Options strategy guides & research notes.
Evidence-backed guides on options payoff, maximum loss, breakeven, and implied volatility. Each guide states its sources, worked arithmetic, and assumptions.
Strategy guides
- · 11 min read
Iron Condor Payoff: Wingspan, Maximum Loss and Two Breakevens
Learn how a short iron condor combines a bull put spread and a bear call spread, how wing width caps maximum loss, and where the two breakevens sit. - · 13 min read
Credit Spread vs. Debit Spread: Collateral and Payoff Math
Compare vertical credit spreads and debit spreads across upfront cash flow, broker collateral requirements, breakeven prices, and expiration risk. - · 9 min read
How Option Time Decay Works as Expiration Approaches
Learn how option time decay (Theta) erodes extrinsic value day by day, why decay accelerates in the final 30 days, and how to calculate the dollar impact. - · 9 min read
How to Read an Options Payoff Diagram: Axes, Kinks and Limits
Learn how to read an options payoff diagram step by step, from the horizontal stock-price axis and zero line to strike kinks and breakeven points. - · 10 min read
Covered Call and Cash-Secured Put: Compare Payoff and Risk
Compare a covered call and a cash-secured put step by step, including why their expiration payoff charts match and how their capital and assignment rules differ. - · 9 min read
What Is IV Crush in Options? Time Value Before and After
Understand how a sharp drop in implied volatility reduces option time value and why a long call can lose value even when the stock rises. - · 8 min read
Options Maximum Loss and Breakeven Across Three Structures
Compare maximum loss and expiration breakeven across a long call, a long put and a call debit spread using per-share and 100-share units. - · 8 min read
How the 100-Share Options Contract Multiplier Scales Risk
Learn how the standard 100-share equity option multiplier converts per-share quotes into total contract cost, payoff and capital at risk. - · 8 min read
Option Premium: Intrinsic Value and Time Value
Separate intrinsic value from time value with three hypothetical examples, and see why a premium alone does not explain a position. - · 8 min read
Long Call and Call Debit Spread: Compare Expiration Risk
Compare two hypothetical option structures using the same expiration scenarios, clear units and explicit limits to the payoff model. - · 8 min read
Expiration Payoff Is Not the Same as an Earlier Option Value
Use a hypothetical long call to separate expiration payoff, expiration profit and loss, and the value of a position before expiration. - · 7 min read
Contract Count, Maximum Loss and Breakeven: Keep the Units Separate
See how contract count scales a hypothetical long-call position while the per-share expiration breakeven remains unchanged.
Historical event notes archive
Historical event notes (September 2026 · 47 notes)
These 47 notes analyzed specific September 2026 earnings reports, FOMC announcements, and macro volatility tests. Each note states its sources, examples, and assumptions.
- · 8 min read
Soft Core PCE Sets Up a SPY, QQQ and IWM Volatility Test
A softer-than-expected August core PCE reading lifted U.S. equity futures, but strong spending and still-elevated Treasury yields make the post-open options response more informative than the headline alone. - · 8 min read
MU Is Pricing Its Smallest Earnings Move in Two Years
Micron options imply a smaller earnings move than any of the prior eight reports, while today's call-put premium split shows why option-price direction should not be confused with volatility direction. - · 8 min read
Anthropic's Prospectus Turns Its $15B SpaceX Compute Contract Into an SPCX Test
Anthropic's newly reported financials make its large SpaceX compute agreement easier to frame, while a clean September 28 SPCX options baseline creates a test for counterparty-risk repricing. - · 8 min read
AMD's World Labs Deal Landed Inside the New 4:15 Options Curb
AMD announced its $8.2 billion World Labs acquisition during Cboe's new post-market options session, making quote timestamps essential to any before-and-after volatility study. - · 8 min read
The NYC AI Hearing Sits Exactly on GOOGL's October 5 Expiry
An October 5 New York City Council AI hearing puts Alphabet inside a same-day listed-options expiry, but the current chain does not isolate a clean regulatory event premium. - · 7 min read
SPCX Priced a Week, Not Just Starship's First Orbit
SPCX's Oct. 2 near-ATM straddle priced about a 5% weekly distribution before Flight 14, but Starship's first orbital insertion resolved only one stage of a longer mission and options horizon. - · 7 min read
How Meta's Enterprise AI Push Repriced MDB Volatility Without Moving META
Analyzing the asymmetric options transmission between Meta's long-cycle enterprise monetization pivot and the immediate gap-risk repricing in MongoDB. - · 8 min read
Anthropic's $180B Compute Backlog Exposes the Horizon Mismatch in NVDA Options
Examining how multi-year AI infrastructure commitments through 2028 contrast with the front-loaded quarterly variance priced in NVIDIA's listed options surface. - · 7 min read
Anthropic's $517B Compute Total Is Not an NVIDIA Contract
Anthropic's reported $517 billion compute stack spans NVIDIA GPUs, AWS Trainium, Google TPUs and CPU capacity, while NVIDIA's new $235 billion buyback operates on a separate fiscal-2028 clock. - · 7 min read
Apple's $5.7B Verdict Creates a Legal-Clock Options Test
The record Taction verdict makes AAPL options a timing study: jury award, appeal path, earnings overlap and any later cash-flow effect are separate events. - · 9 min read
Solidigm's IPO Could Create an AI-Storage Options Benchmark
A possible $150 billion Solidigm listing creates a test of whether AI storage gets valued as a distinct public-market category. - · 8 min read
Anthropic's Pentagon Ruling Tests Cloud-Stock Proxies
The ruling creates opposing Anthropic and Pentagon exposure channels across AMZN, GOOGL and MSFT, making proxy attribution an options problem. - · 9 min read
Meta's Hyperion Bond Creates a Credit-Options Test
Meta and Oracle show why AI data-center credit repricing and equity-options volatility can diverge across very different risk horizons. - · 7 min read
Hormuz Talks Turn USO, SPY and QQQ Into a Volatility Test
Iran's seven-day proposal creates a cross-market test of whether geopolitical uncertainty resolves first in oil options or reaches equity volatility. - · 7 min read
Zuckerberg’s Form 144 Tests META Options Attribution
Meta’s latest Form 144 arrived after a major product event, creating a clean test of what META options can actually attribute to the filing. - · 7 min read
SpaceXAI's 660K GB300 Ramp Creates an NVDA-SMH Options Test
SpaceXAI's staged GPU rollout creates three event clocks for testing whether volatility repricing stays concentrated in NVDA or spreads across semiconductors. - · 9 min read
Goldman's 67GW Behind-the-Meter Forecast Splits GEV and BE Options Exposure
Goldman Sachs' higher 2030 data-center power forecast creates a cross-market options test between GE Vernova's broad power infrastructure exposure and Bloom Energy's concentrated onsite generation role. - · 7 min read
Gemini 3.8 Live's Avatar Layer Creates a Two-Clock GOOGL Options Test
Google's Gemini 3.8 Live rollout separates the September 15 model launch from the September 24 enterprise avatar layer, creating a cleaner way to test product announcements in GOOGL options. - · 7 min read
The $17 Jev Clone Tests What Counts as an NVDA Options Catalyst
Together AI's cheap Jev-like fine-tune separates one-time training cost from production serving cost and tests when an AI efficiency headline becomes relevant to NVDA options. - · 6 min read
Project Jupiter’s Force-Majeure Notice Turns ORCL Options Into a Contract-Clock Study
A reported force-majeure notice tied to Project Jupiter creates a test of which ORCL expirations actually span the data center’s uncertain 2028 delay window. - · 7 min read
Five-Year Treasury at 5%: What Rate Options Actually Observe
The five-year Treasury crossed 5%, but the cash yield, auction yield, and ZF futures-options market measure different objects. - · 6 min read
Bank Weakness Near an S&P 500 Record Creates a Relative-Volatility Test
A benchmark check tests the January 2000 comparison and shows which options observations can distinguish bank-sector uncertainty from broad index volatility. - · 9 min read
Reading SPCX Options Across the Gwynne Shotwell Form 144 Timeline
Gwynne Shotwell’s Form 144 turns one insider-disposition headline into a sequence of separate disclosure events that SPCX options research should not collapse into a single catalyst. - · 8 min read
GPT-6 Cuts API Prices 50%: Where the Cost Shock Reaches Listed Options
OpenAI's lower Sol and Luna prices create a demand-elasticity question across cloud, chip, and infrastructure options rather than a simple read-through from cheaper tokens to lower compute demand. - · 7 min read
Claude Opus 5.5 and the Limits of Cloud-Stock Options as AI Proxies
Anthropic’s new model reaches AWS, Google Cloud, and Azure through different economic channels, making AMZN, GOOGL, and MSFT options a relative-volatility problem rather than interchangeable AI proxies. - · 7 min read
Grok Bot Adoption and the Expiration Problem in SPCX Options
How to separate early AI-agent adoption metrics from the reporting and expiration horizons that SPCX options actually price. - · 8 min read
Open-Weight AI Moves the Options Question From APIs to Compute
Open-weight models now carry most gateway token volume, raising a semiconductor question: does cheaper model access reduce compute demand or redirect it into infrastructure? - · 9 min read
Jev Tests AI Efficiency Against Semiconductor Options Pricing
Jev sharply lowers the cost of structured decisions, but current NVDA, AMD, AVGO and SMH volatility does not isolate a sector-wide compute-demand repricing. - · 8 min read
SKHY SMH Inclusion Meets Quarterly OPEX at the Close
SK hynix enters SMH at an estimated 5% weight as quarterly options expire, creating a clean test of index-flow pressure versus expiration-driven hedging. - · 7 min read
Quarterly OPEX: Which Hedging Effects Can Reach the Close?
September 18 combines quarterly expirations with concentrated SPY and QQQ open interest, but settlement rules determine which hedging effects can reach the closing hour. - · 8 min read
BOJ Hike Turns Yen and Japan Equity Options Into a Decomposition Test
The Bank of Japan's expected 25bp hike weakened the yen while Japanese shares rose, creating a clean options test of currency risk versus local equity risk. - · 7 min read
SpaceX Nasdaq-100 Rebalance Tests a One-Day Volatility Pocket
A sharp SPCX index-weight increase concentrates passive flow into the September 18 close, creating a test of auction mechanics versus options-implied movement. - · 6 min read
Buffett’s Chair Exit Creates a BRK.B Governance Volatility Test
Berkshire’s chairman transition separates cultural oversight from capital allocation, giving BRK.B options a clean test of governance risk after an already completed CEO handoff. - · 6 min read
SK Hynix Japan Fab Review Extends the Options Event Window
SK hynix has not committed to a Japan fab, but its longer disclosure window creates a useful test of whether SKHY volatility is migrating toward later expirations. - · 7 min read
On Football Push Creates a Horizon Test for ONON Options
On’s Mbappé partnership launches a 2027 football expansion, while same-day ONON options reflect a much shorter event. The mismatch defines the research question. - · 6 min read
Post-FOMC Volatility: Event Risk Fell, Rate-Path Risk Remained
The September Fed hike cleared much of the immediate event premium while VIX futures and policy projections kept the later rate path relevant for options research. - · 6 min read
Fed Scenario Ranges Versus the SPX Implied Move
JPMorgan's five Fed scenarios span outcomes beyond the SPX event move, raising a useful question about tails, skew, and post-FOMC volatility persistence. - · 8 min read
Fed Hike Moves SPX Options Focus From Event Move to Rate Path
The September FOMC increase was widely anticipated; the options question is whether a higher projected policy path keeps SPX skew elevated after event volatility fades. - · 7 min read
Intel Memory Bottleneck Warning and Relative Options Volatility
Intel's memory warning shifts the research question from one company to relative volatility across Intel, Micron, SK hynix, and the semiconductor ETF complex. - · 8 min read
SK Hynix-Intel Ohio Talks Create a Two-Market Volatility Test
Reported Ohio leasing or joint-venture talks create a test of whether SKHY and INTC options reprice near-term event risk or longer-dated capacity uncertainty. - · 7 min read
Apple's 2029 AI Server Report Meets an Options Horizon Mismatch
Apple's reported M8 Ultra server plan reaches toward 2029, while AAPL and NVDA options expose a mismatch between the news horizon and observable event pricing. - · 7 min read
Tesla-SpaceX Merger Talk Creates a Paired Volatility Test
Musk's latest merger hint turns TSLA and SPCX into a paired options research problem: whether deeper corporate ties begin to reshape relative volatility. - · 11 min read
Oil, 5% Treasury Yields and the Fed: Why SPX Options Are Pricing a Macro Volatility Test
With a Federal Reserve rate hike largely priced in, the more useful options question is whether surging oil prices and long-term Treasury yields keep SPX volatility elevated after the FOMC event premium disappears. - · 8 min read
Fed Hike Pricing Shifts the Options Question to Macro Volatility
With a September Fed increase largely reflected in rates, SPX skew, oil volatility, and the global policy calendar make volatility persistence the key options question. - · 8 min read
Micron's Reported 512GB DDR5 Module: Reading MU Options
A reported 512GB DDR5 module points to rising AI memory density, while MU options still separate earnings, labor, and demand uncertainty. - · 4 min read
Can IPO Disclosures Test an AI Growth Narrative?
What future IPO filings could reveal about AI-company growth and financing, and why options activity in other companies cannot establish a private lab's motives. - · 4 min read
Can an S-1 Show Whether Growth Is Slowing?
Learn what an IPO filing can reveal about slowing growth, what it cannot reveal about motive, and where options data fits later.
OptionStart
Visualise options risk and payoffs before you trade.