It seems options traders have to wait until the expire friday before closing their trades. My long butterfly of the QQQQ open last month was not profitable until yesterday. And then suddenly, it gave me the maximum profits had I waited until the market close! Funny game!
It depends on what you are trading. Sometimes I have put option positions (Strangles and Straddles etc...) on due to specific events in the underlying and the longer you would have held the less profitable that position would have become. It all depends and that's the beauty of options and the reason I have found I can't live without them. Options to me are like the transition of art from cave paintings to the Impressionists, so much more depth and interest when one takes the time to educate themselves and learn truly what options are really about! Congratulations on a successful trade and I hope there are many more in your future. Keep exercising all your options!
That's what happens with butterflies, they will only start showing a profit (assuming the stock is in the sweet spot) in the last week before expiry, in fact the most of the profit is achieved in the last 2-3 days as that's when the time decay really kicks in, and butterflies need time decay. So, it really depends on the strategy whether you have to wait till expiry or not, with butterflies you do, with long calls you don't.