Short Straddle

### What is a Short Straddle? I'll be upfront: this is not a strategy for someone still learning risk management. You sell both an ATM call and an ATM put — maximum premium collected, because you're selling at the strike where options are most expensive. If the stock does absolutely nothing, you keep it all. But there's no wing protection here. A sharp move in either direction — a surprise result, a policy shock, a gap opening — can produce losses that dwarf the premium you collected. Traders who run this successfully treat it as an active-management strategy, not a "sell and forget" income trade.