I should also add one other possibility that I wish I had though of earlier, in case you ever find yourself in a similar situation. In the unlikely event that the bid-ask spreads are tight enough, gaps in price motion sufficiently small in pre-market that you wanted to trade, and only to the limits of your available margin, you could get a result similar to having a straddle by simulating little stop orders at little price increments by watching the price an issuing limit orders that would immediately fill (because I believe that native stop order types are not generally offered outside of regular trading hours). If the price moved in a single directional trend, you would make money from the purchases made by your previous stop orders that filled along the way. In order for this to work, there would have to parties in that pre-market either trading a liquidity providing strategy or who believe that the market is overreacting and that you are wrong to try to get ahead of the market. Also, keep in mind that if you have multiple trading robots implementing moment strategies in a low liquidity market, they can get themselves into a bidding war feedback loop until one runs out money. What I wrote above is inspired by my recalling reading some mentions in passing that, if I recall correctly, the exposure of options can, at least theoretically, be simulated by algorithmically trading the underlying, perhaps requiring the near absence of commissions, bid-ask spreads, price movement discontinuity, margin requirements and maybe interest. Unfortunately, I am having trouble finding any reference for this right now.
Thank you for all great inputs. For the simple investor like me, it will take a while to digest all these information. BABA stock turned out to be a dud, (not much volatility) so it turned out to be good since i was going to straddle.