I get what you are saying. I've been in many similar situations while not the same magnitude of gains. I was long or short something. It went against me to horrendous level and I just held and held and held. Eventually it came back my way and I made some profits. With hindsight, I think it would have been better for me to take a small hit and REVERSED my thinking and went long(if I had gone short) or went short(had I was long). I would have net net made more money. The exercise the OP did only taught him that if you held something long enough eventually it will make a lot of money for you. Which in this particular case worked out. In many other instances, it might not. Yours truly had experienced it myself. I'm still working on changing that psychology so I would take the hit earlier rather than just wait for it to come back.
Making large gains when you bet the whole farm is gambling. The vast majority that operate like this end up giving it all back & than some.
Back "in the day" late 90's I rode 500 shares of Tellabs down from $68ish to mid $30ish (Ma Bell spinoff bid for a smaller rival but eventually was bought by Lucent which itself is no longer around) till it came back to entry point a few months later and got a couple more for the hell of it before bailing around $71ish. I had the patience (was supposed to be a daytrade lol) and bull market behind me but I have never come close to ever letting that happen again. Learned to measure my patience in waiting minutes or hours at most - otherwise cut and run. Also, for me, to stick with futures only.
%% Mostly; but I would not want to buy a 191% debt ridden co with a $40, 000,000 SEC fine, even in hindsight , because TSLA up trending was such a low probability. So if we are going to pretend low probability debt ridden $40 million SEC fined company /single stock is a good buy; lets pretend with something better than TSLA-. NOT long or short TSLA.LOL-LOL,
It is OK, we are all in the same boat suffer together, learning together. Best wishes for the new year.
I don't own TSLA or trade TSLA. With my luck, I am afraid it will be another AMZN, which I also missed out.
The guy did not exercise 600 leap options as he claimed. He exercised 6 equivalent to 600 shares. Doesn't even know what he bought. 600 leap options at 300 strike would be worth around $12M today.