To buy protective options or not to buy them ... that is the question (for me).
Now that I've actually seen "Buy the Rumor, Sell the News" in action, I have a better idea of what the phrase means with respect to "Rumor", since here on TMC, we see the "rumor" WAY WAY WAY sooner than Wall Street and other investors see the "rumor", usually, but not always (because they get the jump on us on NYC visible items). The "Sell the News" part is pretty easy to understand, since that is a discrete single timepoint. What they're saying is that everyone ELSE buys the rumors as East Coast/average public sees it, and that everyone ELSE sells the news when it is released. So, the smart play is to figure out when Big Money, New York, and Average Investor learns of the rumor, and be in a position to handle a rise (when they are buying), and then sometime during that process when it is high, handle it having risen, and then be ready to handle for others to sell when the news hits, not being in a position to be hurt by this, and then again when that has occurred and things are low again, to be in a position to handle a rise (of any type -- recovery, new valuation, whether lower or greater, etc.).
The hard part for me to understand that phrase was to understand who it was commanding, and what time it was commanding it. Now that I understand the timing of it, I can decipher who is doing what, and how I'm supposed to react in that phrase. I.e., the phrase describes the herd, not the proper action, and the timing is of the herd, not of the people trying to figure everything out. Of course, we ourselves are part of some herd, too, so we always have to second-guess even our own best understandings. But, essentially, it's saying, "They buy the rumor as and when they hear it and manifest it, and sell the news (exactly when the news is released essentially supposedly and in most practice), so you need to be in a position to either be ready for, not affected by, or take advantage of that."
Say I'm a huge Fidelity selling lots and lots of Calls and Puts, hoping that everyone hopes that whatever TSLA does, it goes way up AND/OR way down, so lots of people will buy lots of Calls and Puts, and then Fidelity uses their big position to hold the price in a narrow band, and doesn't have to pay out on those Calls or Puts, like what happened yesterday supposedly according to some interpretations that I read here and filled in my own example here. So, if I were to think oh good, this ER is going to make TSLA do something and I bought lots of calls and puts, then the big option callers could rake in a bunch from me. On the other hand, if I somehow hedged those ... I'm not quite that advanced yet, but maybe matching each one of mine with selling my own options? I'll have to take some days off from my day job for once and sit down and figure this out.
