A note on TSLA trading through expiration and a Dumb Thing I did

Tesla makes interesting vehicles:

But its options have also been very volatile and tradable over the past several months. The Tastytrade Guys say that TSLA is one of the most profitable trading vehicles (no pun intended) they had in 2017.

I've normally been trading "cash-settled" indices including SPX and NDX. When options on these finish "in the money" the difference in price is just deducted from the seller and given to the buyer and it's all over.

TSLA and other stocks are different in this respect. If you have a short call or put that finishes in the money, your option gets assigned:

• short call gets assigned -100 shares of stock at the strike price of the option (per contract)
• short put gets assigned 100 shares of stock at the strike price of the option (per contract)

I had a tiny little TSLA iron condor on a few weeks back and watched as it went a few cents into the money at expiration, thinking that I would lose $14 of my projected $52 profit, something like that.

But nooooo .... I received a short position of those 100 shares of TSLA ... just before they announced they sold some self-driving trucks. And I wasn't paying attention so didn't jump up to get out of this position at the opening on Monday a.m. So my $35 win became a $1000+ loss by the time I closed it. (I could have held on for a while and gotten this back, but I was out of buying power and it's bad policy anyway ... I kept thinking the S&P futures had to come down and they still haven't!)

Dumb, dumb, dumb. Fortunately only a 1 lot .... and I will Never Do This Again ...