Social media has wrecked expectations about options returns. Every feed shows the 500% overnight winner; none show the ten blown accounts behind it or the survivorship bias baking the whole picture. An honest look at realistic options returns is less thrilling and far more useful.

The reality of the numbers

Sustainable trading returns are volatile and incremental, not smooth or explosive. Good traders have losing days, losing weeks, and drawdowns — even with a real positive expectancy. Consistent professionals think in terms of a solid percentage compounded over a year, not a double every week. And the leverage that makes 0DTE exciting cuts both ways: the same math that can produce a huge day can produce a huge loss, so returns come with real variance you have to survive.

Why the highlight reel lies

Three biases distort what you see: survivorship (you see the winners, not the many who blew up trying the same thing), selection (people post their best trade, never their account curve), and leverage confusion (a 500% option gain on a tiny position is a small dollar amount, but it screenshots like a fortune). The result is a wildly inflated sense of what's normal, which sets you up to over-risk chasing numbers that were never real.

Nobody screenshots the drawdown. The 500% winner is real; the account it lives in, and the losses around it, are the part you never see — and the part that determines whether you last.

Setting honest expectations

Realistic goals protect you: if you expect volatility and incremental compounding, a normal drawdown won't make you abandon a working strategy or over-leverage to “catch up.” Focus on a positive expectancy, disciplined risk, and compounding over time — the boring math that actually builds an account. NoVo makes no return promises and never will; it's a tool for executing your edge cleanly, not a money printer. Anyone who promises the highlight reel is selling the survivorship bias.