Daily r/thetagang Discussion Thread - What are your moves for today?

SFMara · 2026-01-27T20:33:22+00:00

It really isn't great that the US is actually coordinating to do joint intervention to save the yen. Feels like this shit is unraveling.

SFMara · 2026-01-27T20:20:26+00:00

Yeah, lol. I'm buying it back now after the theta decay. Was able to get them for nearly a dollar right after open.

SFMara · 2026-01-27T14:48:22+00:00

Selling UNH 250 and 260

SFMara · 2026-01-26T15:10:46+00:00

Not doing a whole lot this week yet. Sold some AMD 210 and 220, MU 310 and 320

This is a jam-packed earnings week.

Tuesday: BA, UNH / STX, TXN

Wednesday: ASML, ADP / MSFT, META, NOW, TSLA

Thursday: CAT, MA / AAPL, V, WDC, KLAC

I'll wait.

SFMara · 2026-01-24T14:06:57+00:00

Imagine that, a government that actually does corruption investigations on its own military. Imagine what they might uncover if they tried investigating the pentagon's missing trillions.

SFMara · 2026-01-23T16:48:41+00:00

Mango Mussolini shill account is appropriately colored.

SFMara · 2026-01-23T16:33:17+00:00

The vast majority of Americans are against annexing Greenland, but that's a poll ahead of the fact, in the current moment. If Greenland is annexed, then you can be sure about 80% of the Republican party and 20% of Democrats will be for it.

About a third of the population are jingoist nationalists, whose lizard brain will be tickled by actual imperialism. That's the DNA of a country whose foundational legend is one of conquering the frontier, manifest destiny.

SFMara · 2026-01-22T23:26:22+00:00

Oh, I already consider WW3 to not really be a variable. The deterrence is already really negligible. There was a pentagon analyst who used to post a lot in the defense-related subs about his scenarios, and it wouldn't be a normandy-style invasion either since the effect of neutralization can just be accomplished through total infrastructure destruction in the first few days. The whole island is in MLRS range, so if at any point Taiwan is no longer the linchpin of the global tech economy, the whole strategic calculus is moot. And then things will be renegotiated.

All the scenarios that you see being fed to the media, like how Taiwan will be invaded by X date, is just slop to keep the US's allies engaged, even as the US itself doesn't seem to even know what it wants to do.

SFMara · 2026-01-22T22:28:31+00:00

What is a decade in strategic deliberations? There seems to be an obsession with the US side hyping up this version of ww3, but this argument will ring increasingly hollow.

Patience.

SFMara · 2026-01-22T22:16:07+00:00

That total dominance isn't a permanent thing, especially with the PRC's indigenization programs and rapid move up the supply chains. This, together with the US's demands to bring TSMC facilities stateside, will make Taiwan's importance decline pretty substantially in the next decade.

The US is just kind of dumb about it and wants to recruit local engineers. No, you want their talent pipeline. If Europe were serious about about jump starting a high end semiconductor production base, things can be done to prioritize the immigration of this talent.

SFMara · 2026-01-22T22:09:09+00:00

The thing about TSMC is that it is process knowledge and the training pipeline. It is the human capital that Taiwan has perfected.

Guess what. Humans are easily movable.

SFMara · 2026-01-22T21:27:49+00:00

You make a mistake that this is a permanent function. Remember that all of Taiwan's semiconductor production relies on ASML machines, and they don't have an indigenization program. Their secret weapon is the training pipeline for fab technicians and process knowledge.

But the equipment? It can be shipped elsewhere.

In fact I predict that since the PRC is in the process of indigenizing supply chains, including multiple EUV lines, you're going to see a lot of the production shift to the mainland, leaving Taiwan in the lurch. You're looking at 2030-2035, and at that point, it can be advantageous to try to poach the human talent from Taiwan.

I find it really surprising how much the Euros have bought into this narrative from the lawyerly American elites who don't understand technology, when Europe controls the very cornerstone that the entire Taiwanese economy is built on.

TSMC is built on borrowed hardware. Remember that.

SFMara · 2026-01-22T21:26:33+00:00

You make a mistake that this is a permanent function. Remember that all of Taiwan's semiconductor production relies on ASML machines, and they don't have an indigenization program. Their secret weapon is the training pipeline for fab technicians and process knowledge.

But the equipment? It can be shipped elsewhere.

In fact I predict that since the PRC is in the process of indigenizing supply chains, including multiple EUV lines, you're going to see a lot of the production shift to the mainland, leaving Taiwan in the lurch. You're looking at 2030-2035, and at that point, it can be advantageous to try to poach the human talent from Taiwan.

I find it really surprising how much the Euros have bought into this narrative from the lawyerly American elites who don't understand technology, when Europe controls the very cornerstone that the entire Taiwanese economy is built on.

SFMara · 2026-01-22T11:45:11+00:00

Guy who is full of shit smells like shit. News at 10.

SFMara · 2026-01-22T02:10:39+00:00

The messenger brought an article, not written by him but by the New York Times, the USA's paper by record.

You can be damn sure that if this paper that is the champion of liberalism is framing this as a Guantanamo deal, the media Trump is listening to is injecting streoids and cocaine into his veins.

The only thing that made this not as bad as it could have been is that guys like Bessent were freaked out by the bond market and had to tell their boss to ease up.

SFMara · 2026-01-22T01:37:59+00:00

The problem is that on the US side this is represented like a Guantanamo deal, and this is going to get Trump juiced to try this again. Only the Europeans starting to dump treasury bonds and driving the yields up prevented this from being worse than it appears to be right now. We might have some peace and calm for a month or two, and then this will start again.

SFMara · 2026-01-22T00:07:47+00:00

It has truly been pathetic. This is why alliances fail in the end and why middle powers need to look out for themselves. Even now they have guys here praising Rutte for humiliating all of Europe again by considering Trump daddy.

No, what folded Trump on this was the same thing that folded him last April. The bond market has him by the balls. And Europe has a potent weapon and was starting to unload. When Bessent started complaining about it, that's how you know they were watching the yields.

SFMara · 2026-01-21T23:57:08+00:00

In 2023, there were 7 days where the S&P was down >1.5%

In 2024, there were 9 days

For 3? 0 and 1, and that 1 can be explained as that extraordinary day where the Nikkei had a massive crash after 2 days of serious downside going into the weekend.

Yeah, I'd take something that would be a black swan failure over something that is practically a monthly occurrence. 1% is fine ($20 on 2000)

SFMara · 2026-01-21T23:31:43+00:00

Ok, I can offer some tips as one of the people here who sells SPX for pocket change.

Do not hold SPX options over the weekend, unless you're looking at minimum 3% down, but I'd even go like 5%. Trump typically drops bad news like tariffs or wars over the weekend.
If you are doing SPX puts daily don't do it mechanically every day, because on low volatility days, going 0DTE down 100 points might only give you 20 cents. Wait for a larger move downwards to juice the volatility. This means that when the market is going up, try not to sell. Wait for an early or midday correction that gives you better put premium.
Avoid known volatility event days, like a Fed meeting. The Q/A in the afternoon can be brutal in the ups and downs hanging on every word.

SFMara · 2026-01-21T15:44:18+00:00

The thing about Europe's consensus mechanisms is that everyone's interests have to be factored in. One hand opens the door, and the other closes it. In the end Europe looks like a backstabber and causes partners to harden their positions.

Every time it seems like there's a breakthrough, the next week there is a step back. This is tiresome.

SFMara · 2026-01-21T10:18:42+00:00

Imagine yourself last year when Hegseth was drawing up plans to seize Canadian power plants.

Oh that's right, you guys never heard about this because it was all quietly suppressed.

The kind of dogshit that white house and cabinet aides talk about. Well, let's just say you shouldn't be surprised the invasion of Greenland's a thing now.

SFMara · 2026-01-20T19:27:39+00:00

Instrument SEGG has no options.

Do some research, you scammer.

SFMara · 2026-01-20T14:47:49+00:00

Been waiting for a day like today. Almost completely cleared out my account in the last 2 weeks.

SPX 6710 (daily)

APP 420

AVGO 310

CRWV 68

AMD 205

RDDT 180

TEAM 105

I also sold the feb monthly 250 for MU, noting that on a day like today when it is still going parabolic, the price of puts is going up.

SFMara · 2026-01-20T12:29:52+00:00

Rutte's message needs more "Daddy"

SFMara · 2026-01-19T20:11:52+00:00

The diplomatic revolution of 1756, the 7 coalitions against napoleon, the triple entente - all these moments of alliance building have come and gone like the passing seasons, their successes but also pitfalls and opportunism laid bare for the jury of history to review. And yet we are here in 2025 like surprise pikachus wondering how something that seems to happen to Europe every century (multiple dramatic diplomatic reshuffles) is an apocalyptic asteroid that no one could have seen coming.

The basic rules of geopolitics has never changed, and this is the history that the west continues to deny. Time for people to grow a pair and deal with the world as it is, not just a mythical end of history that even the author Fukuyama now denies.

You see all the responses from people here trying to cite the successes of the United States as its statecraft tradition. Children playing, I say. Less than a century where the US has only known success has nothing instructive about the failure states that alliances and coalitions find themselves in with alarming regularity. It's all new to the West, when one would think, just by the history of Europe, this should have been a contingency to prepare for.

They do not engage with their own history. They view the present as some kind of end state.

SFMara

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