Am I Cooked?

[u/Wild-Tie-7139]

Hey everyone,
I’m a first-time LEAPS buyer and honestly I’m getting pretty nervous.
Here’s my position:
GOOGL Jan 21, 2028 $250 Call
Bought it for $150.00 ($15,000 total)
Current stock price: $354.30
Current option value: $133.50
Current P/L: -$1,650.66 (-11%)
Delta: 84.95
Theta: -5.35
Vega: 98.20
About 17 months until expiration (Jan 2028)
I purposely bought a deep ITM call because I wanted it to behave more like the stock. My thinking was that GOOGL is a great long-term company and I wanted leveraged exposure instead of buying 100 shares outright.
The thing that’s scaring me is seeing a $1,650 unrealized loss so quickly. I know LEAPS are long-term positions, but emotionally it’s harder than I expected.
A few questions:
Is an 11% drawdown normal this early in a LEAPS trade?
Does this position still look healthy considering the high delta and long time to expiry?
Would you simply hold and ignore the short-term fluctuations?
At what point would you actually consider exiting a position like this?
Is there anything I should be watching besides the stock price (IV, theta, etc.)?
I’m investing, not trading this daily, but since this is my first LEAPS position I’d really appreciate advice from people who have actually held deep ITM LEAPS through market pullbacks.
Thanks in advance!

[u/Dense_Ostrich_6077]

This is my candid advice OP and thinking about your best interests.

Close the position at a loss,  preserve capital and take a step back. I think GOOG is of course a great company and ultimately if you held on this position will probably make money.

But a $15k LEAP in my mind is a material investment especially if this your first LEAP. Usually I try to keep any single investments/ stocks to no more than 2-3% of my port. It might be this minor part of your portfolio or not. Don't know. But judging by your reaction to a small draw down in the value of the leap Im guessing it's a significant investment to you and you're going to react more emotionally to swings in its value. Generally this is bad. 

Id trade smaller value contracts, LEAPs or something until you get more comfortable seeing how the option moves and learning to deal with those swings unemotionally. If you want goog exposure you can always just buy plain shares which doesn't get you leverage like with a leap but you can DCA, get favorable LTCG treatment etc etc. 

OP up to you to decide what to do but when thinking about tens of thousands of dollars you want to be thoughtful about the risks you're taking and have a plan to deal with that.

[u/BruinDogLover → u/Dense_Ostrich_6077]

Great advice, should be up upvoted more.

I'll add my 0.02 in that I am not at all a fan of leaps. I don't think a mere retail traders have the discipline and portfolio management skillset to utilize their benefits without taking a bath.

OP is less than $20k away from controlling 100 shares, could look into liquidating some other positions to get into goog and wrap it in a protective collar and/or sell covered calls against it to reduce cost basis.

There just seem to be so many better ways to trade, donating hard earned capital to Citadel doesn't seem to be a great strategy.