Chapter 04 of 6 · 14 lessons · Lab
Strategies
Every lesson in this topic is the same lab with different legs. Build the structure on a chain that actually traded, read the payoff, and see what the session did to it — including when that is unflattering.
A strategy is several option legs held together, and its payoff is the sum of theirs. What changes between one structure and the next is the shape that sum makes: where it is flat, where it slopes, where it stops, and whether it stops at all.
Three properties decide everything, and all three can be read off the legs before any money moves. Whether the structure costs a debit or pays a credit. Where its breakevens sit. Whether the loss past them is bounded by a bought leg or is open-ended. An unbounded structure is not automatically worse than a capped one, but it is a different kind of commitment, and nothing else about the payoff tells you which you are holding.
All fourteen lessons are built on one recorded chain, NIFTY's 22 September 2026 expiry, and that is deliberate: priced off the same session, comparing two structures compares the structures rather than two different days. It also makes the chapter honest about something strategy pages usually avoid. The index fell 131 points that afternoon, so the bullish structures lost and the bearish ones paid, and each lesson says so.
By the end of this chapter
- Build any of fourteen structures and read its payoff before you commit
- Work out a breakeven, a maximum gain and a maximum loss from the legs alone
- Recognise which structures carry an unbounded loss and which are capped
- See what each one did on a session that actually happened, including when that is unflattering
The lessons
In order, though each one stands on its own.
Common questions
Which option strategy is best?
The question has no answer a page can give. Each structure is a different distribution of outcomes, and which one suits a position depends on facts about the holder that no page knows. These lessons state what each cost, what it could make, what it could lose, and what it did on one recorded session.
What is the difference between a debit and a credit structure?
A debit is paid on entry and is usually the maximum loss. A credit is received on entry and is usually the maximum gain. The bull call spread and the bull put spread express the same direction in those two forms: on 22 September 2026 the first cost 104.00 rupees and the second paid 13.10.
Which structures carry an unlimited loss?
Any with a written leg not covered by a bought one further out. Among these fourteen, the short straddle, the short strangle and the naked written call and put are unbounded beyond their breakevens; the spreads, the condor and the ladder are capped by their long legs.
Written and maintained by MarketCue research
How these figures are produced
Every price on these pages was traded on the exchange and is read from our own option-chain capture, which records the NIFTY and SENSEX chains once a minute through the session. Each page names the session its figures come from.
Figures that a model produced rather than the market — the Greeks, implied volatility — are labelled as model outputs wherever they appear, and never presented beside traded prices without saying which is which. The pricing is checked against published reference values on every change.
Where our own data cannot support a claim, the page says so instead of generalising. MarketCue is not a registered investment adviser, research analyst or broker under SEBI regulations.