Wiki Selling TSLA Options - Be the House

[bonk3125]

Tell me if what I am thinking of doing makes sense

I had 75 BCS -c1100/+c1200 for 10/29 this am which were in trouble as the stock spiked. I panicked a little, and rolled them out to -C1150/+c1200 for 11/12 at the worst possible time when the stock was at its peak at a debit. I realized later that I should have been rolling up the +c1200 to 1250 or higher, but didnt think it through at that time.
Anyways, later when the stock dropped, I closed out the -C1150 for a small loss.

Now I still have 75 +c1200 for 11/12 which are showing a big loss as the stock dropped further after that. If I simply close them out tomorrow, I will probably have a large loss enough to wipe out last few weeks of gains.

So I am thinking to converting this to a call debit spread. I have already spent the money on purchasing the +c1200, why not add short calls at -c1250 or so? I entered the numbers in Fidelity margin calculator and it does not seem to affect my margin as I already have the long calls.

Is there a better strategy to try? I am only trying to minimize my losses on the long calls at this point.

I don’t have any experience with call debit spreads, but the googling I did seems like an OK way to get back a little premium with -1250c since your +1200c is already a sunk cost. If we stay below 1200, you at least get the -1250c premium. If we’re between 1200-1250, your -1250c premium is yours to keep and the 1200c has improved. Never thought about this before. Very interesting. Thanks for the direction.

Question. Why didn’t you close the -1150c and +1200c as a multileg? Were you planning on doing this debit call spread? Or hoping for another sharp spike up?

Thanks.

 

[MindOverMatcha]

Saw this opinion article on how the spike was caused by gamma squeeze, which I understand. I don't understand what they are trying to say about Friday though. Are they saying that market makers can start selling some of the shares they had to buy Monday? If so, I see that as downward pressure the rest of the week. Here is the confusing part:

To Kochuba at SpotGamma, while Monday’s options activity helped push the stock higher, the boost is getting shaky. For one, the cost of options has become more expensive. Plus, more than 30% of dealers’ gamma exposure is expected to drop off upon Friday’s expiration, meaning hedges will be forced to adjust quickly in coming days.

“I believe that creates a vacuum for higher but unstable stock prices,” he said.

In regards to what Market makers are doing, it can be hard to predict what their intentions are. From my understanding, they just respond to the trades happening. Even if they had ulterior motives, it's hard for me to imagine them taking the reigns with such high volumes.

This is a guess, but the big institutions jumping in know something big is going to come. With the Whales jumping in making waves, retail is probably just following and MMs are just responding. Many factors like TSLA getting upgraded a credit rating step below "investment grade", 14-month record call buying, Morgan Stanley price upgrade over the weekend, and 60+ million shares being traded are strong enough to indicate collusion of many forces. Something smells big. People are buying in OVER 1,000 because they're scrambling to get ahead of something. For this near term, we have Berlin and Austin coming online soon. Not sure if the factories opening has been acknowledged, unless some new governmental approvals are coming into the horizon.
From the article below regarding call buying:
More than 2.4 million bullish contracts on Tesla changed hands Monday, a 14-month high, as traders rushed into speculative wagers to reap quick gains. The most-active contract, the $1,000 call expiring Friday, soared to $39.34 from $1.60 -- for a single-session gain of about 2,360%. Investors spent $5.11 billion on call options, compared with a total of $279 million on puts, according to an estimate by Nomura Securities. The firm calls the 18-to-1 ratio “unheard of.” And all the spike in calls means options dealers needed to snap up shares to avoid unwanted risk.

Source: How a 2,360% Jump in Call Options Fired Up Tesla’s Share Surge

This reminds of the times before Shanghai came online, stock split, S&P inclusion, etc. Can't recall exactly, but I feel like a gamma squeeze played a big part in the 2019 run up too. Post split it was about a run-up from 80 to 200.

The low today was 1001 and bounced right back up. Even with all the craziness, we're only down....0.63%. I've never bought long calls and this may be a poorly timed buy for them, but I pulled the trigger after wishing I did for the past week. The Street may know things happening in the near future. That said, I have heard of others selling their long call options to avoid any sort of stagnation that may come the rest of the week.

Obviously, not investment advice as my long call buy at this time is more of a lotto ticket that I'm happy to see go to zero, just to rid myself of the FOMO.

 

[euro2012]

If you believe the direction of the stock will not change, it could limit the damage if you get out of the short leg, but keep the long (or bought leg). Its a bit risky depending on how much theta is left, and volatility. In EV Forevers case, if I am not mistaken, it was worst case scenario where they got out of the short leg at the high of the day, and then the stock price reversed making the bought calls worth less and less. I thought of doing this yesterday with my 1000/1100 BCS, but chickened out and ate the loss as a whole instead.

 

[st_lopes]

Saw this opinion article on how the spike was caused by gamma squeeze, which I understand. I don't understand what they are trying to say about Friday though. Are they saying that market makers can start selling some of the shares they had to buy Monday? If so, I see that as downward pressure the rest of the week. Here is the confusing part:

To Kochuba at SpotGamma, while Monday’s options activity helped push the stock higher, the boost is getting shaky. For one, the cost of options has become more expensive. Plus, more than 30% of dealers’ gamma exposure is expected to drop off upon Friday’s expiration, meaning hedges will be forced to adjust quickly in coming days.

“I believe that creates a vacuum for higher but unstable stock prices,” he said.

I believe the theory is that the holders of now ITM options will be closing their positions later in the week. As they close those positions MMs will sell shares to remain delta neutral resulting in downward pressure in stock prices. My understanding is that is the primary reason as to why squeezes typically come crashing down.

 

[vikings123]

Saw this opinion article on how the spike was caused by gamma squeeze, which I understand. I don't understand what they are trying to say about Friday though. Are they saying that market makers can start selling some of the shares they had to buy Monday? If so, I see that as downward pressure the rest of the week. Here is the confusing part:

To Kochuba at SpotGamma, while Monday’s options activity helped push the stock higher, the boost is getting shaky. For one, the cost of options has become more expensive. Plus, more than 30% of dealers’ gamma exposure is expected to drop off upon Friday’s expiration, meaning hedges will be forced to adjust quickly in coming days.

“I believe that creates a vacuum for higher but unstable stock prices,” he said.

Market makers will try to stay delta neutral as much as possible. Dealer’s gamma exposure is mostly talking about delta hedging by market makers. As we get closer to expiry market makers will sell shares seems to be claim. While this is true in theory, it does not seem to account for options that were bought for future expiry dates. Market makers will want to stay delta neutral for those especially the ones that are ITM.

I looked at the highest premium call option trades for today and you can see from the screenshot below that there was a lot of ITM call buying for Jan 22 and beyond. If this continues this week you could make the argument that market makers will need to buy more shares. Nobody knows for sure. Paging @generalenthu in case he has any insights.

 

[buttershrimp]

The SP is doing exactly what I expected, but I was chicken because I just couldn't afford to be wrong. $2M+ down the toilet for nothing, and the 900/850 BPS are potentially going to be a problem real soon.... F'ing awesome.

well if it is any consolation, I look forward to the day I can experience that sort of cowardice with my portfolio.... it means I've grown it nicely.... until then, I'll keep learning to be more patient, less brave and less stupid. btw.... cowardice is a compliment in case my humor sucks as bad as my option skills

 

[buttershrimp]

PSA- Be careful rolling.

I lost 90k last week by fat fingering a roll. Which blew a month of profit in an instant. As much as people tell you that rolling a position is a separate discrete action... this is not quite true. I spent hours the previous weekend mapping the planned roll, getting valuable feedback from folks much wiser than me.

But when bullets were flying, you still have to execute it right.

Execution risk is the worst type of learning error to make and some positions can't be modeled with smaller positions.... in fact, quite the opposite. When I've rolled in the past, it has worked perfectly. But a credit spread roll that has gone significantly against you and swelled your paper loss, should not be executed in two separate steps unless you are really doing it properly... shutting down the initial position without opening the new one on the same ticket means realizing the loss, which means.... less money available for the newly established position.

Another method I plan to use in the future is to establish a 5 contracts first on the next week before shutting the bad postition down.... and then I've effectively set up an airlift to the transfer to the new position. Once there.... I can deploy a neighboring BPS on the new position.

I also learned to call the broker rather than getting flustered and shutting whole position down. Pulling the ripcord when you aren't sure why things aren't working can be smart as a rule.... just make sure you are out of the airplane first. (I guess I'm going with flight analogies for this post).

 

[mickificki]

This has probably been posted in the other forum that shall not be named, but there’s a chance it may affect tsla stock/options tomorrow.

https://twitter.com/x/status/1453175045593964547

 

[adiggs]

Tell me if what I am thinking of doing makes sense

I had 75 BCS -c1100/+c1200 for 10/29 this am which were in trouble as the stock spiked. I panicked a little, and rolled them out to -C1150/+c1200 for 11/12 at the worst possible time when the stock was at its peak at a debit. I realized later that I should have been rolling up the +c1200 to 1250 or higher, but didnt think it through at that time.
Anyways, later when the stock dropped, I closed out the -C1150 for a small loss.

Now I still have 75 +c1200 for 11/12 which are showing a big loss as the stock dropped further after that. If I simply close them out tomorrow, I will probably have a large loss enough to wipe out last few weeks of gains.

So I am thinking to converting this to a call debit spread. I have already spent the money on purchasing the +c1200, why not add short calls at -c1250 or so? I entered the numbers in Fidelity margin calculator and it does not seem to affect my margin as I already have the long calls.

Is there a better strategy to try? I am only trying to minimize my losses on the long calls at this point.

NOT-ADVICE

I have no particular opinion on the specific trade you're describing. What I do have is an observation - when rolling or otherwise managing a position, I want to enter a new position that I would have entered without the roll, or a position that I consider to be enough better than the one I'm leaving that it's an upgrade. There has to be something about the new position I like better.

So one thought about this particular position - do you have any experience with call debit spreads?

On the face of it, it looks like a great idea. You're already in for the long calls. Are they already max losses, so the premium from the new short calls are a straight offset? Would you be better off just eating that last loss and starting over with strategies you already have experience with?


And I guess a last idea - whatever you do with this position - this sounds like a great trade to setup at small scale and get some experience with this as a management technique. I kind of like the idea of selling options 2x against a single set of long options Whether its actually a GOOD idea or not - I dunno.

I am trying to figure out a recovery plan and how to improve my strategy. So far I am thinking about selling aggressive CC since I am ok with losing my shares above $1000 and I can just do the wheel in my pretax accounts until I feel the stock is about to take off again. I am planning on reducing the amount of cash that I use for spread and do not increase it after profitable weeks since I am just trying to generate income and I am not in the accumulation phase anymore. Will the stock get more volatile? 10% OTM was working fine for a while but I wonder if should go 15% OTM until the stock settles. I am also going to split my trades in at least two days and reduce the number of accounts in which I trade spreads because it makes it difficult; what to do with unused cash on other accounts? I am also going to try to not let losses go to more than two weeks of the typical premium collected and close the trade when that happens..... this depends on how many days I have to expiration. Any thoughts?

NOT-ADVICE

I've thought about rolling and other management strategies. The observation I have for you is that your baseline recovery plan is to go back to doing what you've been doing and that's been working well for you. How many previous weeks (months!?!) did you lose? You might find that there isn't anything to recover from - you've just had a loss that WILL come around now and then. If the loss is the last month of premiums, then maybe don't do anything different. Learn what you can from this time, and don't try to dig yourself out rapidly.

After all - the first rule of holes; when you find yourself in one, stop digging.

A question that I ask myself regularly when contemplating a trade, as I am also into the land of income rather than accumulation; is this consistent with dividend like income? When I ask myself that question, it's invariably because I already knew the answer, and I stop doing what I was thinking about doing


The aggressive cc might be exactly the right play for you. But do it because it fits within the larger strategy - not because you need something higher risk / higher reward. I've done the higher risk / higher reward thing in one of my retirement accounts, and succeeded in concentrating most of my larger losses in that account. (No tears though - it's also now the biggest account; just that it COULD have been even bigger).


I do have a thought as well about compounding the cash being used on spreads. The closer we are to using all of the cash on spreads, the more that we do not want to compound. The problem with putting all the new cash to work in a larger and larger spread count (position size), is that one bad week / one max loss, and you just wiped yourself out (except for the premium). This is .. bad.

 

[M3Rider]

...

Definitely learning that I don’t enjoy managing BCS at all, whereas I seem unphased by the prospect of indefinitely rolling CCs. Human brains are a weird thing.

Indefinitely rolling may not always be an option.
I can roll up ~$20/week with no credit, but imagine the SP goes up $50-100/week. So far, we're catching up on Q3 results.

In the not so far-off future we may have significant progress on FSD, which may trigger another re-evaluation.

This catch up game may take like a year in the worst case or until the next market correction.

And don't forget someone random may exercise your ITM calls at any time and force you to pay taxes at your effective rate. That would be the end of rolling. The reason I know is I've done it myself and planning to exercise a bunch more calls before the expiration when I have the cash. Probably, this is more applicable to DITM calls than just ITM.

Anyway, I was thinking in the worst case scenario if price starts running away from you by hundreds, I may have to roll to the max DTE, max strike, like 01/2024 $2050, get the extra cash one last time and prob 60% more at the exercise strike and that's it. You may get like 50% SP compared to current and be forced to pay 50% tax compared to nothing, so that's a pretty sad outcome of TSLA ownership.The 2 year leap gives a chance to catch a market correction and maybe improve the position, so there's that.

-----
My story of screwing myself up today:

Had 9 unrolled 1000ccs for this week and at 1090 I gave up. I'm looking to sell them by EOY, but thought selling @1000 is stupid if I can roll to next week to 1020 given the current SP...

So, I bought them @95 and was planning to sell 11/5 1020. Except my app defaults to 'Buy' button, which I consistently forget to change to 'Sell' under stress, so I bought 9 more calls @90. In a minute it took me to figure out what happened since my cash did not go up and another minute it took me to consider what to do now - SP was dropping like a rock... I decided recovery was not an option, so sold @60 and took @30*9=27k loss in 2 minutes. Then I realized I still had the 900 shares that I just bought back @95 = 85,500 and with SP hovering aroung 1045 I figured I no longer have any good roll options.
So, sold 10/29 1050 CCs @30, which gave me back $27k, I'm ok whether these exercise or not at EOW, but this is a freaking $85k loss on a laughable 9.00 calls just because the *sugar* broker defaults the Buy/Sell button. This is my highest loss because of it so far. Until now it was limited to $500-2000 per occurence.

However, if I can recover my CCs from here sitting at 1030/1050 on the next 3 weeks I wouldn't be too upset about this outcome. Just need the stars to align

 

[generalenthu]

Saw this opinion article on how the spike was caused by gamma squeeze, which I understand. I don't understand what they are trying to say about Friday though. Are they saying that market makers can start selling some of the shares they had to buy Monday? If so, I see that as downward pressure the rest of the week. Here is the confusing part:

To Kochuba at SpotGamma, while Monday’s options activity helped push the stock higher, the boost is getting shaky. For one, the cost of options has become more expensive. Plus, more than 30% of dealers’ gamma exposure is expected to drop off upon Friday’s expiration, meaning hedges will be forced to adjust quickly in coming days.

“I believe that creates a vacuum for higher but unstable stock prices,” he said.

Just looked into this. By my calculation, the gamma expiring this week is closer to 20% now. Haven't looked back how this compares to historical numbers, but that doesn't seem unusually high.

I do agree that a good chunk of the ownership today is coming from options. These numbers (172 million as of close) are a good bit higher than the highs we have seen in the run up to 900 in early q1 in the page I track here.

There are 2 counter points though. A lot of this exposure is coming from farther dated options (22 and beyond) which is a good thing. Secondly I suspect there's more spread trading going in Tesla than a year ago, significantly inflating this metric.

So I am leaning towards a hypothesis that there are unlikely to be sharp drops, unless there's a sudden dump from Elon, which seems improbable.

Time will tell. I am light on all BPS with only a 860 short for this week.

 

[Tslynk67]

You don’t think that drop from 1095 to 1001 wasn’t substantial? For me that was the big drop. I think we stay above 1000$ this week.

I don't really count intra-day swings as that meaningful, but what do I know

But I do think what we saw this week was a clear Gamma squeeze

I'm itching to put some capital to use, but don't trust this week, might start sniffing for some "safe" spreads for next. Don't know...

 

[Tslynk67]

Tell me if what I am thinking of doing makes sense

I had 75 BCS -c1100/+c1200 for 10/29 this am which were in trouble as the stock spiked. I panicked a little, and rolled them out to -C1150/+c1200 for 11/12 at the worst possible time when the stock was at its peak at a debit. I realized later that I should have been rolling up the +c1200 to 1250 or higher, but didnt think it through at that time.
Anyways, later when the stock dropped, I closed out the -C1150 for a small loss.

Now I still have 75 +c1200 for 11/12 which are showing a big loss as the stock dropped further after that. If I simply close them out tomorrow, I will probably have a large loss enough to wipe out last few weeks of gains.

So I am thinking to converting this to a call debit spread. I have already spent the money on purchasing the +c1200, why not add short calls at -c1250 or so? I entered the numbers in Fidelity margin calculator and it does not seem to affect my margin as I already have the long calls.

Is there a better strategy to try? I am only trying to minimize my losses on the long calls at this point.

OK, I'm still wet-behind-the-ears with spreads, but haven't you got this back-to-front? Normally the short leg is closer to the money than the one leg, you have the converse - to make a profitable spread out of it you'd be looking to sell c1100, etc., which I don't think anyone would advise right now for 11/12 expiry

What I would consider is a calendar spread, selling short strikes for this week against those calls, maybe c1100's are "safe", don't know, hopefully these expire and then you do the same for next week, then the same the week after that

This is how I understand things - someone shot me down if I'm wrong

 

[InTheShadows]

So far, we're catching up on Q2 & Q3 results.

FTFY

 

[vikings123]

I don't really count intra-day swings as that meaningful, but what do I know

But I do think what we saw this week was a clear Gamma squeeze

I'm itching to put some capital to use, but don't trust this week, might start sniffing for some "safe" spreads for next. Don't know...

Fair enough. TSLA always fills gaps so you have that going for you

 

[Chenkers]

Tell me if what I am thinking of doing makes sense

I had 75 BCS -c1100/+c1200 for 10/29 this am which were in trouble as the stock spiked. I panicked a little, and rolled them out to -C1150/+c1200 for 11/12 at the worst possible time when the stock was at its peak at a debit. I realized later that I should have been rolling up the +c1200 to 1250 or higher, but didnt think it through at that time.
Anyways, later when the stock dropped, I closed out the -C1150 for a small loss.

Now I still have 75 +c1200 for 11/12 which are showing a big loss as the stock dropped further after that. If I simply close them out tomorrow, I will probably have a large loss enough to wipe out last few weeks of gains.

So I am thinking to converting this to a call debit spread. I have already spent the money on purchasing the +c1200, why not add short calls at -c1250 or so? I entered the numbers in Fidelity margin calculator and it does not seem to affect my margin as I already have the long calls.

Is there a better strategy to try? I am only trying to minimize my losses on the long calls at this point.

If you don't think we're going past 1200 by 11/12 and just want to limit losses on the +c1200 then turning it into a debit spread sounds reasonable. You limit the upside but also recoup some premium. If you think there's a chance we pass 1200 then you could leave some of the +c1200 without a matching -c1250.

OK, I'm still wet-behind-the-ears with spreads, but haven't you got this back-to-front? Normally the short leg is closer to the money than the one leg, you have the converse - to make a profitable spread out of it you'd be looking to sell c1100, etc., which I don't think anyone would advise right now for 11/12 expiry

What I would consider is a calendar spread, selling short strikes for this week against those calls, maybe c1100's are "safe", don't know, hopefully these expire and then you do the same for next week, then the same the week after that

This is how I understand things - someone shot me down if I'm wrong

What's contemplated here is to make a call debit spread (long option but capped) instead of the usual BCS.

 

[tradenewbie]

This week 40 X BCS (-1000/+1100) pretty much rip all of the income I generated from BCS/BPS (since I started trying few weeks ago), as well as all covered call premium I generated this before trying BCS/BPS.

Usually I only sell BCS on Tue/Wed for the same week expiry because I want to see how price action goes first, then pick a OTM strike with $1 premium. However, last thursday/friday I saw the premium of -1000/+1100 can generate $1 premium and there's no way the SP can shoot over 10% this week esp 900 was the previous ATH and there have been no pull back after ER so I pulled the trigger. (The BPS premium was so bad as I tend to choose a safe strike <700, so I opened more BCS instead)

I have read comments here before and need to roll to the following week (max strike even no credit) when SP starts getting close to short leg (and last chance to roll is before the SP hits the mid-point of the spread). On Monday I started getting nervous when the SP gets over 980 but still strongly believe it won't hit 1000 as this must be the magic number if not 900. After it hits 1000 and keep on going, I was extremely nervous but still decide not to do anything because my experience told me this extremely strong momentum in one day will not last and would pull back later in the week, and also the BollingBand / RSI shows extremely overbought and never see this high number before (my original plan was to wait until thursday/friday to close so the cost of closing is much less if the price stays in low 1000). Yesterday I saw the pre-market is also getting pull back so I believe I was right. I was still a firm believer until I saw the price keeps going after the market open and it run to 1050->60>70>80->90. At that moment I was totally shocked and not sure what to do. And thus when the SP started dropping to 1050->40->30->20->10, then I close all my BCS immediately at each interval instead of rolling as I thought it won't help much to roll to next week anyway because the strike won't improve much at all. After closing all BCS, I then sell BCS -1200/+1300 for around $1-1.5 when SP gradually jumped back to 1020->30->40

I have been extremely conservative since I started playing BCS/BPS and chose only far OTM strike (eg. around $1-1.5 premium/contract). This is really painful and I wanna try to avoid this from happening ever again. I am confused about few things:

1) Should I choose the strike more aggressively every week to overcome the failure like this week? I was very conservative so the premium I generated each week was only $1-1.5/spread and one massive hit like this week has already wiped everything.

2) To look back, one effective solution is to close the short leg immediately and let the long leg keep running in order to minimize the loss. However, we are no psychic and it may hurt even more.

3) I am amazed about how Yoona save his position with 0 net loss but I am also confused about the steps Yoona did

4) At the end of the day,
a) would it be better to wait (and do nothing until later in the week), or
b) just to follow the rule and roll the position to next week immediately (for max strike and no credit) before SP hit the short leg (eg. if short leg is 1000, we roll immediately when SP hits 995)? And if SP continues to hit the new short leg already for next week, we roll immediately again to the following week?, or
c) Take the loss as early as possible? (if so, how early?)

5) I am still thinking how to recoup some of my loss this week....

 

[Yoona]

3) I am amazed about how Yoona save his position with 0 net loss but I am also confused about the steps Yoona did

my pre-hertz IC was suddenly -526% and still dropping fast

when faced with a huge loss, my fave/normal 1st reaction is to press the nuke button (ie take the loss and move on)

but i remembered that 3-4? times in the last 2? months, Mondays gave a false head fake (ie the week is too early and this may be a temporary problem)

so i decided not to nuke

in summary, i
1) moved my IC to next week; the goal is to give me more time to fix the problem
2) adjusted the bcs higher (from -c1000 to -c1020); the goal is not to make $ but to get out of the way
3) adjusted the bps higher (from -p800 to -p850); the goal is to make $
4) added more bps (-p850); i felt this was ok since 20% OTM
5) added more bcs but at higher strike (-c1100); this is the riskiest move since only 10% OTM
6) added more bcs but at higher strike (-c1300); i felt this was ok since 30% OTM
7) used all the credits in #3-6 to close the -c1020 bcs of #2

the new 11/5 IC is 10-30% OTM with better range; layered bcs is heavier than bps because all the good prems are on the call side

depending on the sp move, gradually make the IC range narrower to squeeze out more credit

10/29 -c1300 CC will refund me the commissions/fees

 

[traxila]

my pre-hertz IC was suddenly -526% and still dropping fast

when faced with a huge loss, my fave/normal 1st reaction is to press the nuke button (ie take the loss and move on)

but i remembered that 3-4? times in the last 2? months, Mondays gave a false head fake (ie the week is too early and this may be a temporary problem)

so i decided not to nuke

in summary, i
1) moved my IC to next week; the goal is to give me more time to fix the problem
2) adjusted the bcs higher (from -c1000 to -c1020); the goal is not to make $ but to get out of the way
3) adjusted the bps higher (from -p800 to -p850); the goal is to make $
4) added more bps (-p850); i felt this was ok since 20% OTM
5) added more bcs but at higher strike (-c1100); this is the riskiest move since only 10% OTM
6) added more bcs but at higher strike (-c1300); i felt this was ok since 30% OTM
7) used all the credits in #3-6 to close the -c1020 bcs of #2

the new 11/5 IC is 10-30% OTM with better range; layered bcs is heavier than bps because all the good prems are on the call side

depending on the sp move, gradually make the IC range narrower to squeeze out more credit

10/29 -c1300 CC will refund me the commissions/fees

Even after the explanation I am still amazed at what Yoona did . Maybe one day I can qualify as a NEWBIE trader. I should be so lucky.

Will make the observation that you seemed to be unfazed by your losses as you worked out a solution. Which means the money does not mean anything to you (and it should not. It is just money!). But it also means that you are always level headed as you attack the problem. That would put you in the category of expert money maker. Funny how that works. The people that make the most money are usually the ones who care about it the least. Just ask Elon.

OK, how do I learn to figure out if people are talking about bull or bear call or put spreads? All I see is BPS and BCS over and over. I know one gives you a credit and the other doesn’t but is there something I am missing in the acronyms to be able to read faster?

 

[Drezil]

If your portfolio is effectively all TSLA, interestingly I found Regular T Margin is more helpful than Portfolio Margin.
Did you happen to ever do the comparison?

I had RegT with ibkr UK before Brexit. Then they force moved me to Ireland and switched me to portfolio margin.
I had a virtual margin call of twice my account volume before the switch, because margin was calculated so different.
Can't go back. Even called them about it.