LEAP
Ribbit LEAP, Ltd.
stock NYSE

The thesis here is a multi quarter operational turnaround, so the thing that makes or breaks an options expression is time, not direction. A turnaround like this reprices in steps as comps and unit economics show up over several earnings prints, which is exactly the horizon where short dated calls bleed you out even when you are right. If you want leverage to it, the cleaner structures are a LEAP call you can hold through two or three prints, or a call diagonal where you sell nearer dated premium against a long dated call to fund the wait. Also worth checking where IV sits before you buy anything. If the market has already started pricing the story, front month IV gets bid and you overpay for the exact optionality you want. Buying long dated calls into elevated IV is how a correct thesis still loses money.

Hi everyone! I recently found this subreddit and another similar one, and they've honestly been a great source of insight — lots of interesting stories and strategies.
I've recently started digging deeper into options. For a long time I assumed they were way too risky and better left alone, so I stuck to classic investing and the occasional small trade. But the more I read and researched, the more I realized options can actually be used with limited risk too — through bull call/put spreads if you don't own the underlying shares, or through LEAP calls/puts. I'm still new to this, and since I don't hold 100 shares of any single stock, I'm being extra careful not to end up naked on a position.
So far, so good. The thing is, I've always been someone who likes talking things through with others, but nobody around me has options as a topic of conversation. I spend time every day checking volatility, screening different stocks, and putting together contract ideas and trade plans — but what I'm really missing is someone to bounce these ideas off of.
So if you're part of any groups where people share their views on upcoming trades or market moves, or if you're just as "lonely" in this as I am, it'd be great to connect. A few more brains debating the pros and cons definitely beats going at it alone.

We screen Canadian small caps for unusual volume and most days the honest answer is "no." We write down why each time, which means we can go back and grade the no's instead of quietly forgetting them. Here is the last five weeks.
**THE RAW NUMBERS**, July 2 to August 5, 2026
23 names we flagged and walked away from. 15 are down since we passed, 8 are up. **Median -3.2%.** For context over the same window the TSX composite gained 3.4% and gold miners (XGD.TO) gained 4.5%, so the median pass underperformed a rising market.
**Worked out:** FIN.V -26.7%, BRO.V -25.5%, GGA.V -23.3%, LEAP.V -21.1%, FAIR.V -16.7%.
**Went against us**: ADE.V +108.3%, SPMC.V +44.8%, CGD.V +43.8%, SKP.V +20.7%.
Small sample, short window. Do not read a system into 23 names over five weeks.
**THE USEFUL PART: WHY THE THREE BIG ONES WENT UP**
A stock going up and a stock going up for a reason that holds are different things. If it rose on something reversible, it can round-trip just as fast. So we went looking for the actual catalyst on each of the three.
**ADE.V, up 108%**. We passed on July 15 at 6 cents because New Brunswick's mining registrar had cancelled mineral claim 1505 on July 13, the claim the entire Mount Pleasant project sits on, for insufficient work program expenditures. What has changed since: on July 29 the company filed an appeal with the New Brunswick Energy and Utilities Board asking for a stay and reinstatement. That is the entire catalyst. The claim is still cancelled and still in protected status. The asset is real, Mount Pleasant has been described as North America's largest tin deposit, which is exactly why the appeal matters so much and exactly why losing it would be terminal. So the stock more than doubled on a legal filing, not an outcome. Anyone buying here is making a binary bet on a regulatory board, which is a legitimate thing to do as long as you know that is what you are doing.
**CGD.V, up 44%.** We passed on July 28 at 64 cents because the 988x volume ratio our screen printed was arithmetic, not a discovery. Its 50-day median volume is zero. Not near zero, zero. The stock does not trade most days, so any real session divides by nothing and produces a number that looks like a signal. That day 1.1 million shares changed hands and the stock closed DOWN 1.5%, which is distribution, not accumulation. Then it went up 44% anyway, so we went hunting for the catalyst. There isn't one. Carlin Gold has published exactly two news releases in 2026: a $2.16 million financing on April 14, and a management change on July 13 where the CEO stepped down. No drilling, no assays, no results.
Here is the trap, and it is the reason I am writing this section. If you search this company you WILL find Cortez Summit drill results, seven RC holes, 11,720 feet, anomalous gold and Carlin-type pathfinders in six of seven holes. It reads like current news. We nearly used it. Those results are from OCTOBER 2012. Search engines and aggregators serve undated mining press releases constantly, and a fourteen-year-old program looks identical to last week's if the page has no date on it. Always open the company's own news index and read the date off their list. If a company's own site does not date its releases, that itself is information.
So CGD is up 44% on a financing, a resignation, and no news, in a stock with zero median volume. That cuts both ways with equal speed.
**SPMC.V, up 45%.** We passed on July 6 at 58 cents because the company had an active paid promotion running, a US$300,000 online media budget announced in early June, with 1.07 million options granted at $0.54 around the same time. Our rule is that a bought spike is close to an automatic no.
To be fair to the company, the underlying work is real: first-ever drilling at Ontenu NE hit mineralisation in five of seven holes with a peak of 9.92 g/t gold and 2.35% copper, and its Kili Teke project carries a 4.2 million ounce AuEq inferred resource. That is not nothing.
But look at the sequence before you call this a miss. Paid campaign starts early June. July 29 update is 52 rock samples dispatched, with no assays back yet. Stock up 45%. A stock rising 45% during a paid promotion with no assay results published is what the rule predicts, not evidence against it. The assays are the test and they have not landed. Ask again in a month.
**WHAT WE TOOK FROM IT**
Two of the three moved on something that never touched the reason we passed. One moved on no published reason at all. That does not make us right, the price went against us on all three and we are not spinning that. But there is a real difference between a pass that was wrong and a pass that was early, and you can only tell them apart if you wrote the reason down at the time. Grading your no's is unglamorous and it is where most of the learning is.
Not advice, just our own process and our own numbers. Do your own diligence.

You don't know what you're doing
Stop fucking with options unless you're buying a LEAP 2 years out

I have a UNH LEAP, it’s been sideways but it was one of only three green stocks in my LEAPS port today 
Was tempted to sell,  but I 
guess it’s a decent diversifier.

"Some stocks are just clearly waiting for a pretty dramatic re-rate"
Then why did you not full port a LEAP call with margin at that time? I think you are just clueless as you were.

SPX short LEAP call?

Sorry, LEAPs is a pet peeve of mine. CSPs and CCs are meant to be the plurals of CSP and CC, respectively. One CC, two CCs. LEAPS is **not** the plural of LEAP. LEAPS is an acronym, like IRS. You don't have one IR, two IRS, and you don't have one LEAP and two LEAPS. If you want to form the plural, have LEAPS modify the thing you want many of, like one LEAPS call, two LEAPS calls.

You are saying use wheel strategy until some huge dip or market catalyst (assume for some specific stocks) and then buy LEAP call (after the price dip or the catalyst), is this correct?
Can you share details on LEAP call contract, like expiry, IV, what else matters?
My assumption that premium for a LEAP call would be significantly higher after a sharp price drop from a black swan. Also market can price in a catalyst. Does it matter or I miss something?

The pattern is real but I would be careful calling the source of those returns defensive. A Jan 27 200 strike doubling twice came from the underlying making roughly 27 percent moves levered by the option, not from anything defensive about WM. Low vol names like this are exactly where a LEAP is cheap in extrinsic, so the delta is doing almost all the work and there is little vega tailwind to help. That is fine on the way up, but it means the option tracks the stock close to one to one rather than getting the convexity kick a higher IV name would give you.
The risk that is not being priced is the flip side of the thing you like. "Rarely below its 200DMA for more than 1 to 3 months" is a backward looking regularity, and single name regularities tend to break right after you size up on them. On a two year option the daily theta is small, so the real cost of being wrong is not decay, it is capital parked in a levered bet that grinds sideways under your strike while you wait for a rebound that used to be reliable. The thesis can work, just size it as the leveraged single name bet it is, not as a defensive sleeve that happens to pay like a lottery ticket.

Before I begin, I recognize these stodgy old dogs lack sex appeal which makes them unappealing or forgotten by most traders, especially in today's market where thirst for the next great thing is unquenchable. But this may be where an edge presents itself...

Take for instance a company you probably never think of: Waste Management (WM). The business model is self-explanatory: they collect waste and manage its disposal. Trash does not equal sex appeal, clearly. If there ever was a business with a true moat, it's this one. I'll spare the details; you can ask a chatbot if you want a deep dive on their business lines and strength of moat.
Let's talk about LEAPs on this bad boy. The Jan '27 200 strike contract first began trading in February of 2025. It has since experienced a peak-to-trough 100% return twice..one of them being over 150% (Nov. '25 - March '26). Keep in mind, we are not discussing a deep OTM strike or a short dated option here. The stock closed below $200/share a grand total of 4 days during the life of this contract. 4 days! From the November 2025 low, a subsequent \~27% positive move returned the 150%+ gain on the 200 strike contract. Incredible.
What's more, the trading pattern of this company is incredibly reliable. It rarely stays below its 200DMA for more than 1-3 months and when it does it consistently rebounds for what many would consider a modest gain in commons, but an explosive gain in a LEAP option. Even if you wanted to hedge, puts are just as cheap as calls; you can gain hedge exposure without breaking the bank.
This is but one example. You can model this by looking at option charts on TradingView for names like COST, JNJ, etc. Costco has also experienced multiple 100%+ moves on its LEAP contracts.

Of course, the past trading patterns are not indicative of what will occur in the future. Investing is a game of probabilities and risk/reward. To me, LEAPs skew heavily in the favor of reward. What says you?

I wouldn’t call them undervalued calls. They aren’t. MSFT has been volatile and the options have been expensive lately.
If you think the company is undervalued and want to use calls to establish a position, buy a LEAP. Basically cut the stock price in half, and buy a long dated a call option strike at that price.