re: Can you sell calls to establish a short position?

We're going to start today, day two of the proposed trade, down almost 50%, with SPY premarket up another .5%.

We're assuming the trade is still alive, based on yesterday's open and close, but that's a stretch as yesterday during trading the premium got as high as $1.30, against premium sold for about .89, which is extremely generous as the option actually was under .30 on Friday. But we're trying to give every benefit of doubt that the trade is still ongoing, and hasn't been blown up. Yet.

So the easiest thing to do is look at open and close, but that's not even close to what one would need to do on a naked call. This would presuppose the option doesn't get exercised during the day, which when you have a spread between premium collect and current premium such as we had intraday yesterday, this could have very well been exercised already.

My credit spread for the same short position by the way would be down only marginally, and the maximum loss is still capped at $2,500. But we're not close to there yet. On the proposed trade, we have an entirely different set of circumstances, and so far on day two, it's not looking very good.