The options trade that cleared my $15,000 debt

^{By Matthew Davis}

I used to measure my debt in cups of coffee.

Every time I tapped my card at the deli, I’d think, there goes another $3.75 on top of the fifteen grand I already owe.

It wasn’t just the number that weighed on me. It was the permanence. Student loans. Two credit cards maxed out. A lingering medical bill I’d half-forgotten until it popped back up in collections. I wasn’t drowning, but I was exhausted from treading water.

I never thought one trade — one reckless, impossible trade — would change that. But it did.

The late-night spiral

It started the way most bad ideas do: late at night, scrolling. My phone lit up in the dark while I scrolled through Reddit threads about people who claimed to have doubled their net worth in days.

I had a Robinhood account, mostly ignored. I opened it back in 2020 when everyone was suddenly trading stocks. My “portfolio” was laughable. Two hundred bucks in Ford, another hundred in biotech company I didn’t remember buying. A few others that had actually lost value the past five years.

Then I stumbled into r/options, and I had no idea what I was reading. People threw around words like calls, puts, strike prices, gamma, IV, open interest. To me it read like math homework mixed with casino slang. Half the posts looked like hieroglyphics, yet the comment sections were electric — screenshots of balances that ballooned overnight, strangers swearing they’d turned rent money into a down payment in a week.

Most of it sounded like noise, but one line stuck in my head:

Options are how you turn $500 into $5,000 if you time it right.

I didn’t have timing in anything else in my life. Bills were late. Credit card minimums ate me alive. My paychecks disappeared the moment they hit. Still, I kept scrolling. YouTube explainers with whiteboards full of delta and theta. Practice apps, paper trades, fake wins. Meanwhile, the debt buzzed in the back of my mind like static. Every video, every comment, I wondered what it would feel like to finally be free.

And then one night, with my phone lighting up my face at 2 a.m., I decided to risk the little I had.

The $1,200 risk

It was Nvidia. The stock had already been on a tear, and the timing around earnings felt like a storm brewing. Demand for their AI chips was exploding, and every analyst note I read hinted that results could blow expectations out of the water.

I had $1,200 left after paying rent. Instead of putting it toward my debt, I bought four Nvidia call contracts expiring in two weeks with a $400 strike price. The options were trading around $2.95 per share (about $295 per contract) so the total cost came to $1,180.

I remember staring at the green confirmation screen, my stomach hollow. It wasn’t excitement — it was closer to nausea. I knew if it went wrong that $1,200 would decay to zero. But if Nvidia popped, leverage could do for me what years of minimum payments hadn’t.

Refreshing to death

The first few days tested me. Nvidia drifted between $395 and $405, going nowhere. My contracts bled value by the hour. That’s when I learned the word theta the hard way — time decay.

On paper, I was down 30% within forty-eight hours. The contracts I’d paid $295 for were worth barely $200. I kept telling myself to hold through earnings — that was the point. All or nothing. Either I’d lose nearly everything or I’d hit the jackpot

I couldn’t focus at work. Slack messages piled up while I stared at the Robinhood chart in another tab. Every time the price dipped lower, I wanted to vomit. The losses weren’t real yet, but they felt real enough.

Earnings day

The day of earnings, I barely slept. Nvidia was set to report after the bell. Analysts expected around $11 billion in revenue. Rumors on Twitter said it might be closer to $12. I kept refreshing news feeds, reading the same speculation over and over, like maybe the words would change the outcome.

By 4:00 p.m., I was at my desk with my laptop open, Robinhood on one screen, the financial news feed on another. My leg twitching under the chair. The market closed. Nothing happened yet. The minutes dragged.

At 4:05, the release hit. My eyes scanned the numbers once, then again to make sure I hadn’t misread.

Thirteen point five billion.

My heart was in my stomach. I actually said it out loud: “Holy shit.” Nvidia had BLOWN past estimates. Guidance was even higher. Within seconds, headlines screamed surging demand for AI chips.

The stock exploded in after-hours trading — $405 to $450 in minutes. My contracts re-priced instantly. The $295 calls I’d bought were suddenly worth nearly $2,000 each. My Robinhood balance showed about $7,800.

I just stared at it, pulse hammering, like the numbers might vanish if I blinked.

The morning after

Pre-market, Nvidia kept climbing. By the open, it was trading near $460. That meant the calls I’d bought for $295 were now worth more than $2,500 each. My account balance showed $10,400.

By midday, the stock touched $472. My contracts peaked around $3,900 each. Four contracts meant $15,600 staring back at me.

The bid-ask spread on my calls was swinging wildly. Before earnings, implied volatility had shot through the roof, inflating premiums. Once the results were out, that volatility collapsed — an “IV crush” traders always warned about. Normally, it destroys option value. But the move in Nvidia was so extreme it overwhelmed the crush.

The position snowballed in my favor. Gamma (the way options accelerate as the stock runs) was juicing the contracts faster than I could process.

I had read about this exact setup: an earnings gap-up big enough to overpower IV crush. I never thought I’d be the one sitting there, watching it play out in my own account.

The exit

I hovered over the sell button for half the day. My eyes kept flicking from the flashing numbers to the little green button I couldn’t bring myself to tap.

The value jumped in bursts: $15,200. $15,500. $15,800.

Finally, I exhaled, tapped, and it was done.

The green number settled into my balance: $15,780.

I closed my laptop and sat very still. I couldn’t even celebrate. It felt like a fever breaking.

Debt free for the first time in a long time

Two days later, the money hit my checking account. I opened my credit card apps one by one and watched the balances fall to zero. I called my student loan servicer and made the final lump-sum payment that closed the account. I paid off a medical bill that had haunted me for years.

By the end of the week, I was debt free for the first time since I was nineteen. Even now, it feels strange to type that.

But here’s the truth: I didn’t outsmart the market. I wasn’t a genius who saw the future. I got lucky. VERY lucky. I happened to bet on the right company at the right moment, with just enough leverage to change my life. And that one swing rewired how I thought about money forever.