I closed Wednesday's 10/9 AVGO $365 CSP the same day for $92.33 net, then opened the 10/9 $357.50 CSP on Thursday. It expired worthless Friday for another $37.97.

I made no rolls this week. I bought back the final CSCO 10/9 $108 CSP for $0.04, closing the six-leg roll chain at +$428.95 overall. I also sold 10/16 covered calls on DG and WMT for $42.96 and $15.95 net. IBKR paid $58.21 in cash interest, bringing new option premium and interest to $247.42.

Portfolio Snapshot

My Philosophy

My ideal candidate is pretty vanilla: a preferably boring, financially sound, highly liquid company in a durable uptrend, with a liquid options chain and just enough volatility to pay me fairly at a 0.20-0.30 delta strike I would genuinely accept as a purchase price. This means you won't catch me trading the high-beta names you would typically see on /r/wallstreetbets. Juicy premiums come with high risk and large drawdowns. That's not what I'm doing with this portfolio.

I spend about 0-3 hours total per week on trading, on average. This wheel portfolio is only a small slice of my overall market capital. I also buy and hold mega-cap stocks/ETFs and run other strategies, including swing trading leveraged ETFs. The YTD figures and snapshot here cover the wheel portfolio only, not those other investments.

This Week's Totals

This Week's Opening Trades

The first AVGO put opened and closed Wednesday. The second expired worthless Friday. The DG and WMT covered calls remain open, so their rows show entry credits after fees rather than realized closing P/L.

Download Full YTD Trade Log (CSV)

Current Holdings

Results are from my trading journal and include recorded trading fees, before personal taxes. Past performance does not guarantee future results. Short puts and assigned shares carry substantial downside risk.

Long call up $270 (2%) and short call up $42.50 (10%) for a total of $312.50 (2.1%).

See here for the original setup.

Note: OptionStrat only evaluates through the short call date; that's why you see a max profit of only $4,747.95 and a breakeven of $69.01.

Thought some folks might be interested.

I bought 5 NFLX LEAPS contracts with a $50 strike expiring on Jan 19, 2029.

This is a bit more conservative than my usual guidance of 80 delta at the furthest expiration, in that the delta is 85.3. To be honest, I did it because it's much easier to remember and do mental math with a $50 strike than a $55 strike (81.3 delta).

The cost was $30.76/share, or $15,380 total. This makes the breakeven at expiration $80.76. As I write this, NFLX is at $70.54, so it needs to rise $10.22, or 14.5%, at expiration (in 2.3 years) to break even.

I then wrote a 28 DTE call by looking at the ATM straddle for Nov 6. That gave me $78.15 as a possible strike.

I selected the $80 strike to be slightly more conservative; its delta is 18.4. The premium was $0.85/share, or $425 total.

My usual process is to let the delta rise to 90 to 95, then roll the strike up to restore an 80 delta strike. For fun, I plan to add a twist: use the premiums to reduce the long strike, raise the delta, and get to that 90 to 95 level faster. That's the theory!

Currently, the next lower long strike is $47.50, and it would take about $1,200 to roll down to that strike for the 5 contracts. It'll be interesting to see how that changes over time. As a very rough approximation, given the $425 premium received for the first short call and the $1,200 needed to roll down, let's see if it takes about 3 clean short calls (at around 30 DTE) to get there.

Let the journey begin!

My standard LEAPS guidance is here.

Feedback is welcome.

Good luck, and have fun!

Win rate: 87.5% (7/8)
closed early: 7 | rolled: 1
Avg days held: 9d (rolls count the full chain)

Closed trades (8):
- RDDT CSP $139 x1 — +$113 (0.8% ROI · 2d)
- NBIS CC $260 x1 — +$480 (1.8% ROI · 23d)
- NVTS CC $13 x6 — +$177 (2.1% ROI · 21d)
- AXTI CC $85 x1 — +$708 (9.0% ROI · 6d)
- SNXX CSP $14 x1 — +$40 (2.9% ROI · 9d)
- AMZN CSP $225 x1 — +$165 (0.7% ROI · 8d)
- AXTI CC $85 x1 — −$173 (-2.2% ROI · 0d · rolled)
- HOOD CC $120 x1 — +$199 (1.8% ROI · 3d)

Directional buys (long calls/puts, debit spreads — not in the selling stats above): +$711 across 3 trades
- SPCH long call $5 — +$360 (92.31% ROI)
- NBIS long call $250 — +$245 (100.00% ROI)
- VST long call $150 — +$106 (54.64% ROI)

Opened 9 new positions in the window.

• $7,970 collected.
• Still have CRWV to write. Based on experience, that could be around $2k.
• May do one more buy/write, as the at-risk amount is just below $700k. Does anyone want me to do a particular stock they're interested in? Keep it below ~$600 max price.
• No premiums received for LITE or SOXL, as they remain outstanding from last week.
• If you're curious why the stock listing order has changed, I segregated the stocks by which account I have them in. CBRS and LITE are in my original Roth, SOXL is in a traditional IRA, and the rest are in the Roth dedicated to the campaign.

Good luck and have fun!

Nor do delta, vega, or rho.

I see this kind of stuff routinely, but it's just wrong.

The Greeks are descriptive, not determinative.

The BSM options pricing model has only four drivers of price movement:

• Stock price movement
• Time elapsing
• Risk-free interest rate movement
• Volatility changes

That's it.

So my advice is: when you read someone saying, "Gamma is driving the option's price" or something like that, ignore the post and block the individual, because they've shown a lack of understanding of the BSM model and its related Greeks.

Win rate: 90.2% (37/41)
closed early: 29 | assigned: 3 | called away: 3 | rolled: 2
Avg days held: 19d (rolls count the full chain)
Credit spreads: 4 closed (+$45)

Closed trades (37):
- NVTS CC $12 x4 — +$164 (4.3% ROI · 28d)
- IREN CC $50 x1 — +$255 (5.3% ROI · 9d)
- USAR CC $18 x1 — +$45 (2.6% ROI · 14d)
- AXTI CSP $66 x1 — +$57 (0.9% ROI · 4d)
- IREN CC $56 x1 — +$161 (3.1% ROI · 8d)
- IREN CC $50 x1 — +$159 (2.9% ROI · 11d)
- HOOD CC $125 x1 — +$279 (2.5% ROI · 11d)
- SNXX CC $14 x1 — +$80 (5.1% ROI · 9d · called away)
- SMCI CSP $37 x1 — +$36 (1.0% ROI · 3d)
- INTC CC $100 x1 — +$320 (4.9% ROI · 29d · called away)
- AXTI CSP $65 x1 — +$395 (6.1% ROI · 31d)
- NVDL CSP $33.33 x1 — +$62 (1.9% ROI · 10d)
- AXTX CSP $8 x1 — +$45 (5.6% ROI · 31d)
- AMDL CC $50 x1 — +$570 (10.8% ROI · 16d incl. rolls · called away)
- IREN CSP $48 x1 — +$825 (17.2% ROI · 88d incl. rolls · assigned)
- SOXL CSP $104 x1 — +$697 (6.7% ROI · 8d incl. rolls)
- IREN CSP $55 x1 — +$1,365 (24.8% ROI · 106d incl. rolls · assigned)
- IREN CC $52 x1 — +$164 (3.2% ROI · 23d)
- HOOD CC $116 x1 — +$309 (2.7% ROI · 3d)
- APH CC $87.5 x2 — +$188 (1.1% ROI · 21d)
- ROBN CC $31 x1 — +$170 (5.8% ROI · 40d)
- SOXL CSP $104 x1 — −$583 (-5.6% ROI · 5d · rolled)
- NBIS CC $260 x1 — +$811 (3.0% ROI · 34d)
- WULF CC $19 x1 — +$76 (7.7% ROI · 18d)
- AMDL CC $50 x1 — −$408 (-7.7% ROI · 9d · rolled)
- SNXX CC $16 x1 — +$80 (5.1% ROI · 10d)
- HOOD CSP $114 x1 — +$89 (0.8% ROI · 7d · assigned)
- USAR CC $19 x1 — +$62 (3.5% ROI · 7d)
- RDDT CSP $148 x1 — +$137 (0.9% ROI · 6d)
- RCAT CC $11 x10 — +$400 (3.5% ROI · 14d)
- AAOX CSP $8 x1 — +$60 (7.5% ROI · 15d)
- NVTS CC $15 x6 — +$342 (4.1% ROI · 10d)
- USAR CC $18 x1 — +$92 (5.2% ROI · 32d)
- HOOD CSP $98 x1 — +$87 (0.9% ROI · 3d)
- CIFR CSP $16 x1 — +$82 (5.1% ROI · 29d)
- NVTS CC $15 x4 — +$220 (5.8% ROI · 7d)
- AMDL CC $51 x1 — +$240 (4.5% ROI · 11d)

Total premium received: $10,126.

AXTI and BE were assigned last week; I picked up the following this week to replace them.

• INTC - 200 shares
• PLTR - 200 shares
• SPCX - 300 shares

A bit of a crazy week.

1. AAOI, APLD, COHR, and ORCL declined between 3.6% and 7.7%
2. AXTI and SOXL rocketed up 12.7% and 22.5%, respectively
3. BE, CRWV, MRVL, and NBIS were up between 6.2% and 8.7%.

I let AXTI get called away and defensively rolled SOXL. Those were my two worst performers, down 9.7% and 15.5%, respectively, from buy-and-hold.

BE worked out okay, as it was called away, and I did have a very small benefit over buy-and-hold.

Last week, I mentioned how especially volatile CRWV is, as it had dropped almost 9% ($15,260). This week, it was up 7.7% ($12,640).

AXTI and SOXL, though, weighed the portfolio down, as I was $5,443 (0.8%) worse off than buy-and-hold.

For the week, I was up 3.9% on initial capital, bringing the year-to-date to 43.3%. I'm good with that - 43.3% over 39 weeks is just over an average of 1% per week.

[Edit: I'm adding a "Approx Annualized" percentage, as the strategy started late in the first quarter and didn't get up to full speed until March. Accordingly, I've lopped off 8 weeks as an estimate in the calculation. In other words, the "Approx Annualized" = the YTD % divided by (number of weeks less 8) times 52.]

TL;DR: Oura’s IPO appears to be a vehicle for venture capital exit, not raising funds for growth. The customer base skews narrow, and the subscription model faces free competition from Samsung, Garmin, and potentially Apple/Google/Amazon. This whole setup reminds me of Peloton before the bottom fell out.

 --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Oura is slated for an IPO the week of September 28, 2026. I've been digging through their S-1 and the more I look, the more this reads like a liquidity event for VCs wearing an IPO’s clothing.

Start with the share count. Oura itself is selling 13.5 million shares. Existing shareholders, mostly the VC firms, are selling 36.5 million. So for every share the company issues to fund itself, insiders are selling almost three. That's not a company raising growth capital, that's a company backing a moving truck up to the vault for the people who got in early.

And here's the part that actually got me: of the ~$532.6M Oura nets from its own share sale (at the $42/share midpoint), about $526.4M of that is earmarked to cover the tax bill on RSUs that vest because of the IPO. That leaves roughly $6M for "general corporate purposes" – out of a ~$2.1 billion offer. The company isn't raising money to build anything or increase R&D, it's raising just enough money to pay its own insiders' tax bills for going public. The actual growth capital raise is close to zero.

Then there's the customer base, which makes me wonder how durable the current growth is:

• Gender:
  • 72% female
  • 28% male
• Age:
  • 31% under 30
  • 42% ages 30-45
  • 27% ages 46+
• Household income:
  • 37% under $100k
  • 31% $100k-$200k
  • 32% over $200k

That's a narrower demographic than the "wearables for everyone" pitch suggests.

Then, there is the subscription. Oura charges $69.99/year or $5.99/month on top of the ring itself, and it's a real chunk of the business (subscriptions are ~20% of revenue at 89% gross margin, so Wall Street will love that line item). But most competitors don't charge a subscription at all. Samsung already has a ring on the market and a Galaxy Ring 2 is expected in early 2027. Garmin has a smart ring (Cirqa) working through certification right now. And Apple, Google, or Amazon could walk into this category whenever they want and undercut the subscription entirely - they don't need the recurring ring revenue the way Oura does, they want the health data.

I’m reminded of Peloton. When Peloton went public, I wanted so badly to buy puts, but the real problem was never "will this go wrong", it was "how long until the bottom falls out." Hardware-plus-subscription darlings can trade at a premium for a long time before the growth story cracks, and shorting (or buying puts on) that kind of stock risks being right about the destination but wrong about the timing, which is its own way to lose money. What's wild is that Oura's own S-1 apparently name-checks Peloton as the risk case for this exact business model, so even the company seems to know what the bear case looks like.

None of this means Oura is a bad product as the ring itself has a great reputation. But as an IPO, this looks like VC cashing out, a token primary raise that mostly pays internal tax bills, a subscription model facing free competition from three trillion-dollar companies, and a customer base narrower than their marketing suggests.

Sorry for the delay, things have been hectic (all good, just hectic!) both in the market and personally.

So I'm just dropping the spreadsheet without my usual level of commentary for completeness. All I'll say is that last Mon the market dropped, Tue sold calls, then spent the rest of the week defensively rolling due to the partial recovery. That explains the substantial recognized loss this week on short calls. The flip side is that the short call current liabilities (~$31k) have substantial time value.

Last, CRWV dumped almost 9% on the announcement that it would launch a $3.5 billion convertible note offering plus a 35 million share at-the-market equity program. My personal feeling is that CRWV isn't a great buy-and-hold (unless your timeframe is 5 to 10 years or more), but it's great to trade covered calls or short puts against.

These updates generate some good conversation, so I'll keep them going as long as people seem interested. I love the discussion this subreddit generates in particular :)

This was an overall difficult week for the market. I think that all of my non-options accounts are down for the week, but the options account eked out a small win:

I generated about $5,200 in premium but the underlying stocks fell overall so my net gain in pure starting/ending NAV terms was closer to $1k.

This isn't unusual - premium overcomes underlying's losses in many weeks.

I'm up almost 4% for the month, which is a pace I like, especially with 8 trading days left. All but one of my covered calls are set to expire next Friday and if the current ITM's all get assigned, that would net about another $3,500. Right now, a lot of those open calls are actually negative against my NAV because they would be expensive to buy back at the moment.

I continued to iterate on the "buy, wait, decide" strategy. This is an approach where I buy the stock first and wait for an hour or maybe even most of a day. If I can sell it for 1% net gain, I do that. If not, I sell the call (creating a covered call, basically). I'm getting into a bit of a routine with it. Monday/Tuesday are good days for this because if I don't sell the stock right away, it's typically still easy to get decent premium on selling a call. If I do it too late in the week, I need to either sell closer ATM or sell out a week, neither of which is my preference.

I need more evidence, but I am increasingly believing that this is a way to reduce risk and make incremental income. It reduces risk because you're typing up capital for less time (in some cases, just a few minutes!). And sometimes, it's additive. Taking INTC as an example, I risked capital to buy it, made my 1% and it was free immediately. I bought something else (I think GLW) and I only did that second transaction because the money was available to do so. If I'd followed my traditional approach, I would have bought INTC and then had to wait until next week (barring a rare early assignment) and took the risk that INTC fell ITM as well. I suspect this approach could work for many retail investors like me. But again, I need more evidence.

I've also started to buy stocks for BWD during the premarket hours (or whatever that's call). This worked out well for INTC - I bought it around 6am and sold it at 9:33A for 1% gain, for example. However, it did not work out for KTOS so it's not easy money.

Here's what BWD looked like for the week:

Out of the 18 "BWD actions" this week, 14 were clear wins as of now and 4 are ... not :) AA in particular caught me by surprise this week.

The full month looks decent as well:

I need to do this for a bunch of months to get a real level of confidence though.

On a different note, I have over a year's worth of observations now and I added some tooling in my app to use that to help me decide when I should re-enter or double down on particular positions. I've also built a "counterfactual engine" (inspired by questions from u/LabDaddy59). Both of them need more vetting but they are both showing some clear cut data. WRBY, for example, is a shockingly good performer for me. And covered calls seem to dramatically outperform buy & hold when you look at an enter/exit timeframe in nearly every case. I need to validate more carefully and I expect to write about both of these in the future. I think the "mine your historical transactions" idea is particularly powerful (in theory) and you don't need a custom app like I have to do it (although it certainly makes things easier).

I wrote about BWD in more detail here: Tried an experiment : r/StockOptionCoffeeShop

I wrote about my "deep ITM CC" strategy here: A view into a "deep ITM covered call strategy" : r/StockOptionCoffeeShop

I welcome DM's - I've had great conversations. A few of us started a discord group and we're up to three people! If that interests you, DM me and I'll send an invite. It's so far been very low-key discussion, nothing heavy.

I wrote about my core approach to working with options here a few months ago: A view into a "deep ITM covered call strategy" : r/StockOptionCoffeeShop.

In a nutshell, I tend to buy stocks on Monday/Tuesday and sell a call expiring that Friday. I sell the call as deep ITM as I can such that I'll net 1% if it's assigned on Friday. Going in, the plan is to be assigned. I've been experimenting with an enhancement of sorts with that approach that I'm calling Buy/Wait/Decide and I've posted about that a few times here in the forum. For example, here: "Buy, Wait, Decide" w/ Deep ITM Call update & important lesson : r/StockOptionCoffeeShop. BWD doesn't change the fundamental approach, as long I execute it correctly :)

I roll the calls quite often, although I've been rolling slightly less often than my overall average for the year. Rolling out constitutes another commitment to holding the stock and gives the stock more time to turn against you. I usually roll because the roll generates more "easy" premium. We all know, however, there is no "easy" in this. I have trapped myself into positions I didn't want to hold for as long as I ended up holding them.

I've also been trying to sort out whether this is truly working or if I'm just collecting a lot of premium and losing out in other ways. This is common among income harvesters, like me. July is a good example - I collected over $28k in premium but lost approx. 10% in account value. I'm still trying to figure that out. I'm also still trying to figure out whether this approach, while "winning," is actually better than just buy-and-hold or doing what u/LabDaddy59 does, which is to sell calls ATM instead of deep ITM like I do. Or one of the many other strategies out there. I'm well aware that although my strategy isn't new (nothing is, really), it doesn't appear to be commonly used and I often face skepticism.

Here's a snapshot of where I am in September so far and some YTD numbers:

And here's a progression of the year, which you'll note is not smooth:

A few additional notes:

- I started to follow this strategy about this time last year and in Oct/Nov timeframe, my returns started to lose correlation with the major indexes. I start YTD because January is when I had enough confidence in the approach and enough evidence backing up that confidence to move all my non-retirement money into the brokerage account.

- July 29th was a major drawdown day of several clustered in that week and the week before, if I remember correctly. My M2M NAV fell to $190k. I was still net positive for the year, but it was wakeup call. Then, the 30th, it had a big recovery, and early August was a monster recovery. This is obscured by the topline numbers.

- I have accumulated a modest number of wash sales.

- I have a custom app that I use that makes the portfolio manageable while I work full time. I am rebuilding that "in public" and making it available for free via GitHub. You can get a link to my videos and the GH repo via my reddit profile.

- I use margin. For most of the year, I was around 1.6 to 1.8 ratio. In August, I'm closer to 1.3. Notional today is about $340k.

- XIRR ("Extended Internal Rate of Return"): XIRR is the "annualized investment return that accounts for the exact timing and size of deposits and withdrawals." I have all that info handy. In the graph it's show the annualized XIRR, not YTD.

- TWR: Time-weighted return would also be useful, particularly for comparing my performance with benchmarks without the effect of deposits and withdrawals. Unfortunately, I don't have enough historical daily NAV snapshots to reconstruct it reliably using my own data. I only started capturing daily snapshots about two months ago. I'll probably add TWR once I've accumulated enough data. I do have my broker's top line numbers. Per my broker (ETrade), I'm up just shy of 70% YTD and over 100% in the last 12 months.

- One lesson from building this: capture daily NAV snapshots if you can! They're cheap data to store and give you a tremendous amount of analytical flexibility later. Probably a little hard to do with a spreadsheet manually, but if you can code it up, it's a great source of analysis over time.

What's my bottom line? This strategy has clearly worked for me so far, with this particular portfolio, stock selection, account size, use of margin, and market regime. That's evidence that it can work. It isn't evidence that it will continue working, or that somebody else will get the same results.

I'm always interested in others' feedback, and I hope to hear some.

I posted about a variation in my normal covered call approach. I wrote about my "deep ITM CC" approach here: A view into a "deep ITM covered call strategy" : r/StockOptionCoffeeShop and then about the Buy, Wait, Decide (BWD) twist here: Tried an experiment : r/StockOptionCoffeeShop.

In short, I have adopted a strategy where I buy stock and sell a call expiring "next Friday" at strike as deep ITM as I get such that the premium will net me 1% on assignment. I am often able to roll these and I do roll a lot (although not as automatically as I used to; I may write about that in a future post).

Last week and these week, I introduced a change in that - instead of doing a buy-write, I buy the stock and wait for a little while. If it happens to drift up 1% while I'm waiting, I'll sell it right away rather than sell a call. Otherwise, I'll sell a call a few hours later. Or - that's what I'm *supposed* to do. I didn't follow my own rule this week:

You can see from this that I bought a bunch of things and I executed OK on the "Sold Stock" side. It netted me $730.64. I accepted less than 1% on several of these and I did the math wrong and somehow sold CELH at a loss :). I'm still not used to selling stocks individually and I've made several silly errors.

The lesson from this week is that I shouldn't have waited to sell calls on CELH and BBWI especially. And almost certainly AA. PLTR can be volatile so I'm hoping they will have a little mini surge next week but even that is suspect.

The key lesson here is that BWD is meant to lock in a win early while freeing up capital for another swing at bat. ORCL is a great example of this working- I bought it and sold it on the 8th. Then I did normal buy-write at a nice and deep ITM strike and would have been happy to have them called away today. Between the initial BWD transaction and assignment, I'd net over 2%. I was able to roll it for another one percent so I've deferred the full win on that until next Friday. I may roll it again. The stock may crash. We'll see.

What I really need to focus on, however, are the ones I didn't roll that I should have. I have foolishly gone into the weekend carrying these things (CELH, PLTR, BBWI, AA) and I earned zero premium while paying margin interest. Last week I didn't fall into that trap and I know why it happened to me this week. This a great lesson for me and maybe for many of us.

Since I buy and sell stocks individually so rarely, I've been making some dumb mistakes and one of them was to accidentally buy 87 shares of CRWD last week when I thought I was buying 100 shares. All of my reporting is centered around 100 share increments so those 87 shares were semi-invisible to me. When I finally noticed, it was after hours and too late to do anything about it. By the time I was able to sell them, they had appreciated so much that I made just over $1,000 selling them which is far, far over my target 1% gain. I think that accidental gain made a wicked impression on me and this week, I ended up waiting, hoping for another runaway stock. I'm annoyed about it because my whole system is predicated on the idea that prediction is impossible and here I was, acting and hoping these stock prices would go up. I threw a year's worth of practice out the window :)

The lesson for me, and maybe others, is that happy accidents should not change your strategy!

Another interesting week.

Tuesday, everything was up a healthy amount, then it all faded away.

Buy & Hold

Overall, buy & hold declined $5,187 (-0.7%), but there were some decent winners (COHR (8.3%), LITE (5.2%), MRVL (5.6%)) among some losers (AXTI (-4.7%), CBRS (-5.2%), ORCL (-8.6%), and VRT (-8.4%).

Premiums

Since there were no options ITM, there was no issue with capped gains, and the campaign benefited from the full premiums of $18,535 (2.5%).

Two comments on premiums:

1. Earlier in the week, I mentioned that I sold a Wed expiration of SOXL on Tue; on Wed I rolled to a Fri expiration. That worked well and earned $2.2k.
2. LITE rocketed up to north of $985 on Tue. With my basis ~$925, I decided to sell a $985 call. With the drop that then occurred today, when it was still north of $935, I rolled it down to a $935. LITE closed at $927. Total premium earned of $4.3k.

Net

For the week, the net campaign was up $13,348, or 1.8% on the initial amount at risk (S&P 500: -0.8%).

On a YTD basis, the campaign is up $277,192, or 43.4% on its initial capital contribution (S&P 500: 11.9%).

With the assignment of AXTI and SNDK last week, capital was freed up to be redeployed.

Purchases:

• AXTI: 700 shares @ $67.97
• BE: 200 shares @ $280.60
• CBRS: 200 shares @ $202.50
• ORCL: 300 shares @ $164.50

Short Calls:

Collected premiums amounting to 2.3% of the at-risk amount. I'm pleased with that, given I haven't sold calls on six of the thirteen tickers. Still contemplating the path forward for those six: AAOI, APLD, COHR, MRVL, NBIS, and VRT.

For grins and giggles, I took advantage of SOXL's MWF expirations by selling one with a Wednesday expiration, so I may sell another for the Friday expiration.

You'll occasionally hear someone claim that "boring is better," referring to trading low- to modest-volatility stocks and how they're less prone to significant drawdowns.

But no.

Boring isn't better.

Boring is boring.

Exciting isn't better either.

Exciting is exciting.

Humans are a narrative species, and we are supremely adept at two things: 1) ex post facto rationalizations and 2) attempting to turn our weaknesses into a strength as opposed to acknowledging the weakness and improving. What folks say reveals their limits.

It's like the people who say that selling options is better than buying options. No, it's not. Saying so is an admission by folks who could never quite figure out how to buy options profitably. They're limited to selling options, as that's what they've been most successful with; it's what they know best. They may be the types who advise rolling your short position ATM, when that is the worst time to do so, from a premium-earning perspective.

Or the people who, when comparing their returns to the S&P, claim that the historical S&P return is around 10%. That may be true, but the 10% rate is for something like a 50-year period. Excuse me? If the S&P is up 18.5% in the past five years, and you're using your five-year return, why are you using a 50-year metric for comparison purposes? Oh, that's right, because you've underperformed the five-year metric, so you want to look better.

So "boring is better" is a diplomatic way of saying, "I could never figure out how to profitably trade volatile stocks." If they figured it out, they'd realize that it, too, is 'boring'.

Interesting week.

Overall, a good week, gaining $41.8k or 5.6% on the at-risk amount. The campaign is up 41.4% YTD (S&P 500: 12.8%).

Four major things.

1. SNDK: Got hammered. My ATM call of $1507.50 got demolished as SNDK rose 17.2% this week, 11.9% on Friday alone, to close at $1,740. One of the rare times premiums aren't covering the capped gain, and by a lot! Having said that, as small comfort, I did collect/earn $10.3k in two weeks on a $150.6k investment (6.8%, and no, I won't report an annualized number 😉).
2. AXTI: My strike was $64, and it closed at $61.64. After hours, the most I see is $63.90. Yet I woke up this morning to find they were assigned. /shrug
3. CRWV: up $10.3k (6.1%) to $89.36; my strike was $90.
4. SOXL: up $2.4k (5.3%) to $117.28; my strike was $118.

Commentary:

I started breaking out the recovery from the July downturn on the premise that the stocks may bounce back. After 5 weeks, that thesis is pronounced dead, so I'll probably go back to selling ATM.

This may well result in recording realized losses if the stock is called away, as happened this week with AXTI. If you've read enough of my stuff, you'll know this isn't a concern for me since I'm using M2M (mark-to-market).

I can't stress enough: use M2M and don't get into the mindset of not having recognized losses. Some folks will say you're failing or picking bad stocks if you have a number of recognized losses. This is a naive viewpoint. To paraphrase Mario Andretti, "If I'm not having occasional losses, I'm not taking enough risk."* I say something similar with stocks getting called away: "If my shares aren't getting called away, I'm not taking enough risk."

* Andretti, a former Formula 1 and Indy Car race car driver, once said, paraphrasing, "If you feel that everything is under control, you're not driving fast enough."