Over these past two days, I’ve been watching the options order books, and the more I look, the more I feel that time value is basically “collecting rent.” The buyer pays the premium, and as the days pass one by one, even if they get the direction right but the move is slow, theta grinds the money away. The seller is the opposite: they eat by time decay, but if a big needle-like spike comes, they have to top up margin—sleep quality immediately takes a hit.

With my small capital, I basically don’t touch naked selling now; if I really have to do it, I only dare to use a small out-of-the-money position with strict stop-losses—I’d rather make less profit. Recently, around that mainstream public chain’s upgrade/maintenance, everyone in the group has been guessing whether the project will migrate. As for me, I don’t bet on the news; it’s more that I watch whether volatility gets ramped up—if volatility is high, I won’t be the buyer. Once I harvest the task rewards, I withdraw; I prioritize staying alive first.