How Safe Are Calendar Spreads?

A Closer Look at Calendar Spreads

What you are looking at is a 32 Day Out Calendar Spread constructed on the RUT. The point of this image is to illustrate just how risky this type of trade is. Notice if the market moves down 10% quickly, this trade will lose nearly 100%. Is this the type of trade you should be trading? Would you feel comfortable with $500,000 into this trade?  If you can't do it with that, then why do it at all?

Calendar Spreads are not scalable and therefore, they have no future in your portfolio if you plan to grow it over the years.