You are relentless! I've been sweating (not much) 5 170p and was sweating 5 185CC. I appreciate your insight into getting out of trades that don't go your way. I bought 140 calls to 2x 160 calls to get them closer to strike. I can roll them out to next week for a small credit and wait for a chance to roll them up and combine with 155 puts to get some to 162.5 and slowly ladder up. I also rolled some 20 July 210 calls out to 10 December 210 calls and giving me 10 more weekly's to sell. If we blast up to 300, I'll be happy and can roll those 10 out to 2026. Realizing you don't need to roll one for one, or call for call is enlightening. I'm not sure it would have helped during the Hertz to twitter roller coaster, but I could have gotten out of some long term CC's that limited my weekly opportunities the last 2 years.
Out of curiousity, do you write out ideas to think through some of the math in the creative rolls? I used to write down my weekly profits, but found it encouraged me to maximize profit, at the expense of risk. I'll never imitate your trading style, but understanding different traders thought and thinking processes has really helped my improve my results, even as TSLA has floundered.
Patience is very key and although we are in a volatile stock, ITM trades often go OTM in a few weeks - not an absolute given, waiting for any -p260's sold last December would have been a nasty experience, but generally speaking
Also I've the habit now to be well hedged, buying puts as both a downside protection as well as a trading vehicle has changed my mentality, removed a lot of emotion from my decisions - still make wrong choices, like thinking the SP would dump further after ER, but logically speaking I still stand by that and would probably do the same in the future, although then the idea of taking good profit when it's presented rather than holding out for more is something to balance
I've also a bit adapted my goals and am more focused on capital preservation and growth, looking less at the total portfolio value and trying to build my cash up to a certain point, and then look to de-risk all the DOTM +cLEAPS and start to buy-back the -pLEAPS over time, but first Insist on a $amount of cash before doing that
I rarely write down the trade ideas, rather I tend to open multiple browser tabs in OptionStrat for the current and future positions, then I play about with the strike to find what I think is the best I can get - I also look as to whether it's worth my while to wait until 0DTE, etc., what if the stock moves up, down, will I gain or lose
I do track all of my trades in an Excel sheet and see the current YTD replied profit/loss, my broker doesn't track any of this and I need to do it anyway for tax declaration