To The Moon

Mathematical Money | May 30, 2026

Another 10,000 MARA shares got called away this week. On paper that looks like a worse position. The math says the opposite.

If you've been following along, last week's post was about getting called away on the first 2,000. I wrote about how the assignment wasn't a disaster, even though it felt like one. This week the rest of the May expiry wave hit. About 6,500 more shares assigned at $10–$11 strikes when the stock was trading above $14. Plus the earlier 3,500 from May 9 and May 16 expiries that I covered last week. By the time the dust settled, the share count had dropped from 44,546 in mid-May to 34,546 today.

Let me show you what that actually did to the position.

The FIFO Math Nobody Explains

Here's the part most retail traders never see, and it's the whole reason the wheel works through a drawdown.

When you sell a covered call and the stock rallies past your strike, the shares get assigned at the strike price. But — and this is the part that matters — under FIFO accounting, the broker assigns your oldest, lowest-cost-basis shares first. Not your average price. The earliest ones in.

In my case, those earliest shares came from put exercises back in February, when MARA was much lower and I was getting assigned at $9, $9.50, $10 strikes. Those shares went onto the books at those low strike prices. They had the lowest cost basis in the entire position.

When the May covered calls got exercised at $10 and $10.50, those low-basis shares were the ones that left first. They sold for slightly more than I paid for them. Small realized gain on those shares.

But the more important effect is what happened to the remaining position. By removing the lowest-cost shares from the average, the cost basis on what I still own actually improved. The average cost on my remaining 34,546 shares is now $13.39. A month ago, on a much larger position, it was $14.44.

Same stock. Smaller position. Lower cost basis. Premium collected the whole way through.

Where The Position Is Now

I'm holding 34,546 shares at an effective cost basis of $13.39. MARA closed the week around $14.38. That means the position is sitting on roughly a 7% unrealized gain.

To put that in plain language: after writing about this drawdown across Post 4, Post 6, Post 7, and last week's Post 9 — the MARA position is finally green. First time in six months.

I'm not going to dress that up. It's the result of a stock recovery that I did not predict, combined with cost basis improvements I also did not predict, combined with premium that came in steadily across the whole drawdown whether I deserved it or not. The system carried the position. The market did its thing on its own schedule. The work was mechanical, not predictive.

Zoom Out

The arc on this position has been:

I bought shares above $14 average. The stock spent most of last quarter in the $8s. I watched the unrealized P/L sit at negative six figures for months. The wheel premium kept the lights on while we waited. I wrote about all of it honestly, every week, without pretending things were better than they were.

April brought a sharp recovery. May continued it. Through the recovery I rolled short calls repeatedly, paid real money in roll costs to keep shares I might have otherwise lost. Some I lost anyway. Each assignment took out my lowest-basis shares and improved the average on what was left.

End state: smaller position, lower cost basis, positive P/L. The system did exactly what it was designed to do. Not perfectly. Not without pain. But it did it.

The Harder Question Now

When a position you've been holding through pain finally turns green, the instinct is to "lock in." Sell shares. Take the win. Declare victory. Move on.

I'm not going to do that.

The system that carried the position through the drawdown didn't have a "switch to victory mode" button. The rules said keep wheeling while the stock was at $8. The rules say keep wheeling now that it's at $14. The strikes adjust to the new price level. The cadence stays the same. The discipline doesn't change with the P/L color.

If I sell shares now because the P/L is green, I'm just doing discretionary trading and pretending it's discipline. That's not the brand. That's not the strategy.

What I will do is keep the wheel running at the new levels. The short calls have already re-priced upward — I'm now writing $12 to $14 strikes for June expiries instead of the $10 to $11 strikes from a month ago. Short puts have moved up to $11 and $12 strikes accordingly. The whole structure re-set itself to the new price regime. That's the system doing its job, not me deciding I'm clever.

What This Is Not

This is not a "I called the bottom" post. I didn't.

This is not a "the strategy is bulletproof" post. It isn't.

This is not a victory lap. The position is green for now. Next week it could be red again. The whole point is that the discipline doesn't change with the colour of the P/L.

What this is, honestly, is the end of a chapter. The MARA drawdown I've been writing about for months has structurally closed. I'll keep writing about MARA because it's still the biggest position in the book, but I won't be writing about it as a drawdown anymore. That story is done.

The next chapter is whatever comes next. Could be another drawdown. Could be sideways grinding. Could be more recovery. I don't know. The system doesn't need me to know.

If you want the detail on how FIFO cost basis works during the wheel, or how to think about when to keep a position green versus take profits — drop a comment below. Faster channels are TikTok and YouTube DMs (Mathematical Money on both) or through trueknot.sg.

Stop guessing. Start calculating. Stay disciplined. 🤙