Mathematical Money | June 13, 2026
Last week I wrote about closing two MSFT LEAPS for roughly $8,400 in realized profit. Both contracts had more than doubled. I wrote about the rule that triggered them, the redeployment into higher strikes, the framework working at a second ticker after SPY in May.
I also wrote this, near the end: "Most LEAPS I open will not double. Some will get rolled at a loss."
Eight days later, here we are.
The new MSFT position I opened the same week is down significantly. Let me show you exactly what that looks like, because this is the post that has to be written if last week's post is going to mean anything.
The Marks
Three positions to walk through.
June 2027 $500 LEAPS, two contracts. Opened June 3 at $40.25. Currently around $26.00. Down about $14.25 per contract. About $2,850 unrealized loss. That's a 35% drop in a little over a week.
March 2027 $470 LEAPS, one contract. Opened June 9 at $33.66. Currently around $25.88. Down about $7.78 per contract. About $780 unrealized loss. Down 23%.
The June 26 put credit spread. Sold four $415 puts at $6.20 each, bought two $420 puts at $7.80 each as the hedge. Net premium collected was small. Today the short $415 puts are at $26.86, and the long $420 puts are at $31.22. Net of the hedge, the spread is around $3,600 in the red.
Add it up: the new positions I opened the same week I took $8,400 in profits are now sitting on roughly $7,700 in unrealized losses.
The harvest itself was correct. The two LEAPS I sold would also be down today if I'd held them. Selling at $43.64 was better than holding to $26. The math on the exit was right.
The redeployment was too early. I bought the next rung at what turned out to be a near-term top in MSFT, not the start of the next leg. Same week, opposite outcomes.
What I'm Not Going To Do
I'm not closing the new LEAPS.
The June 2027 expiry has more than a year of time on it. The March 2027 expiry has nine months. These positions were sized as long-dated structures, not as short-term directional bets. The fact that the underlying moved against them in the first eight days doesn't change what they are. It just means I'm in an uncomfortable mark earlier than I'd prefer.
Selling them now because they're down 35% in a week would be panic, not discipline. The strikes I picked were rule-driven entries. If the underlying recovers any time over the next nine to twelve months, these positions still do their job. If it doesn't, I roll them or take a structured loss when the math says to — not because the mark hurts today.
I'm not closing the put spread either. The short side is deep in the money on a mark-to-market basis, but with three weeks to expiry there's still time. If MSFT recovers a few percent, the spread relaxes. If it keeps falling, I'll either close the position or take assignment on the short puts and turn it into a long stock position. The spread isn't large enough to threaten the book either way.
I'm not adjusting the take-profit rule. The rule said sell when a LEAPS doubles. The rule fired. The fact that the immediate redeployment went the wrong way doesn't invalidate the rule. The rule is about banking the win on the position that ran. It's not a guarantee that the next position runs too.
What This Actually Costs The Book
Net of everything: the realized profit from last week is still in the account. About $8,400 in cash from the closed LEAPS. The new positions are sitting on roughly $7,700 in unrealized losses.
So the round trip so far is approximately break-even to slightly positive. Not the second leg of the win I hinted at last week. But not a disaster either. The book isn't broken. The discipline didn't fail. The market just didn't give me the second move I was positioned for.
This is what take-profit rules actually look like in practice. You bank the win on the position that ran. You reset into the next structure. Sometimes the next structure delivers. Sometimes it doesn't. The rule doesn't guarantee the next trade — it just guarantees you don't give back the first one.
If I'd held the original LEAPS instead of selling, I'd be deep in the red right now with no realized profit to offset. So the rule did its job. The redeployment is a separate question with a separate answer.
Brief MARA Update
The June 5 expiry took another large MARA assignment wave. About 10,500 more shares called away at the $11.50 strike. Realized loss on those shares shows up as roughly $51,000 — but again, FIFO took out the lowest-cost basis shares first, and the remaining cost basis improved slightly. I now hold around 24,000 MARA shares at an effective cost basis around $12.07.
For context, this position peaked at 46,546 shares in April. About half the share count is now gone, all via assignments. None of those shares were sold willingly. Each round of call exercises took out cheap shares and left behind a smaller but better-positioned residual.
MARA stock pulled back from around $14.38 to around $13.61 over the same period, so the unrealized P/L moved a bit too. Net effect: the wheel is naturally winding down as the recovery plays out. Strikes are sitting at $12 to $15 across the next few expiries. Nothing alarming, nothing to celebrate. Just the system doing what it does.
Two New Tickers, Quietly
NVDA. Opened the first NVDA PMCC pair this week. Bought two June 2027 $250 LEAPS, sold two July 10 short calls at the same strike. Same playbook as the MSFT structure, just at a different ticker. Small starter position.
IBIT. Added a second short put — July 10 $34 strike. The total IBIT exposure is still tiny. Two contracts. Testing the framework on a Bitcoin ETF, not making a directional bet.
Neither of these is a thesis. Both are framework extensions. If they work the same way the MARA wheel and the MSFT PMCC eventually worked, they'll quietly grind. If they don't, they're small enough to not matter.
The Honest Caveat
Next week MSFT could rip back to $530 and the new LEAPS could be green again. Or it could keep falling and the redeployment hurts worse. I don't know.
The whole point of writing these posts week after week is to show what the math actually looks like in real time — the easy weeks and the uncomfortable weeks, the trades that work and the trades that don't, the rules that fire correctly and the redeployments that arrive too early.
Last week's post celebrated a win. This week's post acknowledges the immediate next trade isn't working. Both are true. Both belong on this feed. If you only saw the winners you'd be reading a different account.
If you want the detail on how I think about position sizing for redeployment, or when to actually take a loss on a long-dated position, or why time-to-expiry matters more than current mark-to-market — drop a comment below. Faster channels are TikTok and YouTube DMs (Mathematical Money on both) or through trueknot.sg.
Stay disciplined. Size your positions properly. See you next week. 🤙
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