I just closed a nearly expired option, watching that little bit of premium dwindle away, and my mindset really feels like watching ice melt… To put it plainly, the time value is being “charged” daily. The buyer pays a time tax: if the direction doesn’t play out, it’s slowly eaten away; the seller collects a time tax, but behind it is an IOU for tail risk, which is usually attractive, but one incident could wipe out all the previous gains and then some.

So now I care more about whether I’m actually buying “opportunity” or selling “disaster insurance.” Recently, with the additional pledge and shared security yield stacking, being criticized as “stacked,” I also see it as a seller’s logic: picking up some time value/spread normally, with the risk hidden in the correlation that could explode on the same day… Anyway, I’d rather earn a little less than treat risk management as a decoration. Signatures, permissions, margin—missing any step could really turn it into charity.