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The easiest way to grok the fact that all options including multi-leg variants like iron condors are a scam is to first understand that any spread is just a combination of single option trades. You sell a call, buy a call, sell a put, and buy a put, so a spread is just a composition of simple buying and selling of single position. That much is obvious. Now consider who you are buying from and selling to. Who is on the other side of those 4 trades? The market maker. An individual who is a professional at making money at your expense who has the expertise, technology, insight, and algorithms to make that happen. None of the single legs of your spread individually have any edge in your favor no matter the strike price, expiration date, or underlying. At best you'll have close to a break even expected value but it will always be tipped at least slightly against you. No option market maker is going to take the other side of a trade where the expected value is not in his favor. And it doesn't matter if you buy or sell because spreads make it such that the trade will only execute when the trade is not in your favor. Do the work and calculate the expected value of any option in the order book and you will see this is true. So if a hypothetical iron condor is composed of 4 legs and all 4 of those legs individually have negative expected value what would make you think that by composing those legs suddenly the expected value is positive? Nothing should because the EV is actually negative. All spreads including calendars, iron condors, jade fucking lizards, verticals, diagonals, etc. have negative expected value. And it doesn't matter if you exit the trade early or let it go to expiration. If you exit early you are now taking one trade with negative expected value and turning it into two trades with negative expected value since the EV is negative both on the open and the close. In short options are a scam and if you win for an extended time you are lucky and should quit
