So how would you go about making an educated reverse engineering claim on the stake at risk without knowing his other legs nor expiry dates? Is it even possible? How about a wide range?
He bought 8001 put options on some undisclosed date at an undisclosed strike date and price. You can take a look at the options chain for TSLA to get an idea.
For example, a $450 put for September 17th 2021 would cost about $16.70 per share:
One option counts for 100 shares, so that would be a (8001 * 16.70 * 100) 13.36 million dollar bet. Suppose that TSLA is worth only $400 on that date, with your right to sell at $450 you'd be in the money for 40 million dollars, or roughly $26 million in profits. If TSLA is worth $450 or more on that date, your options expire worthless.
> As of March 31, Burry owned 8,001 put contracts, with unknown value, strike price, or expiry, according to the filing.
You can't figure out his position with this information.
For example, you could buy very, very out-of-the-money puts for a penny. (Your bet would basically be: TSLA loses 95% of it's value in the next week.) My total value at risk for this bet (of 8,001 put contracts) would be $80.
*Small correction - the minimum value of 8000 put contracts would be $8000, since one put at a price of $.01 actually costs $1 and controls 100 shares of stock (the price is price per share)
For example, a $450 put for September 17th 2021 would cost about $16.70 per share:
https://finance.yahoo.com/quote/TSLA/options?strike=450&stra...
One option counts for 100 shares, so that would be a (8001 * 16.70 * 100) 13.36 million dollar bet. Suppose that TSLA is worth only $400 on that date, with your right to sell at $450 you'd be in the money for 40 million dollars, or roughly $26 million in profits. If TSLA is worth $450 or more on that date, your options expire worthless.