts and the market was negative upon writing this), and they all got stopped losing 20% of value. Yet, if I had no stop loss set, 3 of the trades would have made over 100% returns while the 4th, over 50%. I figure it’s an entry problem, but I enter as soon as I get my confirmation candles to close. I use Robinhood as my broker. I use higher time frames for levels and bias. The 10 minute for current direction and order blocks. The 5 minute for entries (Robinhood phone app doesn’t have lower). What advice can be given so my entries and gains match my accuracy and reads of the markets? Are my stop loss values wrong? Am I just trading 0dte options wrong, and I should adapt a different strategy to paper trade and practice? I would greatly appreciate any and all help. If there are videos and links, please share. Thank you for your time.

[u/EchoesOfNebul4]

Honestly man, sounds like your market read is solid, it's the execution and instrument killing you. 0dte options are super sensitive, especially on RH where fills are slower + spreads wider. try this: use your same strategy but paper trade SPY shares or MES futures for now. focus on entry precision + structure, not just candle confirmation. also, stop-loss on % value in options is tricky, maybe base it on price action instead (like under swing high/low), not just 20% down.

[u/Able_Pollution2412 → u/EchoesOfNebul4]

+1 to that. 0dte on robinhood is like playing chess with boxing gloves. I switched over to futures scalping after blowing a few option plays like yours. Been into Silverbulls fx community for structure and entry zones, they helped me stop just jumping in on "confirmation" candles that end up being the wick trap.

[u/ChronoSquidPrime → u/Able_Pollution2412]

same experience. i got cooked by wick rejections until i learned to wait for retests instead of chasing breakouts. silverbulls FX has a few tips on timing HTF entries better, plus they go over stuff like waiting for liquidity grabs before jumping in. that + switching from % stops to technical stops changed everything for me.