Let’s Talk a Little Bit About Friday – And Get Ready for Monday.
First off, make sure you vote your shares in the surveys – pinned to the top.
Friday was pretty crazy and I already started to see some of their antics with filling orders (or NOT filling orders.)
The first thing I want to say about Monday is that if you are a small fry here, if you only own a few shares (less than 100), if this thing goes live, YOU DO NOT NEED TO HOLD YOUR SHARES. There is no need for you to be a hero. If you get a chance to cash out your shares, no one is going to fault you. You can sell your shares and try to buy back in later. You will not have ANY impact on the share price.
For the rest of us….we WILL control the share price. I have posted my Covered CALL and HODL strategy a handful of times and for those of us holding larger numbers of shares, if we do NOT sell our shares, I will promise you that this thing is going to go parabolic. Here it is again. Go back and re-read it and be ready when this thing goes live.
I am also going to reiterate that if this thing goes live, I will immediately begin deleting ALL posts that are irrelevant. We will all be worked up but feel free to use the “Daily Thread” to voice your enthusiasm and reserve the main thread for MAJOR announcements. At the end of the trading session, we can reconvene and share thoughts. I won’t delete everything, but I will try to have some degree of control over what we will need to filter through.
I have said that I will make my best effort to post here (time permitting), but believe me, in the heat of battle, you might find yourselves on your own. Try to have your own plans in place so you do not need to rely on others to help you make decisions.
Regarding last Friday, I think we already started to see some of “their” reactions. I made this post a couple of days ago and I would encourage you to go back and re-read this one as well. They can use virtually ANY reason to start rejecting our orders and all they have to do is call them “Disruptive Trading Practices).
I had TWO of these on Friday. One on the Buy side, and then Exercising on a contract:
1) Look at the VERY first order at the bottom of that screen grab. I submitted a “limit” order for 500 contracts. That order did not fill instantly so I IMMEDIATELY cancelled that order and re-submitted it as a Market order and it immediately filled. Remember from the post I linked above, they are NOT going to fill your Limit orders. When everyone is submitting at “Market”, the MM gets to keep the entire spread. When this thing goes live, you had better take my advice and set your “defaults” to fill at the Market prices or you are going to be a spectator all day!
2) I also submitted an order for 50 CALLS. I don’t generally buy 50 CALLS at a time. I had already filled two orders for 100 CALLS each, and one order for 500 that all filled without a problem but this 50 CALL order was only partially filled. They filled 20 and I had to go in with a second order to fill the remaining 30. This could be “normal” under “normal” trading conditions, but my point here is to make sure that you are watching your fills and if something doesn’t fill correctly, you MUST be prepared to IMMEDIATELY re-submit your orders. A missed-fill, or a partial-fill could cost you tens-of-thousands, or maybe even HUNDREDS-OF-THOUSANDS of dollars as we get further into this thing…..and I’m not joking. I’m going to post my “Ladder” strategy for you in a couple of hours.
3) The 50 contracts above (at the $4.5 strike) for me was just a trade thinking we were going to see a surge in buying into the close (I thought the guys in the white hats might start exercising those 120,000 contracts – 12 million shares – on Friday afternoon.) I was not really planning to exercise MY trade, I just wanted to jump in, and then duck out…but “someone” REALLY did not want to deliver those 12 million shares on Friday afternoon so they came in HARD to crush this thing down under $4.5. As the stock price was nearing $4.5 (it was at $4.55 when I submitted my order to exercise.) I was prepared to take possession of 5,000 shares if I exercised. They did NOT fill my order and it took about 5 – 10 minutes for the price to drop from $4.55 down below $4.5. Those BASTARDS intentionally did not fill my order because they did NOT want to deliver MY shares either. I was watching someone else in the comments who had the same problem, but here was the difference between our two trades (he did not fill). Once the stock dropped below $4.5, Schwab kicked out 100% of EVERY order to exercise. They didn’t just “not fill” the orders. They DELETED every single order in the queue. And here is their verbiage: “REJECTED: This is an out-of-the-money contract – please give us a call.”
Yes, they were correct. It WAS an out of the money Contract…..because they MADE it an out of the money contract. Once the stock price went below $4.5 they deleted EVERY order from the queue so I immediately queued up my next order waiting for the stock price to creep back above $4.5 and because u/deeepwaterz was single handedly holding up the entire Market on Friday (I owe you a beer Brother), I had a couple of other opportunities to re-submit my order to exercise. I re-submitted my order as the stock was teetering on $4.5 and Schwab rejected my second order to exercise because as I hit “send” on my second order, the stock dropped to something like $4.4901. So, I queued up my third order and just as u/deepwaterz submitted his order for another 10,924 shares, when I submitted my third order, I was the FIRST order in the queue and my order to exercise filled at EXACTLY $4.5. You can look at the time stamps on the orders to see how long this entire process took.
My point is that if you submit your order and then get up to go to the bathroom or to get a cup of coffee, you should expect to lose $5,000 - $10,000 per trade. You MUST be prepared to submit, and re-submit your orders. And if they do not fill, lower the size of your order. But keep trying. THIS IS A FULLY AUTOMATED ORDER SYSTEM. If it does not fill IMMEDIATELY with one of the Market Makers, it is immediately routed to another MM. This is nearly an INSTANT process and if your order does not fill instantly, CANX it and re-submit it. My order to exercise FILLED. The other Gentleman’s order did NOT fill. Schwab can legally CANX your order(s) and you do not have any recourse. Regardless of how much money it costs you. Schwab can just say that they were “trying to protect your best interests”. They give you a phone number to call them, and they will put that order in FOR you. Well guess what? In the heat of battle, you will NOT have time to stop what you are doing to give your Broker a phone call. You may not have time to get up to go to the bathroom. The system is AUTOMATED. Keep submitting until you get your fill.
There are a couple of other “dumb” housekeeping rules that I would encourage you to undertake each morning before the market opens. Take a few minutes to shut down your computer and re-boot it. I know this sounds dumb, but as the memory on your computers fill up, you could see some slow-down in your computing power.
If you do not have a backup power source for your computer (and internet), you might want to consider it. If you had a power outage at the absolutely wrong minute of your lives, it could cost you a LOT of money….if your plan is to “trade” this thing aggressively. If you are someone who travels for a living, be prepared to find your closest coffee shop. Call your boss and tell them you have car problems, or an upset stomach. I would have fired you if I caught you doing that, but it may not matter if you make $50 million dollars.
My point is to make sure you have a plan in place because if you can get everything right, this thing could provide you with life-changing money. Get it wrong, and you will definitely be disappointed with yourselves.
If you have any more ideas, post them in the comments. If we are all working together, we stand to make a LOT of money together. Also let us know what “obstacles” they threw at YOU on Friday.
Remember: Fail to Plan, Plan to Fail.
And GO, GO, GO Wolfspeed!!!
Posted May 4, 2025, 4:44 PM UTC