Not gonna lie, I'm a bit of a fanboi. Here is what he said he did in TSLA (responding to the question how he took a losing position to a profit): How many of you think this quickly and ruthlessly when your trades aren't going your way? And of course, he had to block me on email at the end.
Not gonna lie, he could be a trading genius or an elite BSer, I'm a pleb who knows nothing of the strategies he describes. Someone will confirm if they made sense and having dest's time stamps will clarify
Here's my understanding: - He went long at some price > $250 (say $270) - Shares went to $250, share exposure = long X shares @ $270 - Made a lopsided bet that price would go down further and went short by selling calls = 2X current long exposure - So now he is ~net X short at a cost of ~$230 - Price keeps going down, he covers at 230/270 - So now (I think) he is breakeven, short a bunch of call options and long some TSLA shares This is my guess. I have no reason to doubt he actually made these trades.
I think my favourite thing about Dest is that he keeps the payoff chart in mind. As far as I know, he does not use any external tools to track it. And he makes trades to adjust it as the market changes.
This trade was never a losing trade the way I followed. It was two wins in a row. He bought shares and price increased. Avg cost was low 24x? Then at ~$250 he closed his long. He closed it by converting to a delta neutral short vol position instead of selling the shares. When he gained on short vol he was able to leg into wings that capped his risk from short vol @ 250 at a better price. Probably held while he still felt he had something to gain on short vega/gamma with bounded risk and then finally took everything off.
I was long 80,800 from 233. I converted to a synthetic straddle from mid 240s. The syn-straddle value dropped and was marked to 19-20 at 253-254 on shares. The gain on the synthetic straddle mark was >$10/contract. It's in one of the TSLA threads. 250 synthetic straddle (share long/short 2x 250C) was marked to 18.xx at 250 on shares). Y'all went on tilt with that schweiz clown stating I was long from 254... 254 was the mark at which I started buying the wings. I bought the bulk of the wings at (wing and straddle) neutrality... 250. The best case scenario... well, because I was buying vol and it paid to wait. WTF. I didn't buy any shares beyond the initial 233 fill. CHRONOLOGICALLY: Long shares from 233.xx Short synthetic straddle from 244.xx Long synthetic fly from 249-254.xx (on the way down)
The weather was awesome, no? We had a shit ton of rain driving into the resort on Sat, but then one little shower on Tuesday.
I found the posts: https://www.elitetrader.com/et/threads/tsla.293661/page-223#post-4848915 If you're good you can find the volume in the ensuing days (250C, 230/270 outside combo).
The trade made something akin to $400 per contract ($320K). The (terminal) structuring was an abject failure in hindsight as I was marked to an $1,100 gain on the synthetic straddle when I bot the wings. $1,100 > $400.