falconview, you are sadly mistaken. I know way too little almost embarassed you said GURU. Maybe a NEWRU!
1 and 2.
I will give it a shot though. As far as making or losing 40c a trade, if that is someones strategy, it would have to depend on what the crdidt was in the first place. This would be a very conservative way to get out postions and take little losses, but also make smaller gains.
I have the strategy that if you are 80% of the gains (if you close the position you will be left with 80% of the credit you originally banked). The remaining 20% possibly not worth the risk.
If you had a credit of 80c to start, then closing it when you would lose 40c is along the lines of my strategy to close when it gets to 150% loss of the original credit. (if you were going to make 80c, close it when you would lose $1.20), but roll into another position which is what I am working on)
3.
I am not sure if that is exactly true. A position would start to lose money when the cost to exit is more than the credit you received. To be honest, I dont know exactly when that would be, but doesn't that depend a lot on volatility at the time?
4.
I have never done this or thought about it. I guess that if the market was going down and you had a bull put spread that was getting in trouble, you could buy a naked option to offset that. I am sure TJ can tell us how that would work. I dont know the details.
You must have a lot of pieces of paper on that desk!
Michael