Google dropped $23 in a day. My options hedged 50% of the fall.
After Q2'26 earnings last night, Google's share price dropped $23 in a single day, closing around $315.
My GOOG positions only showed about half that loss.
I didn't sell anything. I didn't touch my account that day at all. The cushion came from something I had set up weeks earlier: insurance on my own shares.
The problem every tech employee has
If you work in tech, you probably have the same problem I had: a big chunk of your net worth sitting in one company's stock — the same company that also pays your salary.
Most people I talk to know this is risky. Their plan for dealing with it is usually one word: hope.
Hope the stock keeps going up. Hope the layoffs don't come. Hope they don't need the money during a crash.
I wanted something better than hope, without selling shares I still believe in (and without triggering a big decision I wasn't ready to make).
What I actually did
Six weeks before the drop, I set up two simple agreements on my Google shares:
- I bought the right to sell my shares at $345 each, any time until December. Think of this as an insurance policy. No matter how far the stock falls, I've locked in the ability to walk away at $345. This right isn't free — it costs money, like any insurance premium.
- To pay for that insurance, I agreed to sell my shares at $380 if the stock rises that far. Someone paid me for that promise, and what they paid me covered the cost of my insurance.
Net cost of the whole setup: roughly zero.
The trade-off is honest and simple: I gave up any gains above $380 between now and December. In exchange, I'm protected against any fall below $345. I covered about 70% of my shares this way.
(Read more about my set up in my previous post here: How I Hedged $500K GOOG Position (Almost) for Free with Options)
What happened on the day of the drop
When Google fell $23, my insurance became more valuable as the stock fell — the right to sell at $345 is worth a lot when the market price is $315.
So net-net, my account was down about $25k instead of $50k. Half the pain, gone.
The part most people miss
Here's the important bit: I still haven't sold a single share.
The insurance doesn't force me to sell at $345. It just gives me the option to. It runs until December. If Google recovers above $345 by then, I simply keep my shares — and I kept my downside protected the whole way through the storm.
That's the difference between insurance and panic-selling. Panic-selling locks in your loss and takes you out of the game. Insurance smooths the ride while you stay in it.
Do I think Google is broken?
No. The market is worried that Google is spending more on AI infrastructure than it currently earns back. That's a real concern, but the business itself hasn't changed — the price had simply run ahead of itself, and it's now coming back down to more reasonable levels.
My view: this is a correction, not a broken company. Which is exactly why I'd rather hold-with-insurance than sell.
What this means for you
If a big part of your wealth sits in one stock — especially your employer's — you have two choices:
- Sell. Sometimes right, but you give up the upside and it's emotionally hard to do.
- Insure. Keep the shares, cap the damage, and often pay for the protection by giving up some upside you may not have needed anyway.
Most people don't know the second door exists. It does, and it's not complicated once someone shows you how the pieces fit.
I'm not a licensed financial advisor and this isn't advice to buy or sell anything — just my own trades, shared openly so you can learn from them.