"ooh the 1 week 2 delta calls are still juiced"
June 25th.. a quaint time when $tsla was in its infancy under 1000.. the nightmare begins with the Jul 2 1200 call for .96cr
June 29th.. Jul 10 1360 calls still juiced at 1.20cr, we can fade another 30% rip in the next week right?
June 30th.. rips to 1100.. things are heating up. bought Jul 2 1170/1180 call spread for .94db, a pretty cost effective way to move my breakeven out to ~1210
July 2nd.. expiration day- rip over 1200, and looked like it was holding at perfection ~1190.. a 2nd pop over 1200 spooked me , closing original 1200 short and the call spreads
- bought 1200 back at 9.75 (879 loss)
- sold 1170/1180 call spread @ 8.80 (786 win)
And now needed to flatten the next week out- bought Jul 10 1320/1340 call spread @ 1.55db and 1.85db to flatten deltas going into the 1360, giving us an actual profit range from 1340 - 1360
And of course i'm a degenerate and also sold the Jul 10 1700 call .94db since we are so vertical.. (did I learn my lesson at any point here?)
July 6th.. casually ripping through 1300, the 1360 main short looks treacherous.. I added probably the biggest cost adjustment ever here, bought Jul 10 1350/1500 call spread @19.20, basically swapping the uncovered strike from 1360 to 1500, flattening deltas but actually adding downside risk. Now my profit zone is around 1340 to 1500.
July 8th, middle of the week,not even expiration.. we had 2 days of $tsla basically 'stabilizing' at ~1400.. we found a fair market price! It looks like almost all theta came in, putting me green on the whole position. I waited a few hours seeing if I could get any theta, and did the responsible thing and took off the main positions.
- sold the shifted 1350/1360 , bought back the 1500c
- closed the long 1320/1340 @ 15.05cr
With all this, locked in a profit on the Wednesday before expiration. I looked over to my trusty double barrel shotgun with mouth attachment.. "not today friend"
After doing my weekly $tsla bedside prayer "Dear god, if you see me through my $tsla options this week, I promise I'll never short again", I thought this might be the final one, we are entering such astronomical insanity that it probably should double next week given some higher dimensional geometry/analysis.
All that being said, did I learn my lesson? Well shortly after closing the main positions.. next week caught my eye , Jul 17 going up to 2100c for 2.16cr...
I don't plan to just list option trades all the time but given the $tsla action this week I almost wanted to journal for myself as in a vacuum without planning,correct sizing, or adjustments, the 'opening' trades would have been:
- Jul 2 1200c .96 -> 9.75 (10x against me)
- Jul 10 1360c 1.20 -> 43.09 (35x against me)
These would be absolute undisputed suicide numbers, optionsellers.com highlight reel stuff.
The most important part about surviving such insane shipwrecks... keep sizing correct! Survival is because you had a plan going in, surviving doesn't mean you can go back in next week twice as hard. Its not like weightlifting/ progressive overload. Yes account sizes go up and overall size increases, but percentage sizing should stay flat or go down!
