Saw WSB post of someone with 500% return for the year, claimed to have been buying the farthest strike, farthest date, the idea was because it's so far out in time it would barley decay to Theta even though so far out in price.

So started adding lots of contracts to my watch list inspecting farthest strike, farthest date. What found was it's inconsistent between tickers, and some strikes were so much farther out from the price. What I did notice was when inspecting LEAP puts instead, they surprisingly are very resilient, they don't really decay and all the sudden explode in value when asset sells-off.

The benefits of playing LEAP puts:

1. Could hold put LEAP for 2-3 months almost for free
2. Pay really nothing to Theta cause contract still 500-800 days till expiration
3. The strikes will be a lot closer to price than calls. For example, NVDA have to go to $280 strike while price is $130 currently. However, the LEAP put at $40 is much closer to the price and so cheap in-comparison to call, talking $1600 for the call vs just $90 for the put!

The results are better too, if opened NVDA farthest strike, farthest date when price was $95 and held, it would've doubled from $800 to $1600. If bought the put even back in June, it triples in value in August from $90 to $270, while having decayed nothing to Theta holding for two months technically for free before the rise took place.

EXAMPLE: I can open now a LEAP Put on NVDA $40 01/2026 for just $1.15, it's small price to pay, doesn't burn hardly any to Theta, and can stand price moving against it for a bit. Cheap gamble if sells off after earning's with big potential imo. Can even open as a diagonal selling a weekly near $50 to capture some premium but will then have collateral cost.

CIONCLUSION: Seems can really use put LEAPs to play to the downside cheaply and effectively. Can probably even time opening when the daily stochastic RSI has peaked for some easier to read companies, then smartly play to the downside while hedging risk aka cost/losses by opening as a LEAP with lots of time. I doubt many consider LEAP puts because by nature it's a losing battle but actually something there it seems.