I have nothing to say about it. A lot of money goes into calls and puts of Tesla, and they don't always pan out.
Tesla Option Traders Are Dumping Massive Amounts Of Calls like this 44mil bearish bet.
I would have liked a little more analysis/context from that article. As noted it is most likely hedging, but still, even if it WAS the same trader making those four positions that add up to a max of $44M, its a bit misleading.
Still, its interesting to case study the positions all the same in an effort to better understand the positions we're taking. Take the first one: 310x Sept $260 calls. Yes, $15M is the max profit one can make on the trade, but that's certainly not what the trader is going for. Hedging aside, what the position really is looking to capitalize on is primarily ∆.
∆ on those right now is .98, which means each contract moves just about as fast as 100 shares. We know that generally a sold option is not a great directional trade as ∆ moves unfavorably in both directions, but...this extreme case pretty much nullifies that phenomenon. ∆ only has two cents to go in the "wrong" direction (if underlying moves up), which is all but a non-issue especially because gamma is effectively zero way down there, and even if TSLA dumps like 25% that's only going to reduce ∆ to maybe .90-.92, which is pretty minimal
unfavorableness considering the total impact that underlying move would have on the position value. In other words, this position basically turns the "selling options to capitalize on ∆ is not a smart idea" approach on its head.
And again turning selling options on its head, volatility only plays a small part in contract value on this one. Because the strike is so far away from the money, Vega is quite low even for a far expiration and IV is only going to move a few percentage points even with big moves in underlying...and so those rack up to pretty low $ impact for volatility movement in either direction.