How to stage your options trades for higher returns

Some options trades require you to complete the structure in two steps. 

Whereas you don't want to "leg" into intra-commodity spreads, you might consider that a strategy for your butterfly or condor trades. 

Instead of putting on a long butterfly all at once, many traders we've worked with are buying call spreads, for example, and then after the market moves selling the call spread above it to complete the butterfly. 

This doesn't work 100% of the time, and sometimes you just offset the vertical spread. However, sometimes is does work and you can take advantage of the flexible nature of options to carve out your Reward to risk profiles.