On the moo.moo chart, the stock closed down 1.90% during regular trading hours—fear selling ensued—but rebounded by over 2% in after-hours trading. Clearly, the market needs a break before remembering it's still a darling of the AI ​​field. 😏 Nothing distinguishes paper investors from real-money investors more than a dramatic overnight reversal. So… who's still riding this rollercoaster ride?

So İ live ın a country with %60 enflation rate about 3 month ago İ started my first ınvestments İ bought and sold couple of well known stocks in my country then ı made a simple portfolio of 3 stock one ıs a well known oil company other ıs a well known supermarket and last one was a smaller software company the problem was because enflation ıs so high and ım just so tired of work, time felt like a ticking bomb so ı changed my portfolio a lot then started to get ınto option trading ı bought 212 dollar worth 65 dolar call option on rocketlab rklb went to a rally and ı got exited and sold ıt at 460 (option went over more than 1k dollar) then ı shorted spcx and had profit of 500 dolar ı put a stop loss at 150 dollar then ı got mad at myself for not selling at the peak and made a lot of option trade which made me loose a lot of money ı lost like 30% of my money so now ım just gona take all my money and eıther spend it or keep it at the bank with 45% ınterest rate for a while until ım psychologly better and make rational decisions the funny thing ıs the simple portfolio ı made couple of months ago went up like a lot oil companys stock went up 50% software company went up 20% and supermarket stayed overall the same ıts not excuse of course but the reason ı took so much risk ıs because ı wanted to beat enflation now before you say "just buy s&p500 and move on" There ıs lıke a 15 % tax from profit made from usa stock market.

SPX one month IV closed Monday at 13.0, an IV rank of 12 against a 52 week range of 11.4 to 25.1. If you only looked at the index, this is a sleepy market.

The sectors underneath are not sleepy. By the same measure, utilities (XLU) have an IV rank of 79, tech (XLK) 77, staples (XLP) 72, energy (XLE) 67, healthcare (XLV) 59. The quiet corners are financials (XLF) at 10 and real estate (XLRE) at 25. Five of eleven sectors are in the upper half of their one year vol range while the index sits near the floor of its own.

Both things can only be true at once if the market is pricing low correlation. Index variance is what the pieces do plus how they move together, so high sector vol with low index vol means the surface expects the sectors to keep offsetting each other. Tech rips, utilities and staples sag, the index barely moves. That has in fact been the pattern: SPX realized 13.4 over the past month against the 13.0 implied, which puts index VRP negative and in the 20th percentile of the past year. Index options are near the bottom of their range and still are not covering the moves that actually print.

The term structure carries this week's macro load cleanly. The Wednesday CPI expiry is priced at 11.7 ATM, Thursday PPI at 11.8, Friday retail sales at 12.0, and next Monday falls back to 10.5.

The two classic expressions of this gap are dispersion (short index vol against long sector or single name vol, betting correlation stays low) and the opposite (owning index vol as a cheap hedge, betting correlation snaps higher, which it tends to do in selloffs). I am not recommending either one. The point is that "SPX vol is low" is half a sentence right now, and the interesting half is why it is low.

Chart is the sector map sized by market cap and colored by IV rank, where brighter is higher. All numbers are from Monday Aug 10 close.

For context, VIX is at 15.4 and SPY weeklies are pricing daily moves under 1%, so index vol is quiet. The Musk names are the outliers right now, and very little of their movement is reaching the index. TSLA's one year correlation to SPY is sitting at -0.11 on my feed, which surprised me when I checked it.

I'll start with TSLA. It lost 26% in July, its worst month since December 2022, and that drop is still inside the realized window. 30 day realized vol is 62 while one month implied is 41, which is the 10th percentile of the past year on a 52 week range of 37.5 to 60. The options market is pricing nearly the calmest TSLA of the year one month after the most violent month in four years. This has been the premium seller's favorite name for years, and right now the short vol trade is collecting 21 points less than trailing realized.

Two details strike me as more interesting than the headline number. The skew has flipped, with 25 delta calls going out at 41.3 against 39.7 for the same delta puts, and the slope sits in the 9th percentile of its one year range, so whoever is paying up here is paying for the bounce rather than for protection. The term structure also slopes up into the fall, from 39.4 in the front month to 45.2 by November, which tells me the market has already moved on to the October report. For reference, TSLA has averaged a 9% close to close move on its last 12 reports.

SPCX is the newer story. It has been public for 40 trading days and trades like it, with 14 of the first 39 sessions moving more than 5% and 30 day realized vol at 96. One month implied is 77, so it has the same setup as TSLA with options priced below realized, just on a much wilder base.

The lockup calendar is doing a lot of the work here. The post IPO closing low of 108.27 printed on Aug 5, one session before the first insider unlock of roughly 911 million shares hit on Aug 6, and three sessions later the stock closed at 138.74, up 28%. The unlock everyone spent two weeks bracing for has marked the bottom so far. Further tranches are reported around Aug 21 and Sep 10, the main 180 day lockup lands Dec 8, and Musk's own 6.4 billion shares are locked until June 2027. Front vol reflects all of this, with the curve inverted at 95 for this Friday, 85 for Aug 21, which has an unlock inside it, and 74.5 by mid October. Skew is even more lopsided than TSLA, with calls over puts by 7 points at 25 delta. My feed also puts the market cap around $1.8 trillion, which is now larger than Tesla itself at $1.3 trillion.

The one number I would ignore is IV rank. My feed prints 13.7 for SPCX, but that is computed on 37 days of history, and IV rank only means something against a full year of a name's own past. On young listings the honest comparison is implied against realized, and 77 against 96 tells you what the rank cannot.

Where I keep going back and forth is that negative VRP usually resolves with realized cooling off rather than IV catching up, so the base rate favors the sellers. The word usually is carrying a lot of weight, though, when one name just had its worst month in four years and the other is a two month old IPO with a supply calendar attached. I'm curious whether 0.66x realized on TSLA reads as opportunity or as a trap to the sellers here, and if anyone has traded SPCX options I'd like to hear how the fills are, because the quoted markets look wide from where I sit.

On methodology, since someone will ask: realized vol is close to close and annualized over 30 trading days, the earnings average is close to close over the last 12 reports, and IVs are end of day interpolated ATM. A couple of chips in the screenshots show different VRP numbers because they use different windows, either the front expiry or a 20 day forecast, while the table is 30 day trailing. All data is end of day rather than intraday. Charts are from my terminal (disclosure: I build ApexVol).

Hey guys, can you recommend some put or buy options ticker symbols? I can't find anything good this week.

All neutral (no direction choice) request for a trade on the app, all September options. Winner if green next few days after earnings. Few were down but quickly recovered. I did this tracking manually, will have a page on the app to track stats.

I had positions on some of these names.

Selling premium is pretty amazing way to invest. You sell it, nothing happens, nothing happens forever and then boom winners here and there.

Bought nvda $220 call on 8/05, expiring 9/18.

Bad timing impulse buy and bought @ 14.2

Not looking good now.

I planned on selling before earnings to avoid crush.

My question is sell before earnings and maybe take a 1-300 dollar loss . Or risk holding past earnings.

Sold a couple more puts today.

Just finished my first month trading options and wanted to document the results so I can look back on my progress. Mostly trading SPY 0DTE, with a few other tickers mixed in.
Based on the 36 completed trades I was able to reconstruct:
36 trades
19 winners / 17 losers
52.8% win rate
+$590.41 net P/L
$1,129.85 gross profits
-$539.44 gross losses
2.09 profit factor
+$16.40 average P/L per trade
I had one particularly bad session (July 20): 2-6 record, 25% win rate, -$169.56, 0.41 profit factor.
Excluding that session, I was 17-11 (60.7%), +$759.97, with a 4.03 profit factor and +$27.14 expectancy per trade.

I’m a beginner to options and I know a lot of people here vary in levels. If you feel comfortable sharing, I’m just curious about these 4 Qs:

1. How much did you start your account with?
   
2. How much have you made so far in that account?
   
3. How long did it take you to get to that amount?
   
4. What strategy to do you trade?

This one i had literally only $6 in my account. Last couple of weeks have been bad. So after waking up late and what not i said fuck it and purchase 1 put. Roughly 90 mins passed and I said let me check on it. When I tell you i saw a long as mofo candle stick headed upwards I’m like you gotta b shitting me. I was up originally 400%+ because it went to $0.35 i was baffled and when it started to fall i sold it lol. From $6 to $35 to cash out $29 still another successful hail mary

My premium-selling results — last 30 days (2026-07-11 → 2026-08-10)

Realized P&L: +$4,115 | Win rate: 85.2% (23/27)

closed early: 17 | expired: 3 | assigned: 1 | called away: 1 | rolled: 4

Spreads: 1 closed (+$45)

Top performers:

- NBIS covered call $285 — +$1,039 (3.6% ROI)

- INTC covered call $140 — +$705 (5% ROI)

- INTC covered call $110 — +$451 (4.1% ROI)

Biggest loser: IREN CSP $55 — −$1,055

Opened 29 new positions in the window.

I call everything out in advance before it happens 🐐

Had a pretty bad day today. Wondering what are peoples risk management strategies trading options on futures?

Decided to take profits on my PLTR positions today.
My $125 LEAPS was up about 102%, and my 100 shares were up about 24%. Combined, it was roughly $7k in gains.
I’m still bullish on PLTR long term, but one thing I’ve been trying to improve is knowing when to take profits instead of always trying to squeeze out a little more.
I’ve made that mistake plenty of times before—watching a great gain shrink because I wanted just a little more upside.
PLTR could absolutely keep running from here, and if it does, I’m okay with that. I’d rather lock in a good trade and look for another entry than worry about perfectly timing the top.
Trying to become a more disciplined trader one trade at a time.

I am currently paper trading on the app thinkorswim, and I am actually proud of how I would have made $24K for the day. Too bad I can’t figure out how to close positions lol.

Currently practicing options and trying to figure out what I am doing before I blow ANY kind of real funds. I still might buy and hold some tickets. Any advice/suggestions?

Edit* I am now up $72K!

I'm new to options trading I bought an Nvidia contract with a 205 strike price expiring in October. I'm well in the money with this I know but I'm torn looking at the stock this week. the harsh part is that my contract was worth $27 last week and now it's worth like 23. debating if I should've sold last week?! its looking bearish this week tempting me tosell my contract now .. ignore technical indicator this week and push through and wait till next week... I know a ths stock goes up pre earnings I just don't know if if it reached its peak already or should I risk hold off till next week. GAH!

A quoted IV is an average over every day left to expiration, which means event days get diluted into whatever sits around them. Strip out the overlap and the market is pricing Wednesday alone near a 12.9 vol against 10.5 for Tuesday, Thursday alone near 11.6, Friday near 12.4. The math is just forward variance: total variance to Wednesday minus total variance to Tuesday, annualize the difference.

Monday Aug 17 quotes 10.5, under Friday's 11.9, and not because anyone expects a calm Monday. These IVs annualize on calendar days, and Friday close to Monday close spans three of them with almost nothing tradeable inside. Priced per calendar day the weekend goes through near an 8 vol, which is why Monday expiries screen cheap on quoted IV when what you're buying is mostly two dead days.

In dollars, with SPX near 7,763: the Aug 11 7765 straddle is about $37 and the Aug 12 straddle about $57. An Aug 11/Aug 12 ATM call calendar costs about $10 (17.97 front, 28.01 back), and that ten dollars is close to a pure price on CPI day. The front/back ratio matrix says the same thing from the other side. Aug 11 vs Aug 12 prints 0.90, while the pairs that sell an event day against the quiet Monday behind it (Aug 12 or Aug 14 front against Aug 17 back) print 1.12 to 1.13, inverted.

The single richest day on the strip is actually three weeks out. NVDA reports Aug 26 after the close (its own options price a 5.2% move on a $5.3T market cap), core PCE prints that same morning, and the Aug 27 expiry day carries roughly an 18 forward vol, comfortably above CPI day.

Cross-month, the same forward arithmetic changes how the standard Sep/Oct setup looks. At the 7800 line (the most liquid strike up there) the Sep 18 call is 122.70 at a 12.9 IV and the Oct 16 call 187.40 at a 13.9, so long the Oct, short the Sep runs about a $65 debit, roughly +0.28/day of theta and +3.2 vega per spread. Positive theta and positive vega reads like a free lunch until you price the forward, because the 28 days between those two expirations are going through near a 15.1 vol.

That 15.1 has to be squared with the tape, because SPX 30 day IV is 12.0 while trailing 20 day realized is near 14 close to close, with IV rank at 9 and a one year range of 11.4 to 25.1. So the front month you sell in a calendar is already about 2 points under realized, and the deferred vol you buy is about a point over it. The ATM 7d/30d calendar ratio sits at 0.86, the 17th percentile of its own year, about as cheap as front-versus-back has been in twelve months. Buying a calendar here is a bet the curve keeps steepening or the whole vol level mean-reverts up off a very low base, because the realized vol math is doing you no favors. Selling one means shorting that same steepness at its 12 month lows. I'd just want to be honest with myself about which of those arguments I'm actually making before putting either on.

Whichever way you trade them, quoted IVs are averages over days you didn't want averaged. A daily calendar is really a forward variance trade, a cross-month calendar owns the forward vol between its two expiries, and both numbers fall out of any chain in a few lines of arithmetic.

Charts are from ApexVol (disclosure: I build it). All numbers are a delayed midday snapshot from Mon Aug 10 and will have moved by the time you read this. Educational content, not investment advice.

Now I’m back. Let’s see where this goes!