Introduction

I don't expect Malaysians to know about SOFI, but SOFI is more than a digital bank in the US.  The Americans know SOFI as an innovative digital bank providing banking services that is so far ahead that Malaysians simply are not aware of the awesome range of services provided.   I don't know it in too detail to be honest, all I know is that it is growing its customer base, revenues and profitability very rapidly.  Some US investors thinks that one day it will reach the scales of the big Top banks in America.  It's current market capitalization is only 17.3 billion a small fraction of the top banks like JP Morgan 750 billion suggesting that this stock has the wildest potential to grow by another 50 times from here!  I don't believe the hype but I trade its options because the odds of it making new highs over the long term looks good!  Maybe it's  like finding Public Bank 40-50 years ago (except SOFI is extremely tech savvy).  I am thankful I came across this bank around November 2024.  It's late in the game, but it's never too late when you buy at all time highs and you know it's just going to go higher because of its potential!

Fundamentals

No complaints from me.

Stock Price

My Trade Report Card

Key observations:

1. My stock position is tiny - 100 shares gaining $147.  Decent but given the chart, nothing to shout about.
   
2. My options profits on the other hand is $2,321, or 16 times larger!  My synthetic dividends paid me much more than the stock price!
3. Theoretically, given the price chart, I should do better with Sell Puts and it does contribute the bigger share of Option profits of $1,297 out of $2,321.  The Calls are smaller.
4. However, not all Calls are sold.  I also bought Calls and you'd think, given the price chart that I should be making a profit buying Calls but surprisingly, I lost monies buying Calls.  Specifically, my Buy Calls lost $440 but my Sell Calls won $1,337!   Why?  Short answer is probably mainly Theta decay offsetting delta gains (buy Options that didn't move much lose monies, but the stock that was bought at higher price than the Calls made money!) and some IV drop too (when it spiked up, the IV probably spiked up too, i.e. despite buying deep ITM Calls, the Option premium is fat).  it also explains why I was able to make so much Sell Call Profits from hedging that my Sell Call profits exceeded my Sell Put profits!   Timing sales is an edge.
5. Not every week expiries are winners - my very first week expiry is a loss!  Losses is a feature of trading, not a bug!  I subsequently suffered 2 weeks of losses for 3 Jan and 10 Jan expiries.  But when combined into a single month - every single month expiry is a winner so far ... the quantum fluctuates, but it's not negative but positives.
6. The amount of capital I used is very small - the broker gave me margins ... I don't recall using $3k-$5k margins (?) at the peak ... hard to know???  But the % returns are phenomenal.  The $ returns are relatively small due to the small amount of capital deployed.

Summary and Conclusion

I call myself the DividendGuy because I just love the "synthetic dividends" that I can create by selling options almost every week ... my edges includes my understanding of options, my timing (especially my sell Call timing just before earnings when price spikes up was fantastic), and my small trading size (most will see this as a negative to trade small, but it works for me).  Despite trading a tiny fraction of MAYBANK, the synthetic dividends that I was able to generate within just 2 months of serious trading with SOFI, easily exceeded MAYBANK.  I loved MAYBANK dividends, but objectively, I love SOFI's "synthetic dividends" even more!

I had forgotten about SOFI the past 2 weeks as I focused a lot more on Bitcoin, but looks like it's time to get back to the "synthetic dividends" from SOFI!  Hopefully, SOFI can pull back a bit more, to start selling CSP again!

Take care, trade safely!

Disclaimer:  As usual, you are fully responsible for all your trading and investing decisions.  Not financial advice.  Just a random guy on the Internet.