The whole point of trading / investing is to make money. Many on here sell OTM puts for pennies on stocks 'they like to own'. That's fine; and to each their own. But frankly, this board is frequented by retail investors who are selling for theta and not vega. Theta is not an edge. The moment you sell the put you take on the risk characterics of owning the stock except your upside is limited to the premium collected. Picture that; you have all the risk of owning the stock but have capped your upside.
It imho is misleading - on a platform of retail investors - to suggest selling the put is akin to a discount to spot. You are being paid to be a bag holder / to bear risk. If assigned, the loss on the position will likely be for multiples of the time premium collected. Selling covered calls, which is what many retailers will then do, may then crystallize the loss if the stock recovers and is assigned.
If that is "convention" that might explain why the majority of retailers lose money.....
Finally, selling credit spreads does not lead you on a path to negative returns. To suggest so is, with all due respect, absurd.
Your sensitivity to an audience of retail trader/readers is admirable. That said, your advice is nearly 180° wrong.
1) You declare 'theta is not an edge'.
Theta is reality. How constructively you interface with reality versus the rest of the market may or may not be an advantage for you. As a tool, theta is always there -- never taking time off -- whether that tool cuts your hand off or makes great products is your doing. To deny reality is not helpful to anyone.
2) You observe that in selling puts, you gain all the risk, and only limited reward. This is false: as you know, both the reward and the risk of selling a put are probability-driven functions that boil down to the available strikes and the premium associated with those strikes. How the seller chooses the strike/market relationship is a choice function entirely under their own control, and whether they choose a strike more probable to be hit, or less, carries with it reward and risk implications well known a priori. They are encapsulated in that little thing we call "price."
TSLA is ~$335 as I write this -- your blanket statement would imply that selling an April 20 TSLA put at $300 ($6.50) or at $370 ($41.25) is "all the risk, and limited reward." But the market -- in another dose of reality -- declares a ~7x difference. "Yeah....."
3) Ignoring the entirely-feasible goal of lowering cost basis in an acquisition target so far as to make your acquisition at $0 (I've done it myself), you instead go further and declare "If assigned, the loss on the position will likely be for multiples of the time premium collected."
Wow.
Buy TSLA @ $335, falls to $250, down by -$85.00
Or,
Sell TSLA April20 $300 put, get assigned: +$6.50 - [$300-$250] = -$43.50
Or,
Sell TSLA April20 $370 put, get assigned: +41.25 - [$370-$250] = -$78.75
Your grasp of reality has the prospective TSLA owner/put-seller down by 85 bucks.
Reality itself -- bracketed ±1σ -- suggests that the trader is not "down by multiples" but is in fact materially better-off. (In fact, being down by multiples is mathematically impossible. Ask yourself why.)
4) And finally, you wish to tie a covered-call strategy to the immediate question -- an entirely false addition to evaluating put selling. The question -- the entire thread -- is about put-selling.
[there should be an emoji for "mic-drop."]
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