I'm feeling a bit lazy today. It has been a long week, the economic whiplash has made the trading interesting but also a little more nerve-wracking than I would like. While I typically am trading on pessimism I am holding on optimism too! My Shopify (SHOP) position has been +/- probably 10% in the course of this week, which is just insane.

I was joking to a friend that I have probably made more money on betting against AMD than I have made holding AMD.

Options trading is risky, but it is a good way to generate returns while you're holding long on some positions.

The only big intent in today's trading was to see what opportunities could be made off of the AppLovin short report by Muddy Waters. AppLovin (APP) is a mobile ad network, I guess, and the report is a pretty strong diagnosis of extremely shady behavior by the company in their serving of ads. In essence they appear to be violating user privacy and lying to ad buyers. They dropped down yesterday to around $260 at the close, and were back up to the $280 range at in pre-market.

Opportunity!

Tesla (TSLA) had an interesting day yesterday with a lot of news coverage about how they're less scathed by White House tariffs than other auto-makers. Nonetheless there seemed to be a lot of debate in the pricing of TSLA on how much or how little their exposure to tariffs may actually be.

Opportunity!

Since i was feeling lazy, I started the pre-market late by watching Bloomberg. The usual stories I expected about PC/E, inflation, international markets, etc. They also highlighted Lululemon (LULU) which issued warnings in their earnings guidance about consumer pullback in spending. They were down 15% before the open.

Opportunity!

I was able to catch the APP swing downward off the open. I figured a $20/share overnight swing meant for some sure-fire volatility which means put option values will swing a lot in the opening frenzy.

Turning TSLA options was pretty routine given their daily volatility.

LULU was a challenge. What I didn't recognize appropriately when I bought my put options was the big difference in trading volume between LULU and the tech sector I am usually working with. Lower trading volume means the price of options is going to move more slowly, but also that the price can move in much bigger jumps! I struggled with watching the position go deeply red off of only a $1/share swing in price.

I decided not to put a stop in.

"If I get torched here, I deserve it."

I loaded up on more options in an upswing on the stock price, lowering my average price per option but also plunging me further into sus territory.

Fortunately the downswing I was expecting finally came, in slow-motion, and I profited less than I should have mostly because I was so anxious to get out before I got burnt.

Options trading can be risky, but especially so if you're a doofus playing with fire.

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I am pleased to have ended the week in the green. My covered calls will expire worthless today and we will see how next week shapes up after the weekend!

Log

• Wasn't expecting much interesting to happen today but was expecting to work off the AppLovin short report by Muddy Waters
• Started paying attention to the pre-market later than usual, and honestly more lazy than usual.
• Queued up trades for AppLovin (APP), Tesla (TSLA), and Lululemon (LULU).
• I don't typically trade outside of the tech sector, but the premarket moves on LULU news about consumer pullback, I wanted to see if my long put strategy would work.
• Caught APP swinging around on the open, quick fire!
• Thought I saw momentum with LULU and bought their expensive put options.
• Started to get pretty nervous because the volatility is there but the volume on LULU is so much different than many of the tech sector that the options move very slowly.
• Diluted my average price on LULU on some upswings, before finally catching it on a downswing to exit profitably. That was a nail-biter.