Question 1

Is this investment advice?

Accepted Answer

No. This portal does not provide financial advice by any means. Everything here is education and analytics only. We don't know your finances, goals, or risk tolerance, and we never personalize. Every trade you place is your decision and your responsibility. If you're unsure whether options trading is right for you, consult a licensed financial advisor before risking real money.

Question 2

Who runs this site?

Accepted Answer

SPX Insights & Analytics is operated by Infinity Global Solutions (IGS), an analytics and integration firm. We are not a broker-dealer or a registered investment adviser. The platform is a research and education product — nothing more.

Question 3

What are the risks of trading options?

Accepted Answer

Options can lose 100% of premium paid (for buyers) or substantially more than the initial credit (for some seller strategies — though credit spreads cap losses). Time decay, volatility crush, gap moves, and assignment risk can all destroy profitable-looking positions. Past performance — including the trades we surface here — is no indication of future results. Trade only with risk capital you can afford to lose entirely.

Question 4

What is SPX Insights & Analytics, and is it for me?

Accepted Answer

A research platform for SPX options traders — daily credit-spread ideas, live gamma context, weekly covered-call screens, and same-day replay. If you're learning options or already active, you'll get value. We don't sell signals or tell you what to trade — we surface data clearly so you can decide. Free tier covers a lot; paid tiers add live data + advanced views.

Question 5

Do I need to be a pro to use the portal?

Accepted Answer

No — but you should be comfortable with the basics (calls, puts, strike, expiry). If you're brand new, start with the Options Basics tab below, then come back. We're a research tool, not a teaching tool, so we assume some baseline familiarity.

Question 6

How do I get started after signing up?

Accepted Answer

You land on the dashboard. The daily briefing tells you what happened yesterday and what to watch today. From there: browse the spread feed (Ideas), check gamma context (Context), or scrub yesterday's session in replay. Free tier covers most pages; paid unlocks live data on top.

Question 7

Can I cancel anytime?

Accepted Answer

Yes. Day and Week passes auto-expire — no action needed. Premium is month-to-month with a 7-day free trial; cancel anytime and you keep access through whatever period you paid for. No retention games.

Question 8

What's a call? What's a put?

Accepted Answer

A call lets the buyer purchase a stock at a chosen price (the "strike") on or before a chosen date ("expiry"). A put is the opposite — the right to sell at the strike. Calls profit when the stock goes up; puts profit when it goes down. You can also sell calls and puts, which flips your role and risk profile entirely.

Question 9

What's a credit spread?

Accepted Answer

A two-leg options trade where you sell one option and buy another at a different strike to cap your risk. You collect a small premium upfront. If the market stays on your side by expiry, you keep the premium. If it doesn't, your max loss is fixed and known before you enter — that's the point versus selling a naked option, where losses can be unlimited.

Question 10

What's the difference between ITM, ATM, and OTM?

Accepted Answer

In-the-money (ITM) — the option has intrinsic value (calls: stock above strike; puts: below). At-the-money (ATM) — strike equals the current price. Out-of-the-money (OTM) — no intrinsic value yet; only "time value," which decays as expiry approaches.

Question 11

What does 0-DTE mean?

Accepted Answer

Zero Days To Expiry — an option that expires the same day you trade it. SPX and a handful of ETFs offer 0-DTE every weekday. Popular because trades play out in hours, not weeks — but also volatile: time decay (theta) accelerates dramatically in the final hours, and small moves can swing P&L wildly.

Question 12

What's "theta decay"?

Accepted Answer

The rate at which an option loses value over time, all else equal. Theta accelerates as expiry approaches, especially in the final day. Option sellers benefit from theta; option buyers fight it. Credit-spread traders sell premium specifically to harvest theta.

Question 13

What is a covered call?

Accepted Answer

Selling a covered call means you make a commitment to sell 100 shares of a stock you own at a specific price — the strike price — by a specific date (the expiry). For making that commitment, you get paid up front. That payment is the premium, and it's yours to keep no matter what happens next.

At expiry, one of two things happens. If the stock stayed below the strike, your commitment expires unused — you keep your shares and the premium. If the stock rose above the strike, you follow through and sell at the strike. This is called being "assigned," or having your shares "called away." You still keep the premium, plus the gain from your original purchase price up to the strike — but you don't get anything above the strike.

Question 14

What's the strategy on this page specifically?

Accepted Answer

The page lists weekly covered calls on uptrending stocks where the strike sits close to the current share price. The return shown is the premium you collect divided by what you'd park (100 shares × current price). The setup expects the stock to keep grinding higher and your shares to get sold at the strike by Friday — assignment is the planned outcome, not a failure mode. You walk away with the premium plus whatever gain you got from your purchase price up to the strike, then redeploy that capital into next week's screen.

Question 15

Will my shares actually get called away most weeks?

Accepted Answer

Yes — on most picks here, that's the expected ending. Because the strike sits near the current price on stocks already trending up, there's a high probability the stock closes above the strike by Friday. Don't pick these names because you want to hold them — pick them because you're OK selling at the strike for the return shown. Next week, screen again, deploy capital again.

Question 16

What's the catch?

Accepted Answer

Three things to know going in.

Capped upside. If the stock rockets past the strike, you don't get any of the move above it. You sold that upside in exchange for the premium.

Real downside. Weekly premiums are small (often 1–3%). If the stock drops more than that, your position is still underwater — the premium just softens the fall, it doesn't undo a real drawdown.

Slippage matters. The headline return uses mid prices; real fills come through the bid/ask spread, and brokers charge per contract. On low-premium tickers, that can eat a meaningful chunk of the return.

Question 17

What do I need to start, and what does "Min Inv." mean?

Accepted Answer

You need to own (or buy) 100 shares of the underlying stock for each call you want to sell. One options contract covers exactly 100 shares. That's why the Min Inv. column shows current share price × 100 — it's the minimum capital you'd park to write a single covered call on that name. The screen formats it in shorthand: whole dollars under $1K, then $K and $M from there.

Question 18

How do I read the columns, and what do the Beta / Earnings / Ex-div flags mean?

Accepted Answer

Each row is one stock. Left to right: Ticker with a small 3-month price sparkline beside it (green = up over the window, red = down). Beta — how much the stock swings vs the broader market (β = 1 tracks the market, < 1 is steadier, > 1 is more volatile); the Volatility tabs at the top let you filter to a band. Spot — current share price. Min Inv. — capital to write one contract (spot × 100). Then three or four columns for upcoming Friday expiries — each shows the return % (premium ÷ spot) and the premium in dollars; higher return usually means a more volatile stock or earnings nearby, and both are also risk signals. Earnings — next earnings date if known; amber when it falls within 28 days, because earnings can gap the stock unpredictably mid-trade. Ex-div — next ex-dividend date if announced; a red dot on an expiry column means the ex-div falls before that expiry, and an in-the-money call can be exercised early so the buyer captures the dividend — meaning your shares may be called away ahead of expiry.

Question 19

What is SPX?

Accepted Answer

SPX is the ticker symbol for options on the S&P 500 Index, which tracks the 500 largest U.S. publicly traded companies. When you trade SPX options, you're trading the collective movement of those 500 stocks — not any single company. We focus on SPX because it offers an ideal combination for income strategies: broad market exposure without single-stock risk, deep liquidity, cash settlement with no assignment surprises, European-style exercise, and favorable Section 1256 tax treatment.

Question 20

Why SPX instead of SPY?

Accepted Answer

Same underlying (S&P 500), but different contracts. SPX is cash-settled (no surprise share assignment), has a larger contract size (~10× SPY, so fewer trades for the same exposure), and offers same-day expiries (0-DTE) every weekday. Cleaner mechanics for credit-spread traders. Tax treatment is also different (Section 1256) — worth Googling before you trade.

Question 21

What's "cash settlement"?

Accepted Answer

At expiry, SPX options settle in cash, not shares. If your spread expires in-the-money, the settlement is a single cash debit/credit — no stock delivery. This eliminates assignment risk on expiry morning, which is a common headache with SPY and other ETF options.

Question 22

What's "European-style" exercise?

Accepted Answer

European-style means an SPX option can only be exercised at expiration — never early. This eliminates the early-assignment surprises common with American-style stock options (like SPY) where the holder can choose to exercise any time before expiry. For credit-spread sellers, this is one less thing to worry about.

Question 23

When do SPX options trade?

Accepted Answer

Regular session: 9:30am–4:00pm ET (6:30am–1:00pm PT). 0-DTE options settle at the 4:00pm ET cash close. After-hours and extended sessions exist for some SPX products with thinner liquidity.

Question 24

What's "Section 1256" and why does it matter?

Accepted Answer

SPX options qualify for Section 1256 tax treatment — 60% of gains taxed at long-term capital gains rate, 40% at short-term, regardless of holding period. For active traders, this beats the all-short-term treatment on SPY or individual stocks. Talk to your accountant — we are not tax advisors.

Question 25

What is Gamma Exposure (GEX)?

Accepted Answer

An estimate of how much hedging the market makers on the other side of options trades need to do at different price levels. When GEX is positive, dealer flow stabilizes price — it pins near big strikes. When negative, dealer flow amplifies moves — small moves trigger bigger ones. GEX doesn't predict direction; it predicts regime (mean-reverting vs. trending).

Question 26

What are Call Walls and Put Walls?

Accepted Answer

Strikes where call (or put) open interest is unusually concentrated, creating outsized hedging activity if SPX trades through them. Call walls often act as resistance. Put walls often act as support. They're not magic — but on quiet days, price frequently respects them.

Question 27

What's the Flip Line?

Accepted Answer

The price level where dealer gamma flips from positive to negative (or vice versa). Above flip = stabilizing regime. Below flip = trending/amplifying regime. Crossings of the flip line often coincide with volatility regime changes, which is why we surface it prominently.

Question 28

Does GEX predict direction?

Accepted Answer

No — and anyone selling "GEX-based signals" is misusing the data. GEX is context. It tells you what kind of day it might be, not which way price will go. Direction still depends on news, volatility, liquidity, and price action. Treat GEX as one input among many.

Question 29

Why does price sometimes pin near a strike?

Accepted Answer

Near expiry, concentrated option positioning creates hedging flows that can stabilize price around heavily-traded strikes. Most visible on monthly OPEX (third Friday) and 0-DTE afternoons. Pinning is not guaranteed — it breaks when volatility expands or positioning rapidly shifts.

Question 30

How often does the data update?

Accepted Answer

Live pages refresh every 15 seconds during RTH (6:30am–1:00pm PT). The marquee and sector strip refresh every 5 minutes during RTH, 15 minutes after-hours. Free users see spread data 30-min delayed; paid tiers get it live.

Question 31

What's the difference between live and delayed data?

Accepted Answer

"Live" = the price you see is from the past minute (sometimes less). "Delayed" = 30 minutes old — still useful for learning the patterns and structure, but you can't trade off it in real-time. Most paid finance products work the same way: free = delayed, paid = real-time.

Question 32

What's the Replay feature?

Accepted Answer

A scrubbable timeline of yesterday's full session — gamma walls, flip line, and spread feed, frame by frame. Useful for studying how a day played out. Free users get yesterday's replay. Paid users also get today's, available shortly after the cash close.

Question 33

Why do some pages say "Available after market hours"?

Accepted Answer

Replays of an in-progress session are noisy and misleading. During RTH we hide them and route you to live tools instead. As soon as the cash market closes, replays unlock.

Question 34

What's the difference between Day Pass, Week Pass, and Premium?

Accepted Answer

Same features, different durations. Day Pass — $1.99: 24 hours. Week Pass — $14.99: 7 days. Premium — $49.99/month: month-to-month, 7-day free trial, cancel anytime. All three unlock live data, gamma context, full screener, and replay.

Question 35

How does the 7-day free trial work?

Accepted Answer

When you start Premium for the first time, you're not charged for 7 days. You get full access immediately. Cancel before day 7 and owe nothing. After day 7, you're billed monthly until you cancel. The trial is once per account — only the first Premium signup gets it.

Question 36

How do I cancel?

Accepted Answer

Settings → Plans & Billing → Cancel Subscription. Cancellation takes effect at the end of your current paid period — you keep access until then. Cancel during the 7-day trial, and access ends immediately with nothing owed.

Question 37

Can I get a refund?

Accepted Answer

Generally no — payments are non-refundable since you got access the moment you paid. If something is clearly broken on our end (sub created in error, duplicate charge), email support@spxinsights.com and we'll handle it. Day and Week passes can't be refunded once activated.

Question 38

How do I update my card or change plans?

Accepted Answer

Settings → Plans & Billing. Update your card, change billing cycle, or upgrade/downgrade from there. Changes apply at the start of the next billing period.

Frequently asked questions.