TOO Reddit Mentions | ChartExchange

the following is not to be construed as trading advice and is to be treated as entertainment.
this story is still developing and with the pause in the markets tomorrow there is one day left. lets take a meandering path through why gambling on 7dtes is dumb and why social media is the worst possible place to get information because the entire purpose of reddit is basically to lie to other people while they watch ads.
now obviously it goes without saying that buying unhedged 7dtes is degenerate gambling. its like speed chess except you're rolling dice and there's no chess pieces and no chess board, just red graphs while the move timer clocks down.
about a week ago people started brigading the reddits with some fantastic news about a massive rug pull opportunity where
"shares may plummet"
"loving my puts rn"
"100% of shares being sold by CEO, Former CEO"
"There has never been a majority CEO stock sale that didn’t end in a collapse"
"ANOTHER HUGE INSIDER SALE TODAY"
"FIRE SALE BY ENTIRE EXECUTIVE TEAM"
"WHY YOU SHOULD QUESTION X"
"PEOPLE NEED TO KNOW BEFORE ITS TOO LATE"
the company in question that has been posted about by 3-4 people across 10-20 subreddits repeatedly you know the name of.
The brigading started 3 weeks ago or so, about information publicly disclosed and discussed 6 weeks ago, and really picked up last week when one user in particular was advocating for puts on this chart, https://finance.yahoo.com/quote/IONQ250620C00039000/chart/
overall volume is low, this is not a huge market, the perfect setup for a brigader where a few thousand eyeballs might be all thats needed.
they claim theyve entered at $1.50 or $2.02 and cashed out at $2.50 "because of theta". hint: theta already evaporated on a 7dte. okay sure anyone can scalp anything and it works and it doesnt.
more importantly the purpose of the brigading is to drive up volume so that people can enter and exit their scalping with better liquidity when uninformed traders start taking risky trades.
https://optioncharts.io/option/IONQ/contract/IONQ250620P00039000
the volume coincided directly with the social media. but so far the trade has moved worse than sideways.
on 6/12 during peak brigading and the volume spike start, the underlying stock was holding steady at $39, 7% higher than a week prior. it's still at $39 today. but the option has gone from selling for $2 to selling for $0.64. if someone started with $1000 they'd have sold for $300 today.
but how can this be? shares might plummet? caveat empor suckers
- read up on rule 144 https://www.sec.gov/about/reports-publications/investorpubsrule144
- read up on 105b-1 planned sales https://www.sec.gov/files/33-11138-fact-sheet.pdf
Understand that the reason the US equities market are the best markets in the world are because of execution success which is created by trust, market integrity, transparency, unadultered greed. if the may 2025 10-q filing with sale disclosure was a cause for concern that was the week the stock would have cratered into the ground to never return. instead a few weeks later the stock spiked, likely cause the merger deal leaked, who knows, i dont. and the stock is up 30% since the public disclosure of the insider sales.
The rules around the markets create successful conditions for executives to make big sales if they want to by providing operating parameters that are highly unlikely to tank a stock. And if the insiders were to be trading on non public material information, especially adverse information, then they go to jail. It makes sense their hands were tied during the acquisition agreement but once that non public info is settled they can proceed with planned sales. That's what the social media brigaders dont want you to know, that they just needed you to help them scalp a few bucks.
Now with one day left the stock could go up and the options expire worthless or the share could plunge $3 and anyone who followed into a bad trading idea can exit with some change.