I am not clear on your actual goal and in order to understand you should provide more precise info on what you are doing and why, or else it's difficult to say anything.
Usually, I work with investors, who, in practice, find ways to not pay any taxes at all, and therefore my concern is to make as much $$$ as possible, and not mix the trading approach with the tax concerns. Also because losses and DD are usually negligible (<5%).
Anyway, talking of pure theory, about the trade you are contemplating, since you mentioned about 2 weeks duration, take for instance the available strikes for short-term options. If you have problems with data you may take for instance momentarily the quotes from Barchart or other similar website:
View attachment 300196
I am receiving the same quotes directly on my platform, so I can take them from there:
View attachment 300195
Now, you can clearly see that if you sell (ITM)
PUT 4080
CALL 3990
you get this payoff:
View attachment 300193
if instead, you sell (OTM)
CALL 4080
PUT 3990
you get this payoff:
View attachment 300194
So, as has been already pointed out by two posters (getthatintoya, TheDawn), in any case, you get a "risk equivalent" strangle (but slightly more convenient OTM).
But the spread values are as follows:
ITM
ES FOP 20221209 3990 C CME 50 E-mini S&P 500 [EW2Z2 C3990, 592160444, mult: 50]
ES FOP 20221209 4080 P CME 50 E-mini S&P 500 [EW2Z2 P4080, 592312679, mult: 50]
Spread values: $25
OTM
ES FOP 20221209 4080 C CME 50 E-mini S&P 500 [EW2Z2 C4080, 592312694, mult: 50]
ES FOP 20221209 3990 P CME 50 E-mini S&P 500 [EW2Z2 P3990, 592160462, mult: 50]
Spread values: $12.50
(Not sure why would one consider this basic configuration as low risk and why you say that one leg would be "covering the other part". Probably I am missing something.)
Paper trading execution is generally accurate on IB. Sometimes in real money trading, one can get slightly faster or more favourable executions.
it’s an arb. WTF are you showing independent payoff diagrams?
I told the OP on page 2. I knew it was a tax strategy and there are only two people on this thread that know what they are talking about.
