It does not matter when you close your position. In fact, it’s the same problem when you close your position as when you open it. At the end of the day, you are either buying or selling your options above and below fair value or you are not. No amount of trickery can get around this. There is no edge in putting on iron condors every month if you are not modeling volatility. There is nothing you can argue about this. Getting out early is not an edge! Selling 5 delta vertical spreads is not an edge. Even if you go way way way out of the money....that is not an edge! Your ability to close a position early. This is a zero sum game and you are trading against professionals. Do you really think having a pulse and an internet connection is the path to financial freedom?
There is no problem with legging positions but once you do that you become a directional trader. No issues with that either but then one's long term success will be a function of their directional trading skills. And if you are so good at legging, whether it be legging in or legging out, then why not trade the underlying? There are a million ways to trade options; iron condors simply have the most negative edge of all of them. It's analogous to Keno in a casino. Keno has the highest negative edge of any casino game but it's the most fun to play, especially for older people. Iron condors are the same way. At the end of the day, when you trade options, you are either trading volatility or direction or some combination of both. You are not trading time or theta. If you even have the slightest bit of success legging your positions, you will have a far better risk to reward structure just scalping a few pennies in the SPY a couple times of month or trading pure gamma.