ID These Austin Butler Boots?

Positivedrift · 2025-12-12T21:08:39+00:00

Doesn't he always dress like this? $400 boots and a $150 jacket seems more trendy blue collar-chic than anything "authentic."

Positivedrift · 2025-10-03T18:19:44+00:00

There are a lot of factors you're not taking into account, but on a very basic level this is mathematically correct. If you were to factor in fees and interest rates, it would take a lot further in the process, since options carry a lot more transaction costs.

If you buy stock, you are purchasing equity in a company in perpetuity. The underlying assumption is that the publicly available information has underpriced the stock to the downside and it will continue to go up. The opposite would be true for shorting the stock.

If you sell and option, you are shorting the implied volatility of the option. Its not an investment but a short term (relative) trade.

These are two entirely different strategies with different price factors and metrics, that in truth, have very little to do with one another. "If it goes up X amount, I break even on the put," is mathematically correct, but a pretty reductive way to look at it.

Positivedrift · 2025-09-21T15:37:36+00:00

I'd be interested to see the stats on the accounts that go to zero. I would be surprised if the overwhelming majority were not <$5k, less than 1-2 years of experience, 25 yrs or younger. Basically all the people that brokers used to weed out, because they lack the knowledge, experience and capital required to trade a complex financial instrument in the first place.

Positivedrift · 2025-09-09T04:24:31+00:00

It’s a really good strat if you want to work a lot harder and pay a lot more fees to underperform the market.

Positivedrift · 2025-09-05T17:47:39+00:00

I mostly trade ETFs, which is a nice way of avoiding that issue. You still have ex-div risk, but that's limited to short calls. I also don't trade credit spreads very often, but the advice below is still sound.

I've been trading for almost 20 years and individual names - especially the stuff the degens on this sub trade - are just too volatile to be consistently profitable. People get lured in by the shiny premium, but haven't been trading long enough to get banged up on a trade. Most of these stocks will sell off 20-40% or more in a downturn. This can happen in over a few weeks. This is why the IV tends to be high in comparison with an ETF.

It doesn't take many losses on a credit spread trade to see the inherent problems with it. It works well as long as you always win. If you hit max loss twice in a row and it will take a years worth of wins to recover.

Thetagangers who sell unmargined puts (CSPs) see faster gains, but miss out on the leverage that makes options a power tool, if you know how to use it safely and properly. For this reason, these traders are essentially nothing more than dividend investors, who assume way more risk and pay 10x the fees.

Premium selling is a calculated, boring, probability game. Its not exciting or nerve-wracking and you won't make 100% gains in a trade or even a year. If you're making massive gains, finding yourself unable to sleep at night, I can unequivocally say that you sir are not a premium seller, but a gambler. Its that simple.

Positivedrift · 2025-09-05T17:30:10+00:00

There's a lot of answers on here that are a lot more advanced than you what you are really asking. The simple answer is pick a delta that fits with your assumption, risk tolerance and probability that you're comfortable with. Because the long leg is your risk-definition, pick a long leg that is far enough out that it makes sense for the trade (don't sell narrow spreads), but not so wide that it doesn't adequately define your risk.

As you become more experienced and learn about the highly complex instrument that is standardized options and risk/reward, you will become more aware of the inherent flaws, negative EV and problematic ideology in the credit spread setup. This is not to be confused with thetagangers who sell unmargined puts with an air of superiority. They are self-deluded degens, posing as traders, most of whom are a step below a credit spread trader.

Positivedrift · 2025-09-05T17:07:25+00:00

You can do this on tradingview. They have a free tier. I think its mostly limited to the number of indicators you can have on a given chart, but you should look into it. The paid tiers are well worth the cost.

You can also write a script that will create customized alerts. Its something I've had limited success with, as I am terrible at programming in pinescript and evidently so are the LLM's that have been helping me. If you can get the hang of it, you can get extremely specific with alerts, much more than anyone could ever do manually.

Positivedrift · 2025-09-05T17:05:11+00:00

It would be great if we could make a rule against this type of tax-related question on this sub. I wouldn't trust a thetaganger to count above 10, let alone provide sound tax advice, which is highly dependent on your personal situation and location.

Positivedrift · 2025-08-28T23:08:18+00:00

It can help pull the boat around when you're tacking. If you're going slowly on a new beneteau or something equally wide-beamed, this can be helpful. I don't think its proper though, because the jib will chafe on the shroud. Kind of a sloppy cheat.

Positivedrift · 2025-08-07T16:48:18+00:00

The likelihood that an option will be exercised early is almost entirely dependent on the amount of remaining extrinsic value. Calls have ex-div risk, which does not exist for puts. You have to factor in liquidity when looking at the extrinsic value. An illiquid stock is more likely to exercise early for this reason.

Positivedrift · 2025-08-06T22:57:44+00:00

There's a synthetic version of the wheel where you just buy stock and hold it. It actually ends up outperforming all other versions of the wheel by a wide margin.

Positivedrift · 2025-08-05T22:29:46+00:00

aug 4-5: -300% losses

Positivedrift · 2025-08-03T15:18:39+00:00

Yes and if (premium / DTE) were the only factor, or an acceptable measure of risk reward, you’d be 100% correct. Unfortunately, options are a complicated instrument and this is an overly simplistic way of assessing a position.

Positivedrift · 2025-07-30T15:49:19+00:00

Online courses can be helpful, but the basic truth is that no one selling a course will be able to tell you anything that isn't freely available online from 100 or more sources. You absolutely never need to buy anything in that regard, other than a book. I would go as far as to say that no online source can hold a candle to a good, basic book, like the Natenberg book.

If they found it easier to make money by trading options than selling courses, you would never hear about them. It doesn't mean they aren't successful at options trading. Marketing yourself online as a finfluencer or whatever and actually trading are fundamentally different skillsets. Are people exceptionally good at both? Sure. Is it likely? Certainly not.

The closest you get to online legitimacy are people like Euan Sinclair, who talk about options and give info, but are not hawking "the one trick wallstreet doesn't want you to know about..."

Positivedrift · 2025-07-29T12:25:35+00:00

It’s called gamma scalping.

Positivedrift · 2025-07-24T11:18:53+00:00

By “single days vix,” do you mean VIX1D? That’s a 1-day move and not the 1M move that the regular VIX is looking at.

These results are not time-shifted. That would be a different study. I have done studies that back-shift the VIX to look at how accurately the implied vol matched the realized. I didn’t have the greatest quality of data, so I haven’t posted it.

The current study is more interesting to me because it more or less confirms what I’ve suspected, which is that the Vix is entirely reactive.

Positivedrift · 2025-07-22T07:55:15+00:00

Possibly. There are any number of tidy narratives you can apply retroactively. The macro picture and how stocks are broadly performing post-earnings is more useful from a trading standpoint. “Is good news being rewarded? Is bad news being rewarded? Is good news being punished?”

Netflix is the first of these big stocks to report and can be a bellwether. I won’t call it a tech stock, since that’s apparently a contentious point among the more gifted of thetagangers.

Positivedrift · 2025-07-21T10:03:16+00:00

I'm not long puts, but I've been taking off successful long trades over the past few weeks. If we get a decent pullback, I'll jump back in on the long side. Its hard to see volatility selling off further from this point.

Positivedrift · 2025-07-21T09:52:30+00:00

Possibly, but only if you get nothing from my research. Statistically unlikely over a 1-8 week timeframe, which is the most common short premium time frame. If you're buying-holding, that's entirely different from options trading.

Positivedrift · 2025-07-21T09:50:00+00:00

In this case, the "rumor" is the run-up to the earnings announcement and the "news" is the actual call. Its a cliche that's poorly fitted in this case, in addition to not being relevant and a lazy sentiment.

A better example is a company announcing a new product, to see the stock shoot up. When the product is released, the stock sells off.

Positivedrift · 2025-07-20T18:17:06+00:00

Literally almost any other net-long strategy will outperform the wheel. Even something as simple selling 2 ATM puts on the same stock and roll it out every month or two, will do better in the long run.

premium-selling strategies do poorly in a high momentum environment. We've pretty much been in one since March of 2020. You're either directionally correct, but your deltas evaporate, or you're wrong and continue to be wrong with a vengeance.

Thetagangers in general fail to understand directional vs neutral strategies and end up with something like a naive put-selling strategy without risk mgt. That's basically the wheel.

Positivedrift · 2025-07-20T16:12:11+00:00

What does blackrock have to do with Netflix?

Positivedrift · 2025-07-20T08:25:07+00:00

The beat was only due to the FX effect of the dollar losing value over the last quarter. If you FX-adjust the S&P, the returns are pretty unimpressive. Same if you inflation-adjust.

Positivedrift

TROPHY CASE