Thursday is a difficult time for my options trading because the sweet spot I am typically looking for is an expiration 10 to 15 days away. That means the timeline is close enough for volatility on the day to day, to make measurable impact on the options price, but far enough away to where there is still plenty of time-value. On Thursday the weekly expirations are 1 day out, and 9 days out, so the time-value starts to evaporate quicker, and it's easier to get torched when momentum swings the other way.

Last week my Thursday and Friday burned the gains made earlier in the week because geopolitical volatility took me by surprise and because the time-value decayed much more rapidly on my options. Today the plan of action was to not screw myself over!

Exiting a position when you are pretty sure it could get better is really quite difficult. Reviewing the trading log I entered and exited puts against Tesla (TSLA) multiple times in their slide. I could have made more money, but I could have also reversed any gains quite quickly. The volatility of Tesla makes it difficult to find the right exit, especially given the propensity for Elon Musk to do everything in his power to goose the hype train just a little bit more.

The rally that Tesla experienced after the stunt at the White House was very predictable. A fair bit of Tesla's stock movement operates on the greater fool theory and despite having absolutely lousy business fundamentals, quality, and deliveries somehow Tesla still trades at an incredible premium. I believe Cathie Wood is a shrewd investor but snapping up more TSLA on the belief that they will ever deliver autonomous driving is pretty insane to me. I think ultimately Waymo and/or Chinese EV companies are going to eat Tesla's lunch, the greater fool theory and preferential treatment (corruption) from US policy are the only hopes for Tesla investors who believe that the company is competitive in the automotive or the autonomous markets.

When the conditions look right, I will continue to bet against Tesla without getting too emotionally involved. I think the company is lousy, I think the CEO is a charlatan, but I recognize that facts have less to do with the share price compared to most other equities.

Log

• Nothing other than the Intel (INTC) news that came out after close yesterday to really consider going into the open today.
• I was expecting some energy from yesterday's rally to fade since there haven't been any real positive policy shifts, set up my pre-filled orders for a bunch of symbols I was expecting to carry momentum today:
  • Apple (AAPL)
  • Taiwan Semiconductor (TSM): there was some not-promising results from the overnight trading in Taiwan so I was thinking TSM would slide from their high yesterday, but I have been burned so before on the unpredictability of TSMC.
  • SMCI
  • Netflix (NFLX)
  • Nvidia (NVDA)
  • Tesla (TSLA): negative news yesterday didn't seem to ding them too much, despite the lousy performance the company has had, and the White House lawn stunt.
• Saw Shopify (SHOP) dip below $90/share and reshuffled things to pick some up to holder longer-term and bring my cost per share down. I really like the company and think they're a good choice for selling covered calls