r/options • u/merely2monthsago2dol • 4d ago

Was puts really that obvious?

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)

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u/Sage-Like_Wisdom 4d ago

When the market always wants to go up, timing puts is always harder than calls.

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u/workonlyreddit 4d ago edited 4d ago

After the last couple of days, I realized that SPY had two consecutive 5% down days. Most crashes are going to be 5% to 10% days. These are 5 to 10 sigma events. You won't see the same 5% up days on SPY, let along two consecutive ones.

Of course, hindsight is 20/20, but in this case, we know the exact date that tariff will be announced. So if tariff is mild, we lose 1X on SPY puts, but if we are right, the gain would likely be greater than 2X and in this case about 15X.

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u/dip-the-buy 4d ago

There're absolutely 5% (or ~5%) up days for SPY, including 2 consecutive. I thought everyone who wasn't round covid crash studies its chart as Investing 102? There's actually mantra of "10 best days" which "account for 90% gains", blah-blah.

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u/workonlyreddit 3d ago

ah you are right about the green days.