I am searching the web for a good stand alone long/short options strategy or a dollar neutral long/short options strategy. I have 10K in equity and I am flexible when it comes to risk. My goal is to earn 3 to 5% return each month from intraday options trading, but I am not sure what derivatives I should be looking at. My general belief in the world is there will be a correction after the election and right before the tax cuts expire (around Dec 2012). Second, I also anticipate QE3 and a country or two to go bankrupt. I also think gold ETFs would be an interesting asset to look at and I am long natural gas, short technology. Does anyone have any suggestions on the different kinds of straddles I can use? Also, I want to backtest this strategy using Matlab. I am getting familiar with the platform and I am comfortable enough to try new tools to calculate return etc. Any direction or suggestion to make that possible would be great.