With 48 hours left before the launch of Tesla's humanoid robot, traders are hovering over the buy button. When the product launch of a tech giant collides with the expected game in the derivatives market, the FOMO emotions of retail investors and the precise calculations of institutions are playing out a battle of ice and fire.

Buying call options is the simplest and most primitive option trading strategy, but it implies the craziest gambling nature in human nature.

1. The gap between expectations and reality: from “supply chain tremors” to “stock price plunges”

Tesla's press conferences have never been a simple technology show, but a directional explosion point for the capital market. At the "We, Robot" press conference in October 2024, although the dance of the Optimus robot amazed the audience, the stock price plummeted 8.8% due to the lack of mass production details, causing retail investors who chased the weekly call options to swallow a 60% loss.

However, the official announcement of trial production in March of the following year made players who accurately ambushed monthly call options earn 220% in a single week. The key to success lies in understanding the "three-level expectation gap" behind the press conference: the value of the technological breakthrough, the undercurrent of the supply chain, and the swing of market sentiment.

Taking the upcoming Q1 financial report on April 22, 2025 as an example, smart money started planning three weeks ago.

They found from the logistics data flowing out of the Fremont factory that Optimus's trial production line rolled off 12 robots per hour, far exceeding the market expectation of 5 per hour. More importantly, Sanhua Intelligent Control's lead screw supply increased by 300% month-on-month, and Wuzhou Xinchun's reducer yield exceeded 92% - these capillary tremors in the supply chain often predict the explosive power of the market better than the CEO's PPT.

So someone quietly bought Tesla's weekly call options with an exercise price of $260, with a premium of only $3.2. When the trial production news was officially announced, the contract price soared to $10.5, a 228% increase in three days.

2. The light and dark lines of the supply chain: from "screw yield" to "geopolitical trap"

The most taboo in ambush wars of call options is linear thinking. The bloody lesson of Q4 2024 still makes veterans nervous: at that time, the market was crazy about Optimus's demonstration of the delicate operation of grabbing eggs, and retail investors frantically bought weekly call options.

The robot did manage to squeeze the egg, but unfortunately it broke in its palm. The stock price fell 7%, and all out-of-the-money options were reduced to zero.

The ones who really survived were the spread players who bought the $260 call option and sold the $280 call option at the same time. They used the premium income to hedge the risk of volatility collapse and eventually made a net profit of 35% in the sideways price movement.

Geopolitical factors add to the uncertainty. As Tesla was forced to rebuild its robot supply chain outside of China, Chinese suppliers such as Top Group and Green Harmonic that it had originally planned to cooperate with were excluded, and it instead chose parts from Nidec and Germany's Schaeffler.

This adjustment directly resulted in the mass production cost of Optimus soaring from US$20,000 to US$35,000, and the mass production time was postponed from 2025 to the second half of 2026.

If option players focus on the flashy PPT of the press conference but ignore the undercurrents of the supply chain, they will often become victims of "expectation gap".

3. The Double-edged Sword of Technology: From “Visual Solution” to “Algorithm Bottleneck”

For Bitcoin option players, Tesla’s press conference is even more mysterious. Since Musk has repeatedly linked Bitcoin to the future robot payment system, whenever Optimus makes significant progress, the BTC option IV surface will show strange distortions.

When the news of the robot's mass production leaked in January this year, the implied volatility (IV) of weekly call options with an exercise price of US$75,000 soared 42% overnight.

But savvy traders did not blindly chase the rise, but instead turned around and bought $78,000 call options expiring next week - because they knew that the main players would use the short-term volatility premium to reap the chips.

Sure enough, five days later, Bitcoin surged and then fell back, with the weekly contract plummeting 70%, while the next weekly contract rose 55% due to the IV lag effect.

The divergence in technology paths is equally fatal. Tesla's FSD system, which insists on a pure vision solution, is in stark contrast to Waymo's multi-sensor fusion approach.

When Optimus' pass rate in the 500-meter walking test was less than 60%, institutions had already arranged put options in advance through dark pool trading.

During the trial production activities in March this year, Optimus was exposed for relying on manual remote control, causing its stock price to plummet 9% in a single day and all out-of-the-money call options to return to zero.

4. Next Issue Preview

Tomorrow we will dissect the "Sell Covered Call Strategy"

Homework

1. Supply chain audit : Compare Tesla's list of parts suppliers in Q4 2024 and Q1 2025 (focus on the order changes of Sanhua Intelligent Control and Top Group), and analyze the impact of geopolitics on Option IV;

2. Volatility experiment : When Bitcoin breaks through $85,000, buy a call option of $88,000 for the next week and sell a call option of $90,000 for the current week at the same time, and record the arbitrage space brought by the distortion of the IV surface;

3. Sentiment calibration : Before the next major event, count the frequency of occurrence of the social media keywords "mass production" and "supply chain", and perform a regression analysis with the premium range of Tesla options.