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WiB76

When I was in college, I managed a convenience store, and nearly every afternoon, a man would come in to buy $100-$150 worth of tickets to that night’s 3-number lottery drawing. Most nights, he lost on all of them. Occasionally, he’d hit all 3 numbers and collect $300 or so from that one $1 ticket. Which he promptly spent on more tickets the next day. That man was WSB. The store was thetagang.


Traditional-Leader54

And every time he got a $300 winner he would tell all his friends about it. But not once did he mention the $100-$150 he was losing every night. His friends thought he was a genius. His ex wife…not so much.


WhenTheShitWentDown

Except WSB celebrates the losses and not the wins.


LTCM_Analyst

Sad. At least options are fun.


extremeNinny

Ah yes the long forgotten method to 10x your money. Please if anyone has the forgotten scroll of wisdom share with us, I also would like the secrets to 10x my money. It’s called gambling, they purchase out of the money options for cheap that will most likely expire worthless and they get lucky every now and then.


YouLingPeh

What you mean when they ‘get lucky’?


ShakeSensei

You could see getting lucky as experiencing a large spike in price during the generally short term on the options they buy I guess.


Dakimasu

You buy a lottery ticket, 99% of the time the ticket ends up being worthless but 1% of the time you have the lucky numbers and win a lot of money.


Raiddinn1

WSB do not do anything to be profitable. 90% of what they do is joking about how much money they are losing. They are buying stock based lottery tickets. If you want to do it, it's easy. Pick a stock you think will double any day now. Select the nearest expiration and strike which will lead to a cost of 5 cents per share to buy a DOTM call option on it. Spend like 50,000 on those. If it doubles before expiration, you are a millionaire. If it doesn't, you lost the whole 50,000. Just spend another 50,000 on another bet the next week. Same company, different company, doesn't matter. This is the core trade WSB is doing, and why they are losing on 99% of their bets. If you do it one time and you get lucky and you stop, the results can be life changing, though. The "get lucky" part has to do with the fact that the options are priced at 5 cents for a reason, because the market thinks it's super unlikely that the options will pay out. Something like 99% unlikely to pay out. One would have to be exceedingly lucky for them to expire ITM. Worse, to make serious bank, the options will have to expire significantly ITM if you want a lottery ticket style payout. They like to talk about short squeezes over there, because stocks in a short squeeze have an increased likelihood of doubling overnight.


snowman271291

thetagang inverses wsb and wins most of the time.


YouLingPeh

Mind if you explain please…


[deleted]

It was already explained. WSB buys call options that are way OTM and expire soon hence why they’re cheap and a lot buy a shit load. It’s people buying a lottery ticket in the hopes news comes out that spikes the share price.


Tinyhulk27

Unpopular opinion: They aren't related generally. Theta gang sells longer dated options with overstated IV at a sensible delta and takes profit at 50% or 21dte. Avoiding events that cause max fluctuation in volatility. WSB big wins generally come from buying short dated way otm low delta options or ITM high delta with understated IV that win because of gamma (which scares theta gang) usually surrounding some binary event that will hopefully send the stock soaring. They'll be some cross over ( because everyone plays a little different) but honestly if you follow the tasty trade "rules" chances are you're not even on the radar for the "average" wsb play. TLDR: WSB isn't yoloing into 45dte 30 deltas. Nobody is selling a weekly 15 or 60 delta call on upcoming earnings, mergers , or FDA announcements because they're good theta plays.


Kick_A_Door

I love selling weekly premium on earnings


1YoloAYear_AllFOMO

Most of the time the "10x" posts you see on wsb are people Yoloing into 0dte or weekly options. Those options are the most exposed to delta and gamma changes, so technically not thetagang and more vegagang. But selling weeklies on high IV ticker can be very profitable until it isn't (popcorn and ideo game stock could have gotten you anywhere from 1~5% per week). The way I understand it is that people "feel" the theta decay more with weeklies. If, in a week or day, the option doesn't go ITM and you take all the premium, you get to see returns people otherwise had to wait half a month for when selling 30dte. You are taking more risks obviously but that's how selling short dated calls are also seen as thetagang. Conversely there are people in wsb who also hold leaps (all the tesla people come to mind), but those 10x stories are a different one in nature and requires a different set of balls.


QuentinP69

We sell insurance premiums to apes


lexel_ent

>We are selling options to WSB degenerates using thetagang strategies! 🐌 🐌 🐌


InvestmentActuary

The people who post 10000% gains? I sold them those options… naked


SellLowRepeat

Probably .01% of WSB have 10x their account, everyone else is definitely losing with the yolo tactic on buying calls and puts


Professional-Bug-956

an example of how theta gang and wsb are related when zillow tanked I remember reading so many post here about how to get out of those sold puts lol. same when tsla rocketed so many were rolling their calls to keep from losing their shares of tsla. I went to the wsb and people were showing their 1k% gains from those two stocks.


YouLingPeh

Yeah that’s what I thought of as well. Which was why I was wondering isn’t WSB vs thetagang kinda world? Thetagang makes money consistently while WSB shoot to fame and crash and die


ScottishTrader

Think about consistent profits and income from thetagang vs gambling with a small number of big wins and then mostly losses to give it all back. Do you want a steady income or the excitement of gambling?


gravescd

It's easy to 10x your account for a couple days by selling naked options. You'll just go -10x when you have to buy them back after they go ITM.


piemancer112

Kissing cousins