Wiki Selling TSLA Options - Be the House

[MindOverMatcha]

Sold bps today soon after market open:
-1100/+900
-1050/+850
-1000/+800

These are now around 50% profitable.. if I can buy these back near market close for less than 50% I will. It's decent for one day

I live vicariously through you!

 

[CHGolferJim]

My condolences. It's painful to part ways and accept the losses. But better to cut the losses now before it gains further. A lot of trading is psychological and pivoting to different methods depends on emotional and cognitive flexibility. TSLA is a beast and as bullish as I am, I'm still just sitting on my hands. I want to sell puts and put spreads, but I know mentally I may not be able to handle the unease. This is my way of "taking a vacation".

Buying back into TSLA or selling puts can generate enough gains to make for these losses in the next few weeks. Crazy to think we may break 1200 today or tomorrow.

Thanks, part of what provoked today’s action was seeing the cost more than double in the past week and worrying about the downside of another $100+ in SP rise. The potential for big news on Austin, Berlin or 4680 any day just shook me. Still have shares and LEAPs to make it back, just tough to swallow that bitter pill.

 

[MindOverMatcha]

Thanks, part of what provoked today’s action was seeing the cost more than double in the past week and worrying about the downside of another $100+ in SP rise. The potential for big news on Austin, Berlin or 4680 any day just shook me. Still have shares and LEAPs to make it back, just tough to swallow that bitter pill.

Absolutely, the catalysts for these next two months are staggering. I'm going to have a dance party when Giga Berlin comes online. Austin will be the biggest factory (building?) in the world! When I watch the drone videos over the rooftop, I imagine how fun (and tiring) running on top of the roof will be. TSLA also undersells and over delivers so these catalysts may come earlier than expected, particularly the 4680s. Hopefully, after a few days, the pain will subside and you can enjoy the bull run. I know my body and mind became much healthier after exiting my losing CCs. Not having my adrenaline and blood pumping like a sprinter at 1 AM has made me much happier and healthier,

 

[LightngMcQueen]

You lose the time value on the contracts. For example, your $1,000 call will be worth more than $151 (assuming stock price at the time is $1,151). By exercising early, you lose on the "time" part of the option.

And you loose interest on the amount equity that is required to exercise and buy shares today.
Since your cost is fixed by Call Strike price, the cost of exercising your shares will be the same now and later, why spend cash up front ?

 

[buttershrimp]

Prediction for real this time.... Price is going to drop.... maybe not today, maybe not tomorrow, but soon, and pretty substantially.

 

[vikings123]

I personally think selling CCs right now is insane. This SP movement is unnatural and could just keep going up. You may win on those but IMO it is absolutely not worth the risk.

I have to disagree. You should be looking to sell CCs precisely because this SP movement is unnatural. I just sold 15X Dec 17 1500 for 20$ each. I mean even if it gets there I will happily let go my 1500 shares @ 1500.

 

[ZeApelido]

I sold 11/5 $1180 CCs on 1/2 of my taxable account shares. At this level I just don’t care if they are sold, this is an amazing ROI and money I’ll need to buy a house soon.

 

[pz1975]

I have to disagree. You should be looking to sell CCs precisely because this SP movement is unnatural. I just sold 15X Dec 17 1500 for 20$ each. I mean even if it gets there I will happily let go my 1500 shares @ 1500.

Right but he/she was asking about 1,200s for this week. Doing the equivalent last Monday with a similar pattern of SP movement resulted in a wipeout for many here.

I sold 1500 CCs for this week on Friday and am fine with those but that's as close as I would go right now.

 

[LightngMcQueen]

I personally think selling CCs right now is insane. This SP movement is unnatural and could just keep going up. You may win on those but IMO it is absolutely not worth the risk.

Would you say the same about Mar 22 $2000 CC ?
Those are roughly $18 today.

The main risk is if FSD would go live, then there is on upper bound on SP, because nothing like that has happened before.

 

[vikings123]

Right but he/she was asking about 1,200s for this week. Doing the equivalent last Monday with a similar pattern of SP movement resulted in a wipeout for many here.

I sold 1500 CCs for this week on Friday and am fine with those but that's as close as I would go right now.

My bad.I agree with not messing around with anything close to the money especially for this week.

 

[traxila]

Huge volume indicating a short term blow out top?

Question with TSLA is how long is short term

 

[pz1975]

Would you say the same about Mar 22 $2000 CC ?
Those are roughly $18 today.

The main risk is if FSD would go live, then there is on upper bound on SP, because nothing like that has happened before.

I would sell those if I was okay with selling shares at that price. But yeah that's a nice return for a crazy high market cap ($2 trillion)!

 

[DurandalAI]

Wow - thank you for sharing.

This is the risk we take by selling options against our resources. We're trading potential access to big gains for access to steady short term returns now (that can also go bad!).


I also had 3500 shares at one point that my CC on them went deeply ITM. I had to roll them out to Sep 2022 to get enough time value to get the CC OTM. I rolled out to $4200 ($840 post-split) and then thankfully cleared out those CC about 1-2 months back. Thankfully / lucky.

But I've also been in income mode, so the opportunity cost if I hadn't updating the position to clear the $840 strike CC wouldn't have hurt in the way you've been hurt.


It's cold comfort, but telling your story will hopefully help at least 1 other here avoid that outcome. Because its real. The closest thing I have to advice on this for others - if you're still accumulating then use a portion of your resources for this activity, with a significant focus on learning this and experiencing a range of good and bad conditions. By focusing on the learning, you are in effect training yourself for your retirement income activity. But that also means you have most of your resources accumulated for the big purchases (such as retiring).

Yeah, normally I would have rolled them over but the spike was so high that I didn't have enough money to buy back my calls to roll them forward by the time I saw how much it had spiked. I just hoped it would go back down enough temporarily to bring the cost of the calls back below my cash balance level, but it didn't. By time the options exercised, I couldn't buy as many back. Meh.

 

[samppa]

Sold bps today soon after market open:
-1100/+900
-1050/+850
-1000/+800

These are now around 50% profitable.. if I can buy these back near market close for less than 50% I will. It's decent for one day

Aand everything closed and bought back. Went closer to 75% profit.
And omg what a close!

 

[scubastevo80]

This is getting a bit nerve racking, but I'm glad I wrote that BCS at 1350/1450 (~25% away). I guess I shouldn't complain if this goes to full loss, as I'd be making 10x that amount on my long equity positions. Nevertheless, do you guys roll your BPS upwards on a day with a huge jump in price?

 

[Cherry Wine]

I'm not sure there's a strike price in existence at which I feel comfortable selling calls for...I'm shook. I'm thinking $1500s expiring 11/5...maaaybe?

 

[buttershrimp]

Prediction for real this time.... Price is going to drop.... maybe not today, maybe not tomorrow, but soon, and pretty substantially.

Record RSI, shall I buy some calls to start the correction?

 

[juanmedina]

Record RSI, shall I buy some calls to start the correction?

I started selling my shares... it is probably going to go to $1500 now

 

[Cherry Wine]

On the plus side, pretty sure I'm not going to have to recognize any net realized short-term capital gains on my taxes this year.

 

[pz1975]

Captain Obvious here but this spike into close and AH climb again all but guarantees (IMO) a spike at/after open tomorrow. As I did Friday, I bought OTM calls just before close today. Rinse and repeat I guess!