Strategies · Lesson 06 of 14 · Lab
The short straddle
A short straddle sells the call and the put at the same strike, keeping the credit if the index finishes near it. On 22 September 2026 the NIFTY 23,450 straddle collected ₹99.35 with breakevens at 23,351 and 23,550 and no cap on the loss beyond them. The index closed at 23,329 and the position lost ₹21.85.
NIFTY weekly expiry, 22 September 2026 · MarketCue one-minute option-chain capture
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Prices captured at the open on Tuesday, 22 September 2026. NIFTY spot at the open: 23,460. The highlighted row is nearest the money.
NIFTY closed at 23,329, down 131 points from the open. Sold 23,450 CE at ₹64.50 → settled ₹0.05. Sold 23,450 PE at ₹34.85 → settled ₹121.15. Net loss of ₹21.85 per unit, or −22% of what was put up. This was the expiry, so those closing prices are settlement values.
The maximum gain is known on entry
Selling both legs at 23,450 brought in ₹99.35. That is the most the structure can ever make, and it is collected immediately. Everything after that is the position giving some of it back.
The loss beyond either breakeven grows point for point with the index and has no bound in the structure. That is not a tail risk in the statistical sense; it is a property of the payoff, visible as the two lines running off the chart.
What it did, and what that does not prove
The index closed at 23,329, twenty-two points beyond the lower breakeven, and the position lost ₹21.85 — about a fifth of the credit.
A 131-point session producing a modest loss is worth stating precisely because it is the ordinary case rather than the dramatic one. The structure’s risk is not that most sessions go badly; it is that the distribution of outcomes is many small gains against occasional large losses, and one session shows neither tail.
Switching to the iron condor replaces the open-ended loss with a defined one: a ₹41.50 credit instead of ₹99.35, and a maximum loss of ₹58.50. On this session it lost ₹29.30 against the straddle’s ₹21.85 — worse on the day, bounded in the cases this day did not contain.
Common questions
What is a short straddle?
Writing both sides at one strike. The whole gain — ₹99.35 on 22 September — arrives on entry, and the session is spent giving some of it back. Past either breakeven there is nothing in the structure that bounds what can be lost.
How much can you lose on a short straddle?
There is no limit in the structure. Beyond either breakeven the loss grows one for one with the index, which is why writing requires margin that can be called intraday.
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Written and maintained by MarketCue research · Updated 9:30 AM IST · 23 October 2026
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.
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