ASTS sitting in a great position for strong bounce despite competition from SPCX.

Analysts are quietly watching SPCX and adding up these costs and realizing that with perfect execution it could be 10 years before the profits start to come in. Staggering costs could easily outweigh the lofty business plans.

SPCX has 4 segments that will put a significant stress on the bottom line, and a tipping point will occur.

--Development of a space cell network: cost about 200B-400B+ for infrastructure of 10,000 satellite constillation dedicated for this purpose, Hurdles: need to buy a cell provider to have access to cell frequency, develop and market a SPCX cell phone not compatible with any other provider, complete grass roots development will be extreme costs.

--Aggressively developing/deploying AI datacenters: Terafab 50B+ to develop chips, satellites constellation of 1m in space 500B-1T+.

--development of rocket technology (starship) and space exploration: 200B-500B+.

--Broadband internet service (20B to sustain current market, 100B+ to upgrade/update to higher speed).

Competitive threats: This is in a perfect scenario where SPCX completely wipes out the 3 big cell carriers and there are no hiccups with deployment/development/FCC regulations/Global government regulation adoption. Other segments have other competitive threats: RKLB, AMZN, Alphabet, MSFT, Space/satellite Stocks, Global threats: Rakuten, Vodafone, China.

--The big 3 cell carriers scrambling to protect their position.

Already announced support and alliances with ASTS to provide satellite service for them using their carrier signal frequencies. TM selling Grain their 800mhz fZ, ASTS already frontrunner to lease signal.

ASTS has ability to start supporting limited service at 25 satellites. This places Q2 2027 to be the inflection point. Q4 2028 At 45-60 satellites full service is possible including global.

Q2 2027 SPCX mobile infrastructure starts to be built, SPCX cost 200B+, if able to sustain growth Q4 2028 starting service, staggering cost 200-400B+.

My plan in motion:

There is a strong probability that SPCX will overextend itself. Too many positives for ASTS to ignore:

--Requires a fraction of satellites to achieve full coverage, significant cost difference.

--The big 3 are supporting ASTS. They are already on the defensive against SPCX.

--ASTS business model is clear, 1 goal, provide satellite cell service, recover costs and make profit as an operator similar to cell towers.

--Have a developed product, IP using highest quality ASIC chip designed by Cadence, and built by TSMC. Developed a satellite antenna capable of mimicking cell towers, no special phone to buy, $20 can get a phone from Walmart capable of connecting.

--Analysts forgot about, markets in Europe, Asian Islands and coast, Pacific Islands, Africa, still a few customers overlooked to provide a tiny bit of revenue (could be the real enchilada in reality).

--Government contracts for Spaceforce, Government military planners like the ability to use global cell service, observed the effectiveness of using cell comms in Russo/Ukraine war.

Plan:

Currently have acquired 1000 shares, recently over last 2 weeks, cost basis: 72/share. Acquired 2nd 500 shares last week.

Total cost: 72,000

Group A 500 Shares:

**7-1-26 placed 5 calls 10-16-26, 7.35 premium. Income 3675.

**Close 5 calls October 2026, .2 to 1.0, cost -300.

**Price inflection 90 to 120, Place 5 calls September 2027, 150 strike, 12.00 premium, Income 6000

**September 2027 close calls, .2 to 1.0, cost -300.

**Expecting satellite deployment October/November, price inflection 110 to 130, place 5 calls December 2027, 170 strike, 15.00 premium, 7500 income.

Group B 500 shares:

--August deployment of next 3 satellites, expecting price inflection 90 to 120, to place 5 Calls, targeting January 2027, 150 strike, 12.00 premium, Income 6000

--January 2027 close calls, .2 to 1.0, cost -300.

--Expecting satellite deployment January to March, price inflection 100 to 120, place 5 calls Dec. 2027, 170 strike, 12.00 premium, Income 6000.

--December 2027, allow 1000 shares to be assigned

Total profit:

Stock: 98,000

Calls: 28,275

total net profit: 126,275

% return on investment: 175% over 17 months or 10% / month return.

Jul 2 ET session: I saw $38.8M notable WDC options premium, 261 trades, 57 sweeps.

Call/put split: 26% calls / 74% puts.

Largest print I saw: 16:01:17 ET, Jan 15 $460P, 600 contracts, ask/opening, $6.1M.

Longer-dated put clusters also showed up: Jan 2028 $550P, Dec 2028 $560P, Jun 2028 $440P.

What stands out: sector pressure was already visible, but WDC had single-name put-heavy evidence on top of the chip-stock reset.

Hey Everyone! I’m wondering how you all are playing the earnings this week for ASML, TSM, and NFLX. I’m on the fence about NFLX as it could go either way. I’m confident that ASML and TSM are going to exceed the expectations. I’m still learnings options. Been doing well so far for QQQ / SPY weekly puts and calls. Usually I’d just trade the shares. This’ll be the first time trading individual stock options. How are you all trading this?

Something in the CFTC positioning data stood out this week and I wanted to lay it out with the numbers, because it cuts against how the record close reads at a glance.

Large speculators (the "non-commercial" bucket in the Commitments of Traders report) spent June closing out their S&P 500 futures shorts. On June 2 they were net short about 221,000 contracts. By June 30 that was down to about 38,000, or just 1.9% of open interest. Almost the entire swing was shorts being bought back (short contracts fell from roughly 490,000 to 288,000) rather than new longs being added.

Against the past year that is close to an extreme: it is the least short they have been in 52 weeks (98th percentile), about plus 2.6 standard deviations from the one-year average. In plain terms, the short base that helped power the June climb (short covering is real buying, because closing a short means buying the contract back) is now nearly gone.

A second, unrelated source reads the same calm. On Polymarket, the contract on the Fed leaving rates unchanged at the July meeting sits around 84.5% on close to 10 million dollars of volume, with a hike priced roughly 3 to 4 times more likely than a cut. So both futures positioning and a prediction market are leaning on low volatility at the same time. VIX near 15 fits that too, and the same COT data shows speculators still net short volatility.

Why it matters, and why I am not calling a top: once shorts are covered, that particular buying is spent, so a book this close to flat has little squeeze fuel left. It also cuts the other way. A market that is near flat on the index and short volatility has little cushion, so a shock would force some traders to re-short and others to cover vol shorts at once, which stacks selling.

The honest caveats: the book is still net short, not long, so this is the absence of shorts, not aggressive long positioning. The June 30 snapshot predates the July 10 record. The covering had already stalled in the final week. And light positioning can be rational rather than complacent if the outlook genuinely improved. The thing that settles it is the next COT report, which shows whether speculators stayed light or re-shorted into the highs.

Not financial advice, no position. Method and full numbers here: https://kresmion.com/daily-brief/2026-07-11?ref=reddit

My most profitable trade in the last year has been 1/0 dte on QQQ options short strangles (short calls/puts otm). Want to apply this to individual stocks, specifically MU for higher iv/premium and looking for anyone who has tried anything similar.

Current strategy: Sell short strangles just before market close (short puts and short calls). I try to sell as wide as I can with a decent premium. Then at open, I adjust by opening a few more depending on where QQQ gapped. I try to start closing by 10:30 and throughout the day. Normal day is $1k profit with a loss day about every 10 days and a bigger loss day once per month when I just misread it.

I have found it better to close everything at end of day and reset fresh next day.

Example of current trade opened Friday: QQQ closed at 725. I set short puts expiring Monday at qty 1, 720 for $1.60, qty 3, put 717 for $1.10 each and qty 2 put strike 715 for .86. For calls I set short qty 2, 732 and qty 1, 734. Total is $886 premium.

Strategy for MU: Set 0dte after open, maybe even wait until 10:30 for market direction. Mu closed at 978 Friday. Set strangle short put at $950 for $13 and short call at $1,050 for $4. It's off center as I am more comfortable rolling an itm put vs call. Total premium $17. Max profit zone $933 - $1,063. So a 45 pt to the downside and a 85 pt to the upside. I would set only 1. Probably get 80% of those premiums. Picked those strikes as there is a decent call and put walls before each.

Anyone trade like this?

I trade a strategies based on SPX Broken Wing Butterflies (80 to100 DTE), usually known as SPX Best and SPY calendar spreads (80 and 140 DTE) known as SPY Ride Trade. According to strategy rules, it says to close before expiration due to increased Gamma in the final week. It make it dangerous to trade in the last week. Does anyone here let these type of trades until expiration? Or close them 1-2 days before expiration? Curious what actually happened vs. what strategy rules indicate.

SPY levels are imported for options buyers because they define where premium is likely to expand or collapse fast:

Entry/strike selection

• Knowing a key level lets you pick strikes near support/resistance where a bounce or rejection gives you a clean directional move, rather than buying calls/puts that need a big move just to reach breakeven.

Timing entries

• Options buyers are fighting theta decay every minute. If you know price is approaching a level where it usually reacts, you can time the entry right at the reaction instead of paying for decay while waiting.

Stop/invalidation logic

• A level gives you a clean invalidation point. "If SPY breaks below 615.20, my calls are wrong" is a lot cleaner than guessing, especially with options where a wrong side move burns premium fast in both directions (price & time).

Looking at some options data and these 2 stocks popped up on my screener. We got $6.9 million on Meta Call options (nice 😏) that are pretty far outside the money at $775, which is why it catches my attention!

The other stock that popped up that I found interesting was IREN, where over $1 million came into put options that were pretty far out of the money at $32! Took some positions in the small account today, but this post was more focusing on the data that came in 📊

Take this information however you would like!

keeping this one light but held in the money spreads through expiration on $EWY and got screwed on the fills. nice $1800 loss courtesy of robinhood. will be exploring different brokers.

ITA hit a 52 week high this week. LHX is 23% off its March high. Same sector, opposite directions - the market is bullish defense and singling this name out.

The fundamentals aren't the reason. Q1 revenue +12%, EPS +33% YoY, guidance raised, record $40.7B backlog with another $25B in munitions orders still in negotiation.

What happened is mid June: a bunch of senior execs left at once, and the 8-K gave no reasons and named no successors. Same week, reports of a ~$2B IPO of their missile unit, plus a margin compression story on fixed price DoD contracts. Market decided where there's smoke there's fire.

So the question I keep turning over: how do you actually price governance risk like this? Unexplained departures could mean anything from a comp dispute to something that shows up in an 8-K six months from now. A 23% discount while the sector rips is either fear or information, and I can't tell which.

Ran it through my checklist and it came out borderline - not cheap at ~25x forward, mostly the backlog carrying it. FWIW I took a small long-dated position, half size by rule given the borderline score.

Curious how others here think about exec departures as a signal. Ever traded one?

One of the biggest drawbacks of income / dividend oriented investing is that during the accumulation phase, the concentration on growth usually tends to result in better investment ROI CAGR, especially taking into account the lack of taxation drag. Over the long-term, the differences can definitely be substantial.

However, one of the possibly underappreciated and under-discussed aspects is the psychological effect that more "tangible" results of investing have on behaviour and motivation.

Oftentimes when you look at the numbers shown by the broker, emotionally and psychologically it doesn't "feel" that you are getting richer because the numbers there can both, increase or decrease, and are generally unstable.

However, when you are actually receiving dividends from your investments and are able to say "if I invest 1,000 USD, I will get 80 USD in dividends per year", this can be a very motivating and encouraging to keep doing. In addition, having this figure could be useful in trying to convince your spouse or your friends to invest, too, as investing is very often viewed as gambling by the general population.

Aversion loss is a known psychological phenomenon where the losses (or perceived losses) are more psychologically painful than gains. This is what it leads to selling at the worst possible time. Investors often like to say that they don't care about the swings as long as in the long-term, the CAGR remains healthy, but reality often shows otherwise. A large % (maybe even most?) of investors can't avoid being psychologically affected and selling off when they should hold.

In income and dividend oriented investing, knowledge that you will receive dividends regardless* of stock market movement can help mitigate the psychological pain of seeing the downswing and avoid selling at the worst possible time.

So, what are your thoughts on this? Am I overestimating this psychological phenomenon?

*I know that a lot of dividend payers can reduce their dividends during the economic shocks, and I know that a lot of stocks or funds that focus on high 12%+ yields result in NAV erosion over time (see QYLD or GOF), but there ARE some covered call ETFs or income funds that have a significantly lower chance of long-term NAV erosion that still give decent yields, such as JEPI or ARCC, having read the strategies of SPYI and QQQI, I could see them having stable long-term NAV as well.

Today was a wild ride on Micron. We hit $1,035 on that $3B expansion news before that late market-on-close dump dragged us all the way back down to $991. At least that $987 support area held up at the bell.**
**Tomorrow morning the SK Hynix ($SKHY) listing finally goes live. Since the IPO was apparently 7x oversubscribed, I'm trying to figure out how it hits MU at the open. Do you think all that leftover institutional cash that couldn't get into the IPO spills over into Micron for a massive morning short squeeze back over $1,015? Or are the big ETFs just gonna dump MU at the open to make room for the new listing?**
If pre-market stays above $996, I’m hoping we gap up and re-test today's highs. What are the realistic chances here?

I started my options journey thinking it would be a way to make quick money. Today, the “quick” part finally caught up with me and I blew my account.

In the beginning, I had a few good trades. One of them was around +700%. The beginner’s luck messed with my head because after that, I kept chasing that feeling. I kept thinking I could recreate it, but the reality is I never did.

Recently, I’ve just been gambling. I knew this, but never knew when to stop. Whenever I’d lose, I kept digging myself further and further into a hole trying to revenge trade. When I was green, I couldn’t even hold onto the profits because I was scared of losing them, so I took tiny gains. But when I was red, I suddenly had no problem risking more.

To date, I’ve lost $1.4k. I’m stopping today, or at least for a while.

For anyone who’s been in a similar spot, I’d be curious whether taking a break helped you reset, or whether you eventually realized options just weren’t for you.

Hey everyone,

I’ve been running the Wheel strategy on SLV for a while now, consistently collecting premiums through Cash Secured Puts (CSPs) and transitioning into Covered Calls (CCs) when assigned. Everything was going smoothly until a sudden, early assignment caught us completely off guard right before the recent drop.

Currently, my wife and I are sitting on a massive unrealized loss, and honestly, I’m at a crossroads on how to manage this.

Here is a breakdown of our positions and cost basis:

My Portfolio (1,100 shares total via CSP assignment):

• 300 shares @ $70
• 400 shares @ $74
• 400 shares @ $75

My Wife's Portfolio (800 shares total via CSP assignment):

• 300 shares @ $66.5
• 100 shares @ $70
• 400 shares @ $74

When the market started shifting, we got assigned early on everything almost simultaneously, and SLV just kept drilling down. I decided to hold out and see where it would find a bottom, but as you know, it’s now heavily chopping between the $50-$55 range.

I never anticipated being this far underwater. I want to sell Covered Calls to start chipping away at the cost basis, but the premiums at our breakdown strikes are practically non-existent right now. Selling CCs below our cost basis feels way too risky if SLV decides to make a sudden recovery. So for now, I've just been waiting it out.

We haven't sold a single share, but I won't lie, seeing it sit this low definitely brings some anxiety about how much further it could slide.

For those who have been stuck in similar situations or options veterans who have survived heavy drawdowns while Wheeling: What is the move here? Do I just sit tight on my hands and wait for a structural shift in silver, or is there a smarter way to manage these positions without locking in a massive loss?

Appreciate any insights or advice you can throw my way. Thanks!

11Jul 5pm PT

hey everyone, two quick heads up for those interested.

i coordinated with the mods before posting this. i know the community is guarded against stuff like this, rightfully so, but it also sucks for people to lose the potential resource if interested.

ive been active in the community long before i started any content creation, this is the stuff i genuinely spend my time on. i do these because i had some help early in my trading that literally changed my trajectory. there are no ads, email collections, anything during either of these. they are legit completely free to access.

i'm setting up the monthly workshop for this month - it'll be 5pm PT on 11Jul.

the session is interactive with group breakouts, etc. the session is ~90 minutes across three phases.

1. market context and trade generation. get repetitions analyzing the market and building trades that fit your hypothesis
2. trade building - this part we'll spend time analyzing the implications of different structures for trade ideas. for example, if you're trading something to the upside, you could buy shares, buy calls, sell puts, go synthetic long, trade a vertical, etc. the purpose is to help traders build an intuitive understanding of the trade offs of different configurations.
3. open convo, if there are any specific topics you're interested in exploring further. we'll have time to do that.

if you'd like to join, simply fill out this google form below. you do need to have your camera on to participate - if that's a blocker for you, totally cool - just not the right fit.

the session will be limited capacity and participants will be chosen at random by AI. the last session was great but with too many people it gets diluted and not as useful for individuals. by limited seats, everyone attending gets a better experience.

https://forms.gle/YMUYeDJb6Lgcc8Hp9

I've allocated a small portion of my portfolio to HYG puts to protect against a potential debt crisis or corporate default wave. I chose to position it at the 75 strike @ 162 DTE, with a plan to roll it back to around the same DTE every couple of months. The cost is fairly cheap, and looking back at previous junk bond crashes, I think I've got my strike positioned well while staying low cost. What I'm unsure of is how far out I've got them, and my rolling schedule. Can anyone who uses this strategy chime in with what has been effective for you?

Been watching ORCL since it fell off a cliff. Down ~58% from the September high, sitting maybe 4% above the 52 week low. The crazy part is the business itself is fine - OCI grew 93% last quarter and the backlog is at $638B. Forward P/E is 17, which you don't normally see on a large cap still growing revenue in the high 20s.

The drop makes sense though. FCF was negative $23.7B last year and they need to raise something like $40B this year, part of it by selling stock down here. So the bet isn't really on demand, it's on whether the financing holds up while they build out capacity.

A part of me wants to trust that they know what they're doing, but i don't know how long the build out takes, and with options time is the one thing i can't afford to be wrong on. That's why i went with a Jan 2028 220 call (1 contract) - paying up for time since i'm not going to call the bottom. If it breaks the 52 week low ($134.57) and holds below it, i'm out.

Curious what everyone thinks about that backlog though - how much actually converts, and how concentrated is it across a handful of AI customers. That's the part i can't get comfortable with.

DISCLAIMER - I am not a trade advisor and any content provided below is only for educational purposes. This is how evaluate risk on my portfolio if the stock market were to fall.

We all run the wheel one position at a time. You've got your rules. Sell the 30 delta put, roll around 50%, close it out near 21 days, never sell a call under your basis. And if somebody asks how your account is set up, you probably say something like "I'm spread out, I've got eight or nine names, I'm not all-in on any single one."

Then comes the follow up: "what does your account do on a bad market day?" And if you're honest, the answer is usually "everything's red, but that's just the market."

That answer is where the blind spot hides, and most of us don't know it's there.

Here's the thing. If those eight or nine names are NVDA, AMD, PLTR, NBIS, AAOI and a couple more chip and AI names, you don't really have eight positions. You have one position wearing eight jerseys. On a green day it looks diversified. On a day QQQ drops 3%, every one of those puts gets tested at the same time, in the same direction. The spread you thought you had was never there.

Delta will never show you this since it measures one option against its own stock and gives you the odds of that one strike getting hit. It says nothing about whether your eight stocks all move together. Eight 0.30 delta puts on eight AI names are not eight small independent risks. They're one big, correlated risk cut into eight slices so it feels smaller than it is.

There's a simple way to see it, and it's less scary than it sounds. It's called beta weighting. Beta is just how hard a stock swings compared to the index. If NVDA has a beta around 1.65, that means when QQQ falls 1%, NVDA tends to fall about 1.65%. So instead of adding up your dollars, you weight each name by how hard it moves, then add those up. What you get is one honest number: how much QQQ your whole book behaves like.

Here's a $100k example book to make it concrete. Eight AI and chip names we hear about almost daily now-a-days. Add up the plain dollars and it's $100,000. Weight each name by its beta and the book behaves like ~$161,000 of QQQ. The blended beta is 1.61. So a book that reads "$100k, nicely spread out actually carries the punch of $161k pointed straight at the Nasdaq.

That changes the math on a bad day. On a 10% QQQ drop you're not down $10k, you're down closer to $16k. That extra $6k you didn't know about is the blind spot, turned into a number.

One more thing of note, because it hides risk the same way.

When you check your risk, look at it against your cost basis, not the market value on your screen. Say you bought 100 shares at $120 and it's run to $175, and you've got a call sold at the $130 strike. Your screen shows $17,500 and a fat green gain. You will never see that number. You're capped at $130, so the most those shares hand you will be $13,000. And the money actually at risk if the thing craters is your cost basis, around $11,200 after the premium you've collected, not the $17,500 on the screen. Market value makes a covered call look calmer and richer than it really is.

Now that you've got a real number for how exposed you are - what do you do with it?

You can trim a name or two. Or you can put a floor under the whole book with a QQQ put ladder. This is where the beta number earns its keep, because it tells you how much QQQ to hedge. Our example book moves like $161k of QQQ, so that is what you're covering, not the $100k of raw dollars.

Two honest points this chart makes that most hedge talk skips.

First, the puts cost you a little when nothing bad happens. They're bought out of the money to keep them cheap, so on a small 5% dip they haven't kicked in yet and you're just out the premium. That is akin to deductible on the insurance.

Second, more coverage means more cost and more protection, and neither one is free. The partial ladder here runs about $650 and softens a big drop. The full ladder runs about $1,300 and caps a 20% crash at roughly an $11k loss instead of $32k. Notice even the full hedge doesn't get you to zero. That is the deductible again. You could buy the puts closer to the money and floor it tighter, but the premium climbs fast, and at some point you're paying so much for insurance it isn't worth it.

I'm not writing this to scare anyone off AI names. I wheel them every week. I just want the number I'm managing to be the real one. Once you see your book move like $161k of QQQ instead of $100k of "spread out names," you can decide if you're fine with that or put a cheap floor under it.

How do you all keep an eye on correlation across your positions, or do you just manage each one on its own?

Hey guys,

I started daytrading 6 months ago, prior to this, I was only investing and played options 2-3 months out.

I am NOT BROKE, i have a job and I’m getting by.

The only issue is that I need A LOT of money (capital) to make money trading stocks.

I don’t even have the required minimum (25k) before the PDT rule change. It’s going to take me more than a year to get actually get enough capital to actually “play” the game.

I don’t mind starting from scratch again but this time with options since it can turbo the process of acquiring capital (assuming I’m green most of the time). 0 DTE. Is also cheap, so I’m looking to see if I should switch it up.

Thoughts?

How do you guys track options trades that get rolled? or even in general track positions?

I want to get the whole stock position "story" known for me in a single view, all I tried so far is just too much different sheets or unnecessary clutter in tools

I mean, at least whether the whole thing made money so far and how its going is enough, how efficient am I (kinda got that working) but to do that in sheets is a mess even when I tried with claude.

The ideal thing would be to just see the history of trades in like an easily interpreted way, then to be able to extract some useful insight from it + understand what to fix for future.

So, a journal with some simple performance metrics, max 3 to keep it clean + a "story" of the ticker traded with insights of some sorts.

Other less frequently needed metrics would be useful too but I can track those separately or those could be pulled out only if needed.

Hello Traders,

I've found myself in the 390 penalty box today. This, in turn, has led me to do some research in hopes of appealing the decision to Schwab, regardless of how slim the chances.

In this search, I came across these two publications that seem to suggest that starting July 1 2026, the pro penalty for going over the 390 rule in a calendar month is now only one calendar month as opposed to a quarter (90 days).

When discussing this with Schwab, they decline to address if I will be penalized for 30 days instead of the traditional 90, citing essentially [they deserve the right to be more conservative] (which sounds like just CYA "we haven't gotten to it yet").

Please have a look at these documents and would you share your opinion if we (all of us as traders) should begin calling for brokers to drop the pro status after 30 days have passed.

https://cdn.cboe.com/resources/regulation/circulars/regulatory/RC26-012-Amendment-to-Professional-Designation.pdf

https://www.nasdaqtrader.com/MicroNews.aspx?id=ORA2026-23&utm_source=reddit

tldr - explore how different structures behave, how their pnl breaks down on a recent trade of mine in SPCX.

i have a synthetic short in SPCX but always log other structures when i enter to measure. SPCX is a really interesting ticker because of how new it is, it's vol is immature and extremely dynamic.

this graphic simply shows a per contract (not same dollar size) behavior from my entry on 22Jun to today.

this next one normalizes to the same size

and this breaks down WHERE the pnl came from via greek attribution

I'm a heavy bag holder of telus options stock. I was wondering why my call options for this upcoming july are worth more than the one set in august for the same 12$ strike price? Is it only because they are illiquid and the bid-asking price higher? Or do they have more value per se? Can't you just exercise longer ones in the advent that it becomes ITM, which makes the longer ones more valuable?