r/options 3d ago

Options Questions Safe Haven periodic megathread | April 2 2025

6 Upvotes

We call this the weekly Safe Haven thread, but it might stay up for more than a week.

For the options questions you wanted to ask, but were afraid to.
There are no stupid questions.   Fire away.
This project succeeds via thoughtful sharing of knowledge.
You, too, are invited to respond to these questions.
This is a weekly rotation with past threads linked below.


BEFORE POSTING, PLEASE REVIEW THE BELOW LIST OF FREQUENT ANSWERS. .

..


As a general rule: "NEVER" EXERCISE YOUR LONG CALL!
A common beginner's mistake stems from the belief that exercising is the only way to realize a gain on a long call. It is not. Sell to close is the best way to realize a gain, almost always.
Exercising throws away extrinsic value that selling retrieves.
Simply sell your (long) options, to close the position, to harvest value, for a gain or loss.
Your break-even is the cost of your option when you are selling.
If exercising (a call), your breakeven is the strike price plus the debit cost to enter the position.
Further reading:
Monday School: Exercise and Expiration are not what you think they are.

As another general rule, don't hold option trades through expiration.

Expiration introduces complex risks that can catch you by surprise. Here is just one horror story of an expiration surprise that could have been avoided if the trade had been closed before expiration.


Key informational links
• Options FAQ / Wiki: Frequent Answers to Questions
• Options Toolbox Links / Wiki
• Options Glossary
• List of Recommended Options Books
• Introduction to Options (The Options Playbook)
• The complete r/options side-bar informational links (made visible for mobile app users.)
• Characteristics and Risks of Standardized Options (Options Clearing Corporation)
• Binary options and Fraud (Securities Exchange Commission)
.


Getting started in options
• Calls and puts, long and short, an introduction (Redtexture)
• Options Trading Introduction for Beginners (Investing Fuse)
• Options Basics (begals)
• Exercise & Assignment - A Guide (ScottishTrader)
• Why Options Are Rarely Exercised - Chris Butler - Project Option (18 minutes)
• I just made (or lost) $___. Should I close the trade? (Redtexture)
• Disclose option position details, for a useful response
• OptionAlpha Trading and Options Handbook
• Options Trading Concepts -- Mike & His White Board (TastyTrade)(about 120 10-minute episodes)
• Am I a Pattern Day Trader? Know the Day-Trading Margin Requirements (FINRA)
• How To Avoid Becoming a Pattern Day Trader (Founders Guide)


Introductory Trading Commentary
   • Monday School Introductory trade planning advice (PapaCharlie9)
  Strike Price
   • Options Basics: How to Pick the Right Strike Price (Elvis Picardo - Investopedia)
   • High Probability Options Trading Defined (Kirk DuPlessis, Option Alpha)
  Breakeven
   • Your break-even (at expiration) isn't as important as you think it is (PapaCharlie9)
  Expiration
   • Options Expiration & Assignment (Option Alpha)
   • Expiration times and dates (Investopedia)
  Greeks
   • Options Pricing & The Greeks (Option Alpha) (30 minutes)
   • Options Greeks (captut)
  Trading and Strategy
   • Fishing for a price: price discovery and orders
   • Common mistakes and useful advice for new options traders (wiki)
   • Common Intra-Day Stock Market Patterns - (Cory Mitchell - The Balance)
   • The three best options strategies for earnings reports (Option Alpha)


Managing Trades
• Managing long calls - a summary (Redtexture)
• The diagonal call calendar spread, misnamed as the "poor man's covered call" (Redtexture)
• Selected Option Positions and Trade Management (Wiki)

Why did my options lose value when the stock price moved favorably?
• Options extrinsic and intrinsic value, an introduction (Redtexture)

Trade planning, risk reduction, trade size, probability and luck
• Exit-first trade planning, and a risk-reduction checklist (Redtexture)
• Monday School: A trade plan is more important than you think it is (PapaCharlie9)
• Applying Expected Value Concepts to Option Investing (Option Alpha)
• Risk Management, or How to Not Lose Your House (boii0708) (March 6 2021)
• Trade Checklists and Guides (Option Alpha)
• Planning for trades to fail. (John Carter) (at 90 seconds)
• Poker Wisdom for Option Traders: The Evils of Results-Oriented Thinking (PapaCharlie9)

Minimizing Bid-Ask Spreads (high-volume options are best)
• Price discovery for wide bid-ask spreads (Redtexture)
• List of option activity by underlying (Market Chameleon)

Closing out a trade
• Most options positions are closed before expiration (Options Playbook)
• Risk to reward ratios change: a reason for early exit (Redtexture)
• Guide: When to Exit Various Positions
• Close positions before expiration: TSLA decline after market close (PapaCharlie9) (September 11, 2020)
• 5 Tips For Exiting Trades (OptionStalker)
• Why stop loss option orders are a bad idea


Options exchange operations and processes
• Options Adjustments for Mergers, Stock Splits and Special dividends; Options Expiration creation; Strike Price creation; Trading Halts and Market Closings; Options Listing requirements; Collateral Rules; List of Options Exchanges; Market Makers
• Options that trade until 4:15 PM (US Eastern) / 3:15 PM (US Central) -- (Tastyworks)


Brokers
• USA Options Brokers (wiki)
• An incomplete list of international brokers trading USA (and European) options


Miscellaneous: Volatility, Options Option Chains & Data, Economic Calendars, Futures Options
• Graph of the VIX: S&P 500 volatility index (StockCharts)
• Graph of VX Futures Term Structure (Trading Volatility)
• A selected list of option chain & option data websites
• Options on Futures (CME Group)
• Selected calendars of economic reports and events


Previous weeks' Option Questions Safe Haven threads.

Complete archive: 2018, 2019, 2020, 2021, 2022, 2023, 2024, 2025


r/options Feb 26 '25

Another spambot is targeting us, similar to the last one

49 Upvotes

March 24, 2025 UPDATE: Your reporting is working! A recent attempt by the spambot to spam in our sub, "$420 in One Day || Surprisingly Easy!", resulted in Reddit admins suspending the account Reddit-wide. While this may mean that the spambot jumps to another account, at least no other spambot can use that same abandoned or stolen account.

OVERVIEW

About 4 months ago, our sub was targeted by a spambot, repeating posts with similar get-rich-quick schemes. A similar spambot, or maybe the same one since the M.O. is almost identical, is targeting us now. HERE IS WHAT YOU CAN DO TO HELP MODS COMBAT THIS SPAMBOT.

The titles of the posts are often very similar and with similar phrasing (I won't give examples here -- if you know, you know). However, a new twist is that the spambot DELETES the post after a few hours, before mods can react to your reports. This deprives the mod team of sample posts that we could use to build filters to intercept these spam posts.

This is a fairly sophisticated spambot campaign that uses a few techniques that make it difficult to defend against. For example (not exhaustive, again, don't want to tip our hand):

  • The user who posts appears to be a stolen account. So banning them doesn't do much, the spambot just switches to a different stolen account.

  • The posts may contain a statement that they spoke to a mod before posting who said it was OK to post (sometimes actually mentioning a specific moderator by username). This claim is FALSE; don't fall for it. In fact, explicit mention of permission from mods is a good indicator that the post is from the spambot.

WHAT CAN YOU DO?

Keep doing what you are already doing, report the post to the mod team. We can't give better than 24 hour response time, but we do eventually see the reports and can at least ban the stolen account, forcing the spambot to switch.

NEW: We need samples of the body text of the post before the bot deletes it. We can see the title, but not the body text after the post is deleted. So if you see a post you suspect of being the spambot, copy/paste the entire body text of the post and reply to this post in a comment with that copied text. Don't worry about formatting, that's not important. No need to screenshot the body text, unless the spambot changes to posting screenshots itself. Finally, we only need one copy of each post, so if you see others have already commented with the same post text, there is no need to comment again.

Do NOT engage with or comment on the post. That doesn't do anything useful and just lets the spambot know that their post is getting through our filters.

DO report the post to Reddit Admins as spam. Reddit site-wide anti-spam defense is more powerful than we can use in our sub, so the more Reddit admins are aware of the bot, the sooner we can stop seeing this junk.

EDIT: If you notice identical post text in other subs, like other financial topic subs, please mention that in your report to the Reddit admins. The more widespread the problem, the more motivated Reddit admins will be to do something about it.

Reddit report form -- https://www.reddit.com/report

Thank you for your support!


r/options 1d ago

Soo... anybody became an overnight millionaire?

1.5k Upvotes

Crazy to see all these puts that turned $10k to $3M+ (e.g. https://x.com/EpicTradeAlerts/status/1908266500370424120)

And it's not like these were dumb luck degenerate yolo trades, I feel like there was at least a 10% chance Trump's planned tariff announcement would've crashed the markets and then subsequently another 10-20% chance a megapower like China would retaliate somehow.

A $10k bet would probably have been a very reasonable bet given the risk-reward of the options available. So I'm assuming there's a number of you who made over $1M overnight.

Regale your tales/inner thoughts here


r/options 7h ago

monday green?

30 Upvotes

i really like to use history charting when i trade. (works almost ever time). the stats shows after 2 days of -4.5%. the market rallies the next day.

but earnings is the next factor into this. Q1 should be meh, nothing to crazy. i personally think Q2 will be bad tho.


r/options 8h ago

Is it too late to buy nvidia puts?

39 Upvotes

I was thinking of buying 92 dollar nvidia puts on Monday with about 1,000 dollars. Do you guys think nvidia will keep lowering?


r/options 2h ago

Should I use option percentage gains or support and resistance for profit targets?

8 Upvotes

Hi all, hopefully this gets posted. I couldn't find this specific topic in the FAQs.

I am a swing trader who just started options trading. In swing or day trading, key levels of support and resistance are used to determine take profit or stop loss zones. But with options, I keep hearing the same advice to target the percentage gains e.g. close your options position once it gains 20-50%. But what if the price of the underlying stock has not reached a key level yet, and still has a bit more to go?

Let me give a recent example. I bought an ATM PUT on Hanesbrands (HBI) last Thursday, 43 DTE. I spotted a level on the chart of HBI where the price could stall on its way down. The following day, I waited until HBI hit that level, and closed my put with a 70% profit. But I didn't pay attention to my gains, I focused on the 'price' target of the underlying stock.

Was this wrong? Am I looking at this as a swing trader rather than an option trader?


r/options 3h ago

IBIT Long - Bitcoin divergence from Nasdaq?

9 Upvotes

As the stock market flash crashed this week, crypto held very nicely. One of the few times I've seen bitcoin diverge from the Nasdaq on such a strong move. This coupled with the recent decline in most cryptocurrencies in the past 3-4 months gives me some confidence in opening a long position on IBIT. I plan on executing this sometime on Monday.

Anyone else have similar thoughts on bitcoin?

I'm curious to hear what some of you think of this.


r/options 5h ago

Call me crazy but my strategy for TSLA calls

9 Upvotes

I know macro is bad and market sentiment is equally terrible but I think that’s where opportunities lie.

Tesla is doing unsupervised full self driving in Austin with robo taxi in June.

Thinking about entering around mid May when the stock price is even lower. And get out before the end of August.

It won’t be massive but with good timing it can have decent return.

Thought?


r/options 6h ago

This coming week

12 Upvotes

What are everybody’s thoughts on this coming week? Cpi comes out this week which could make things really interesting. The question is if cpi is more or less of a concern compared to what just happened this past week. Looking at options chains for a lot of major stocks it seems that things are still very crazy, with calls and puts still expensive. I’ve been playing around with amzn options switching back and forth between calls and puts and both have become super expensive. What are everybody’s thoughts?


r/options 6h ago

Put gain value even though stock goes up

8 Upvotes

Yesterday I had bought some MSTR puts near close for $15 per contract when it was around $294 per share. 10 or 20 minutes later, the price per contract was around $20, even though the price per share briefly jumped up to around 298 dollars.

Why would an increase in share price lead to an increase in the value of my puts?


r/options 3h ago

Darvas box for US stocks

4 Upvotes

I am currently in Germany. Can anyone suggest a good screener or broker which allows Darvas box screener . I have IBKR but they don't have that indicator .


r/options 41m ago

Stop Limit v Stop Market Orders w/ Options

Upvotes

So I’m aware that a stop market order will just sell your position at the price you put in for the stop loss, however how does a stop limit work? I don’t understand why there’s a stop but also a limit and how they work with each other. I hope this question makes sense!


r/options 9h ago

Another far OTM selling put credit spread situation

9 Upvotes

I am looking in at SPY 12DTE (17Apr25) for selling a put credit spread far OTM 325/275 for a premium of $24, but can be scaled with multiple contracts to get few hundred bucks. Isn't it very safe? as market going down more than 30% in 2 wks is very low probability. How do you guys see this situation? Roast me with your comments:) Thanks for your valuable time.

Edit #1: its for SPY


r/options 4h ago

First W after liberation day: Buying UVIX and selling a CC

2 Upvotes

New to options and have already paid for my first semester of education.

Realized that the only thing guaranteed to hold value in this chaos is VIX etfs. So in Friday I found UVIX, bought 100 shares for $6600, sold an 11APR CC for $76 that went in the money same day.

So, worst case, I made $950 premium and $1000 profit from the shares if they're called away.

That is the worst case right...? I am finding out new "hidden (to me) rules" of this game every day.

All the best to everyone this week.


r/options 1d ago

Anyone made bank on spy puts post tariff?

127 Upvotes

I saw some dreamy number of puts up 3000% both Thursday and Friday. Someone literally gambling 1k Wednesday would have had 30k Thursday and u get the point for Friday… Of course lots of people lost a lot but I’m looking to be inspired by those who made great money? Care to share?


r/options 1d ago

Was puts really that obvious?

128 Upvotes

I’ve lost so much money from 2020-2024 buying puts when everyone was making on calls, I am inherently bearish.

Im just a retail trader (loser)

I made some money on puts early March as talks of tariffs began. But I saw how wishy washy it was, tariffs being delayed or manipulation from Twitter comments from the president etc. Then all the big dips on opening and watching everything get bought up to green by close this week….

As a retail trader who occasionally gambles on options, if I was buying options was it really that obvious?

Just seeing all the gain posts on wsb today. I stayed out of the market until I bought some 15 day apple calls at close yesterday (sold this morning for 25% loss)


r/options 3h ago

CFD short and calls

1 Upvotes

For those of you in Asia and EU... are hedging your CFD shorts with calls? If so, what is your option time frame?


r/options 11h ago

U.K. traders?

4 Upvotes

Any options traders here based in the uk? Seems like the contracts available here are a lot more expensive than what’s available across the pond, in particular SPY and QQQ


r/options 1d ago

Let’s hear some profit/losses for this week

Post image
37 Upvotes

Curious to see who rode the huge wave down this week. I played it a little safer than I probably should have and day traded the moves down, but I know a lot of you that commented on one of my last posts were holding pretty heavy in puts Wednesday, so would love to see how some of you made it out!

I’m not much of a swing trader, I like to have a bit more control over my trades, but this was definitely a no-brainer and I’m kicking myself in the a** for it.

That being said, I’m going to make sure the boat is loaded for the bounce, I do expect some sort of retracement bouncing off somewhere between $490-$500, depending on what other news we get in the short term, which will also be interesting to see.

Hope everyone enjoys their weekend, and I’m ready to see if there were any new millionaires made this week, let me know 😎


r/options 6h ago

Are there any puts on the US economy with a strike price in a foreign currency ?

0 Upvotes

I want to bet against the US economy, but all the ways I know to do so (puts with a USD strike price, shorting ETFs) are also bets on a low inflation.

I am also nowhere rich enough to get OTC services like FX options.

Are there any puts on US indexes or US stocks with a strike price in a foreign currency ?


r/options 1d ago

Too late to short

66 Upvotes

Took a leap into options trading two months ago upon hearing trumps tariff threats. Saw a good opportunity to buy puts but burned $2k on 0DTE plays like an idiot. (Edit: no intention to continue trying 0DTEs, but want to buy some weeklies) I told my wife I was done trading and will sit out.

Watching the bloodbath unfold and the puts on my watchlist print money daily is killing me. Do I continue to sit out? Or try to convince my wife this is an opportunity not to be wasted. I have roughly $20k cash (6 months living expenses) as an emergency fund and another $60k in a brokerage..


r/options 1d ago

Bagholding SPY..

22 Upvotes

Bagholding some SPY with a $563 cost basis.. can't really sell calls unless I go below my cost basis or extremely far out time wise..

Pretty sure that it's not gonna rebound to my cost basis any time soon..

Wondering if any of you are in similar spot and what your plan is?


r/options 23h ago

Lets party like it's 1987

13 Upvotes

Happy Friday all! Hope everyone's positions moved in their desired direction today!

Today I was seeing comparisons to different crashes, 87, 9/11, 2008, Covid and had a few questions to the seasoned traders who went through these times what happened to options throughout that period?

Did they become harder to sell or buy and how wide did spreads become? Yesterday I also noticed that the bid/ask spreads were wider than usual

And in general what were the options markets like during those times?

Thanks!


r/options 1d ago

HYG Puts/Spreads Might Be a Smart Hedge for SPY Right Now

15 Upvotes

If you're looking for a hedge against more downside in $SPY, take a look at $HYG (the high-yield corporate bond ETF). During the March 2020 COVID crash, $HYG dropped ~20% in just 13 trading days, trailing $SPY’s decline but catching up fast as credit markets cracked.

In March 2020:

  • $HYG fell from $85 → $68 (−19.3%) from Mar 6 to Mar 23
  • That decline lagged equities by a few days, then accelerated
  • $SPY was already collapsing — $HYG followed as junk bond risk blew out

Why HYG puts or vertical spreads are a great SPY hedge now:

  • HYG typically holds up better — but cracks hard when credit stress hits
  • Puts on HYG are cheaper (lower IV) than SPY/VIX
  • You can express a credit tail risk thesis without fighting SPY’s high options premiums

What to use:

  • HYG put spreads (like $75/$70 April 17): cheap, risk-defined, 10x potential
  • OTM HYG puts (like $74 or $72): lotto-style plays if markets panic

How long to hold?

  • These setups work best over 1–3 week windows
  • If SPY keeps dumping and VIX/credit spreads blow out, HYG could drop 5–10% fast
  • After that, credit support (like Fed action) often slows the move, so time your exit

TL;DR: If you're already short SPY or long volatility, HYG puts or spreads are a cleaner, lower-cost hedge for the next wave of fear — just like March 2020. The Fed isn’t likely to jump in like 2020 unless something breaks. But if credit markets start spiraling — illiquidity, no bids, ETF NAV breaks — they’ve already shown they’ll act. Until then, you’re trading a window where credit weakness can accelerate without interference.

Thoughts? And any other cheap hedges for this market?


r/options 14h ago

Follow up on my $JNJ put calendar trade: Sold at 5X

3 Upvotes

This is a follow up on the calendar trade I posted about earlier in the week.

I sold it at 5X, or 4X profit before commissions, even though JNJ went in the wrong direction.

If it went in the right direction, this could have been a bigger 10-20X winner.

Options are great if you know how to use them.


r/options 23h ago

High IV Puts, No Problem!

Post image
11 Upvotes

With IV incredibly high on even traditionally low IV stocks like AAPL, one of the best ways to play a big drop from here is with spreads. I’m not holding too many long puts over the weekend as I took a lot of profit and didn’t like the high IV in case of a rebound Monday. Check out this cheap play on AAPL. Quick math; cost $13/contract, 150 contracts, $1950 total. Max value if AAPL at or below 150 on 4/11 is $500 per contract.. a $73,050 profit. Only had to invest the profit from a single 4/11 185 put that I sold earlier today.


r/options 10h ago

Trading Gold (options)

0 Upvotes

Anyone here who trades Gold (GLD). How do you trade it? Do you use leverage to short/long gold or there are options available on Gold just like SPY and QQQ. If available, what’s the ticker symbol and are the liquid? What are the pros and cons of trading Gold options compared to equities. Thank you in advance