Hi all, So a friend just woke up to a huge loss in his account due to the assignment/exercising of his options. He's devastated so I'm gonna ask clarify something since my knowledge on options is limited. I checked his trade logs and it appears that some were autoexercised while some were left to expire which is baffling. For example, let's call the first stock 'ABC'. He sold a few put credit spreads (149/150) and the stock closed at 145. His 149P was autoexercised while his 150P was assigned. However, there is another stock 'XYZ' which he too sold put credit spreads (405/410) and the stock closed at 390. His 405P was left to expire while his 410P was assigned. Is there a reason for this difference on why one is autoexercised and one is left to expire when both stocks closed below their strike price? To my understanding, all ITM will be automatically exercised while OTM will be left to expire worthless. I've checked the website of his broker (Interactive Brokers) and they do mention ITM will be auto-exercised and OTM will be abandoned. Appreciate any response. P.S: Let's keep this civil and avoid spewing any hate comments please.
Tell him to wait until Tuesday morning. Until then it’s possible his risk and balances won’t be correct.
Assuming "XYZ" stock is Tesla. If that's the case, the stock officially closed at 418.32, but traded around the 390 level after hours. This would mean his long 405 put would expire worthless based on the closing price (unless he told IB to exercise). His short put could be exercised by the holder up to 530pm et. Based on the after hours movement it appears that is what happened. Once he finds out he is assigned on his short put, it is to late to exercise his long. This means for every 1 put he is assigned on, he will be long 100 shares of Tsla.
If it is tsla, I guess your friend is one of many affected by tsla afterhours sp500 news. Was the sp500 scheduled for friday 5pm? Would have been a great trade to take on. Buy 425c and 410p almost for free at 3:50pm.
The expiring 410 puts were 3 bid on the close even though the stock was trading 418, so something must have been expected.
It is TSLA. I guess there's no way out of this unless TSLA happens to gap back up in the unlikely event on Tuesday morning.
This is really bad i guess... Tsla could easily nosedive a lot lower after the long weekend and european markets open on monday.