We detailed one reason why TSLA has been seeing this incessant opening panic-bid previously...

One topic that is occasionally brought up by Tesla skeptics, but rarely examined in depth, has been a litany of out of the money call buying in the name that appears to be occurring, relatively aggressively, on a weekly basis.

While the buying could be attributed to normal market forces, a new article by Dan Stringer looks into the specifics of one such trade that took place last week, where it appeared that over $2.5 million was deployed in a very short term, very out of the money options buy.

...

The author then lays out that OCC rules dictate that the clearing house must have a certain percentage of this stock on hand to deal with the calls should they move into the money. He estimates a 20% ratio:

The broker-dealers need to have some margin level (per Rule 601 of the OCC rules); this can vary by broker-dealer and is subject to calculations with these rules. I have heard a typical ratio is roughly 20% on hand, so for the purpose of this exercise, I will use that.