33,546 Shares Of A Stock That Just Missed Earnings. Here's W
Mathematical Money | August 15, 2026
Three weeks since my last post. Not because nothing happened — quite a lot did — but because I wanted the numbers straight before writing about them rather than after.
So let's start where it hurts.
MARA reported Q2 on August 6. Revenue came in at $174.9 million against the $209.4 million the street was looking for, and sitting inside the net loss was a $343 million fair-value hit on their digital assets. Bitcoin isn't helping either, around $62,800 as I write this and roughly $55,500 below where it was a year ago. MARA closed the week at $9.19, a lot nearer its 52-week low of $6.66 than the $23.45 high.
If you hold this one you already know all that. You've been watching it. And I know the feeling of opening the app and deciding today's not the day.
I've got 33,546 shares.
Where I actually stand
Shares: 33,546
Average entry: $11.43
Currently: $9.19
Calls written at: $11.50 to $15.00
Puts sold at: $10.00 and $9.00
So I'm underwater on the stock, about $2.24 a share. No way to dress that up and I'm not going to try.
The puts matter as much as the shares. Those are prices I've already agreed to buy more at, whether I feel like it on the day or not. That's the commitment people forget is sitting there when they sell premium.
What I did about it
Nothing dramatic, which is sort of the point.
I didn't cut after the earnings miss and I didn't average down with fresh cash. I wrote more calls against what I already own and let the premium do the work. One block was 175 contracts of the $15 calls at 27 cents — sounds like nothing until you multiply it out, and that's a strike I'm perfectly happy to get called away at.
The wheel just keeps turning. Calls above, puts below, roll them as they come due, collect either way. It's boring on purpose. Boring is what pays when the underlying is having a quarter like this one.
Two scenarios, and I don't know which
If BTC steadies and MARA grinds back toward $11–12, my calls start getting tested and I get called away on a chunk of the position at prices well above where it sits today. Good outcome. I've pre-agreed to it.
If BTC breaks lower and MARA revisits the $7 handle, those $10 and $9 puts come into play and I end up owning more at a lower average. That's the deal I signed when I sold them. It's also the one that stings, and I won't pretend otherwise — MARA is more than half my entire book, so when it moves, I feel it properly.
Either way the premium arrives weekly. That's the part that doesn't depend on guessing direction right, and it's why the book holds up through quarters like this.
The rest of it
MARA is the biggest position but it's not the only one, and I've never really laid the full thing out here.
So I've started writing a newsletter with room to do it properly. This week's post is the entire book — all eight counters, the exact concentration numbers, every entry and exit price, what the whole thing earned over the last three weeks, and the stress test on what actually happens to me if MARA halves from here.
That last one was uncomfortable to write down. It's in there anyway.
It's free and it's weekly, at mathematicalmoney.substack.com. Next week over there I'm showing the machinery behind all this — the backtests, the automated daily signals, and the AI layer that lets one person keep track of 449 open contracts without losing the plot.
Back here as usual. What do you want broken down next — MARA, COIN, or the ECHO/SPCX pair trade? Drop it in the comments.
Stop guessing. Start calculating.
Live to fight another day. 🤙
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