---
title: 'Small Account 0DTE SPY Option Strategy'
source: 'https://youtube.com/watch?v=cmvX3vUYPlI'
video_id: 'cmvX3vUYPlI'
date: 2026-07-17
duration_sec: 1141
channel: 'Matt Giannino'
---

# Small Account 0DTE SPY Option Strategy

> Source: [Small Account 0DTE SPY Option Strategy](https://youtube.com/watch?v=cmvX3vUYPlI)

## Summary

This video presents a four-step system for trading SPY zero-day options (0DTE) to grow a small account from $1,000 to over $10,000 in 15 trading days. The strategy focuses on liquidity, leverage, risk management, and a specific trend-following setup called the 50 FIB entry.

### Key Points

- **System Overview** [00:02] — The presenter grew $1,000 to over $10,000 in 15 trading days using a four-step system for trading SPY zero-day options with small accounts.
- **Why SPY for Liquidity** [00:33] — SPY options have tight bid-ask spreads (e.g., $2 spread on a $200 option, less than 1%), unlike illiquid stocks like MARA or Shopify where spreads can be 30-50%.
- **Zero-Day Option Leverage** [02:03] — 0DTE options provide maximum leverage; a $2 move in SPY can yield 100% return, compared to 14% for 30-day options. This accelerates account growth but carries high risk of total loss.
- **Risk Management with OCO Orders** [03:31] — Hard stop losses are essential for 0DTE options because they can go to zero quickly. OCO (one-cancels-other) orders allow setting profit target and stop loss simultaneously.
- **Focus on One Ticker** [04:02] — Trading only SPY (or QQQ) helps maintain focus and avoid missing setups. SPY has 0DTE every day, unlike single stocks like Coinbase or Tesla which have them only once a week.
- **Best Times to Trade** [06:12] — Trade the first 90 minutes after market open (high volatility, best risk/reward) and the end-of-day run around 11:30 AM ET. Avoid the midday lull from 11 AM to 2 PM ET.
- **The 50 FIB Entry Setup** [07:43] — Identify a new high, then a higher low (pullback). Enter at the 50% Fibonacci retracement of the initial move from low to high. Validate with risk/reward of at least 2:1 and candle confirmation.
- **Trade Validation Criteria** [10:07] — Ensure risk/reward is at least 2:1 (stop loss under the 618 level or recent wick low). Wait for multiple candles (2nd, 3rd, etc.) to confirm support at the 50 FIB level before entering.
- **Managing the Trade** [11:35] — Once the trade moves in your favor, move stop loss to break even or take partial profits at the risk-off level (midpoint to highs). Never let a winning trade turn red.
- **Real Example: SPY 0DTE** [14:35] — The presenter demonstrates the 50 FIB setup on SPY, showing how to draw the fib, set profit target at the high, stop loss under the 618, and manage the trade as it progresses.

### Conclusion

The key to growing a small account with 0DTE SPY options is to leverage liquidity and tight spreads, use strict risk management with OCO orders, and follow a trend-following strategy like the 50 FIB entry with proper validation and trade management.

## Transcript

trading SPY zero day options I was able to grow a th000 bucks to over 10 grand in 15 trading days so inside this video I want to tell you exactly how I did it using this four-step system so this is basically a very simple guide on how
small accounts can trade zero day options with spy if you want this guide for free comment the word small and I'll send it right over but now let's go into the first reason why we like spy so for example if you are to enter spy options
You' be buying at the bid which is 185 or you'd be buying at the ask and if you had to sell those options you basically have to sell back at the bid basically have to sell back at the bid and so that's a $2 spread on a $200
option so that's less than like 1% there so some options will rob you getting in and out I'm talking about you know some of this crypto stuff right now if we go and try to trade off of Mara here for next week we have $200 is 212 and then
next week we have $200 is 212 and then 217 is the ask that's a $5 wide so that doesn't seem like a lot two2 to5 difference but if you scalp every day for a whole year it's going to add up and if you start looking at tickers that
have even less liquidity like Shopify this is 261 and 267 there's even some like the bond funds here there's almost no liquidity where if you want to get in some of these calls this would be $75 for the
bid and then $380 for the ask so that would mean you $380 for the ask so that would mean you could be losing 50 to 30% of your money getting in and out of these options so if you lose 10% getting in 10% getting
out you're there's no way you're going to be profitable so if you want to be on the right edge of the markets and crush it you got to be trading tight bit ask spreads and spy and the triple Q's provide that so those are the only two
tickers I would recommend if small accounts want to grow so the next thing is that the zero Day Option opportunity is huge on spy every single day you have options zero days that means that you could be trading with the most leverage
and this just helps you maximize the returns so let's go back to option Strat and show you what I mean so for example on April April 1st here if you were to on April April 1st here if you were to buy the 523 call and the market moved
let's say a couple bucks higher so from 523 to 523 to 525 that would give you 100% return and so if you put if you had $1,000 count you put half in you would be up 500
bucks and your whole account's up 50% so if you were to even go out another day from that you're making 70% return instead of 100 if you go out 30 days you're making 14% return instead of
100 so the problem is if you want to grow your account quickly the further out the options are the more time value you're buying and again that's just going to drain the opportunity for you to grow faster so zero day options are a
unique opportunity where you can make money quick and your account Blossom but the downside is fam you have to understand this if you're ever going to understand this if you're ever going to use a zero day option they go to zero
use a zero day option they go to zero all the time on a daily basis so you have to have a hard stop loss in I'm not talking about mental stop loss oh if it hits 50% I'm out nobody's going to do that on a zero Day Option it can go well
below 50 in a matter of seconds so if you're on thinker swim that's a great platform to put in that order and make sure you are out if it hits 30 50 40% losses so managing risk is number one especially with short-term options
remember as a Trader it's not about how much money you can make it's about how much you can keep especially from the profits you put in lastly the last reason why we trade spy is we want to stay focused you see this guy with all
of his screens here he's got maybe seven tickers so if you have one setup you tickers so if you have one setup you trade and you have seven screens going at the same time what are the chances you miss that setup triggering more
importantly spy is the best one to trade because of liquidity and because of zero because of liquidity and because of zero day options so the chance of you even being able to trade any other stock with that Leverage is pretty small because
coin Tesla they only have zero day options once a week spy has them every options once a week spy has them every day zero day options are the best way to get that maximum growth if you trade this next strategy correctly so like I
this next strategy correctly so like I said the key to success is OC orders and inside this guide what you're going to find is that the video for Oco orders is small you'll get this guide sent straight to you and an OA order is
typically on the higher end trading platforms like think or Swim and so here what we're seeing is that you can set your profit Target and stop loss at the your profit Target and stop loss at the same time Oco stands for one cancels the
other one order get it's triggered the other one goes away so that way you can have two exit orders in the same opportunity or the same Trend and so when you're setting up your trade you want to make sure you make sure that the
risk through order is measured and then you put that Oco in so remember respect the risk it's zero day options because they go to zero not because they're going to Blossom your account in one day they can just as well take your account
down as quickly as they can move it up and lastly we're going to go over how to trade my current setup with some examples but you have to understand before we go over the setup the time of day to trade and some other key hacks I
have over here but the first thing you want to do is trade that 90 minutes that want to do is trade that 90 minutes that the Market's opening to like 9:00 that first 90 minutes is going to give you the most volatility the best fair value
gaps the best risk to reward and you don't have to wait for the move typically once you're in at 9:30 the market starts chopping and if you're in zero day options you're going to be having your stop loss get closer and
closer and closer because that time Decay is clicking away and making you lose money from just waiting for the trade to hit and then lastly around 11:30 is when you're going to see that end of day run so the end of day run if
your setup triggers can be an excellent time to enter so some key hacks is make sure you understand the trend and we're going to give you a strategy to use with the trend but if the Market's falling down all day try to find our strategy
with the bare Trend or the bearish entry and lastly best times to trade are here times to avoid or in the middle between them so don't be trading that 11 to let's say like EST it would be like 11 to2 don't be trading 11 to2 and now I'm
I'm going to go over and an example and apply it today on how you could have made money on Nvidia so we're focusing on spying triple Q's but I literally use this setup inside the Discord for Nidia so this setup is really simple we're
just going to look for our high to break our prior High to break and a new high to come in this is a typical Trend in the market this is our first Insight that a trend has begun or continued and when we make a new high in the market
what we're looking for is that new low that comes in the low needs to hold so that we can get the pull back and we can get this higher low so a trend in the get this higher low so a trend in the market goes up and I'll draw this here
goes up makes a new high goes down makes a higher low and then that's a full bull Trend at that point if we can support the higher low this will give us an the higher low this will give us an opportunity to run up to the high again
and so where are we going to make money on the push to the new highs that's the idea is we want to make sure we at least hit the old high for a take profit and
then let some run after that and this is a called a 50 FIB entry this is where we're going to be getting in at the measured 50% retracement of that initial move from low to high and this is again one of my favorite strategies intraday
for small accounts because it has power to move quick and you have better risk to reward because you're going within the trend more profit better win rate because of this too so what you want to do is um set up those triggers and we
could talk about that later basically if the market triggers you can set alerts on trading View and get alerted for this if it breaks a new high you know if the low down here breaks you could get alerted and then
that way you can not stare at the computer and just wait for your alerts to hit and we'll be talking about risk to reward in a second but the setup I want to talk about today is NVIDIA and Nvidia hit kind of what we trade with
this strategy perfectly and you can see inside the Discord we call it the 50 FIB opportunity basically Nvidia ran up made a new high which is exactly what we want a new high which is exactly what we want so low to high we look for that 50% Mark
so low to high we look for that 50% Mark to hit and so the key is you want to follow these steps next and this would be the criteria next and this would be the criteria number five that is validating the trade
so while we hit the 50 FIB for NVIDIA it's not good enough to just be buying in instantly you have to validate every single trade before you take it using this simple criteria we teach this to all our coaching students and if you
want to apply for coaching hit the link below in the description we take on three to five students every so often often total we try to take on 15 per year and this is a one-on-one mentorship program to help you learn a strategy and
a way to create passive income with options so now on to validation if you want to validate the trade the first thing is to measure your risk to reward using this criteria you want to make sure you enter no at the
505 if possible drag your profit Target to the high of the move and then your stop loss move it to a 2 to one and I always tell our Traders the stop has to be underneath the low of the 618 or the low of the wick that happened
recently so this Wick and the 618 are fully cleared by the stop we are underneath it so this is a perfect 2 to1 trade to take and what we're looking for is next candle confirmation this is where you don't want to be buying in the
first candle you want to be buying in the second third fourth fifth the more candles that support the level the better you'll be for having this trade better you'll be for having this trade hold and then run and then lastly
managing your risk once the trade starts moving you want to make sure that you move your stop loss to break even or start taking profit at the risk off level so risk off is the middle of the move to the highs or the middle to
profit anytime you hit Midway just make sure the trade never goes red you guys see me scalp on YouTube all the time for free I'm always moving my stop up or telling traders to risk off at a certain point of every trade and we never shoot
for some crazy high level because we want to make sure that we make money and want to make sure that we make money and don't let it disappear so you can sell some but ideally you want to let it run to the highs and then let some winners
run over if that's the case in scenario so going back to Nvidia we have the second candle holds and again I would be taking the trade around the second third candle this guy's up 20% in the Discord because of it and then there's the third
candle Runner so at this point trade's perfect there's at four or five candles on the 3 minute and if you can use the 5 minute or the 10-minute chart that's
better and then here we start seeing the move materialize so we want to try to hit the high and I want to show you what's going to happen here we can see Vince is upside 75% on this one play and this is pretty dang close so we're about
two points from the high on Nvidia um using this strategy here so what you want to do is take some profit move your stop up in this scenario then you don't want to let anything go red when it's moved that much so if I go here and
moved that much so if I go here and start playing this you can see that the start playing this you can see that the Nvidia play setup again 3 minute chart and then boom We start running on these candles and then there's risk off you
don't want to again let this trade go red so I move my stop up to break even just to make sure that trade triggers for uh break even so no money lost and this on thinker swim is relatively easy you just Trail up your order and drag it
up and it's a oneclick thing so this is a mid trade management thing but you want to kind of manage the trade as it's going properly and this is just more so managing your downside and and starting to scout out if you can so at this point
this is fully moved and I don't think this is going to be hitting the highs so this is one scenario where the highs were never hit but you could still taken money and and gotten out for a profit and so what you want to do in the
markets and I'll show you my step-by-step process here well look at the dump for here on spot yeah it's crazy man Market just just nuts right now if we had let's see this this
opening run here we broke over the high of the day for spy right there and this is where we have the ability to Trend and so once you have the ability to Trend those zero day options can pay a
ton if you can enter within Trends sometimes you get the all day move where it can move 1,000% so right here I'm going to start setting up the TR trade because we broke the high so I take my 50 fib and I draw
it and we can see we hit the 50 FIB on this candle unfortunately you know you might have missed it like this candle did not give you a second candle support you know did not give you an easy entry because if
you throw up your risk to reward what you're going to see is that the long position here if you put the profit Zone up there your stop loss down low um you have to get in on this candle or else it's not a 2 to1 trade you want to make
sure your Stop's always under the 618 always under the candle low and then the next candle kind of just rips so you could enter on that candle but you can
see it kind of just went straight to take profit within two two or three Candles there so this trade continues to go over unfortunately but that's exactly
how I would be setting up the trade when this stuff is happening and so lastly what we're going to see is that we do enter the 50 FIB later in the day and enter the 50 FIB later in the day and you could try to go in again here on
this 50 Fib so this trade what I would do is just wait for your second candle do is just wait for your second candle to confirm move your take profit to up high there and your stop loss 2 to one which is way down here this is a really
healthy trade if you were to get in you want to make sure again next candle holds but you want to make sure you have this level here the risk off level marked CU there's no point in letting the trade run up here and letting it go
red so if you were to get in again this candle holds boom you get in third candle holds boom you get in third candle and you just try to run this up okay that was actually the last candle of the day but you can see that
we hit risk off so most most Traders look at this and they're like Matt W would have lost money but if you hit your riskof level that means you shouldn't have lost money because when you hit risk off you move your stop up
so this trade we typically either scale profits there or just move our stop up or do a combination of both and because this was end of the day uh that was kind of a crazy last candle but whenever you see any type of Trend in the market
you're just looking for your disc level to hit and then just waiting for those candles to confirm um let me see if I have any good Trends here to show you kind of what we'd be looking at but like this one here this is a pretty good
morning Trend honestly so there's your low and then new high gets broken so looking at high of day that's a clear break of high of day and if I go back break of high of day and if I go back here start planning out the
candles this this would be your measurement tool so hit your 50 FIB low to high and you're just trying to get in at the 50 Fib so perfect there risk to reward going to be stacked in your favor stop loss 2: one so right there at that
point you're just trying to run it up to the highs risk off level needs to be marked and a needs to be respected you need to respect it when it hits risk off so at that point three candles later your R off and then boom
you just aggressively start taking profit here and you have the ability to let runners run if you want so again this PDF is free if you just comment the word small I will send it right to you in this YouTube video appreciate you
in this YouTube video appreciate you guys watching this this is a huge huge there and I'm going link a video to the right of me and how you can actually sell options with the poor man's covered call with small accounts for passive
income that's going to be insane peace out Traders have a good day