The flagship Skew lesson showed one data point: sell puts at 2%/week and accounts collapse even while the typical month reads about +9%. This lesson sweeps the whole curve — weekly return target from 0.25% to 3%, a couple of hundred simulated 2-year accounts at each step — and reveals a hump: median wealth rises with the target, tops out in the low fractions of a percent per week, then falls steeply.
The mechanism is that a return target is a knob on your distribution, not just your income. Higher targets force closer strikes, shorter dates and bigger size, and the loss tail grows super-linearly while the premium grows linearly. Past the hump, every extra point of ambition buys more tail than income.
Over-aggression is hard to self-diagnose because the feedback flatters you: the typical month stays exactly on target while the realized average — typical month minus the tail tax — sinks and eventually goes negative. Eight green months is what the losing configuration looks like from the inside.
The defenses are pre-commitments: a written return-target ceiling derived from the math rather than from a hot streak, and a cap on the percent of the account committed to short premium. Both are decided in calm weather because they bind exactly when a winning streak argues loudest for more size.
Educational, not investment advice.