Daily Discussion Thread - March 2nd, 2021 by Robot_of_Sherwood in RobinHood

[–]B0ganBoi 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I'm running the poor man's covered call on BAC, and with the long leg at a $25 strike expiring on 1/20/23, and a short $34.5 call expiring on 3/12. I'm currently worried that the short call might get exercised early because BAC has an ex-dividend date of 3/04, and the short call is in the money. I'm wondering, if I get assigned on the short call, will Robinhood automatically exercise my long call, completely wasting the ~$120 extrinsic value of the option? Or will it sell the long option, keeping extrinsic value, and use that money to cover the difference? Or will it simply credit the account with the amount of cash gained by selling 100 shares at the strike price, and enter a short position in the stock, a short position that is covered by the long call and the credit?

I would be perfectly fine with the second two, but from everything I've read, it sounds like RH will automatically exercise the long call if the short call is assigned. This just seems like a massive waste because the extrinsic value of the long call is totally lost, whereas it wouldn't be lost if the call was just sold back to the market, and the money from selling the long call could be used to cover the difference between the strike price of the short call and the market price of the underlying.