SharkWater Trading • Income Strategies • Options • Private Markets
RVI: The Fund Where Nobody Knows What It Is Worth, And That Is Exactly Why You Sell Puts
August 17, 2026
Bottom Line Up Front
Robinhood Ventures Fund I (NYSE: RVI) went public at $25 in March, ran to $77.39 in May, fell all the way back to $24.10 in late July, and now trades near $28. The last audited net asset value the fund published was $24.05 per share, dated March 31. That number is four and a half months old.
Implied volatility sits near 87 percent against 30 day realized volatility of roughly 61 percent. When a market is charging you 87 percent vol on a fund whose true value updates once a quarter and holds a large slug of money market funds, the cleanest way to play it is not to buy the shares. It is to sell out of the money cash secured puts at or below the last known NAV and get paid to wait for a price that actually makes sense.
First, Almost Everything You Have Read About RVI's Holdings Is Wrong
Search "RVI holdings" and you will find confident pages telling you the fund owns Anthropic, xAI, Perplexity, Anduril, Scale AI, Figma, Notion, Discord, Chime, Brex, Plaid, and Mercury, with a $725 million NAV. Other pages will tell you the NAV is $300 million. One popular page insists RVI does not own SpaceX. Another insists SpaceX is the largest position at 22 percent of the fund.
None of that survives contact with the audited annual report. RVI's fiscal year ends March 31, and the Form N-CSR filed with the SEC lays out the entire schedule of investments, line by line, with cost basis and fair value. Nine private companies. Not twenty. Not one of the exotic names above.
It gets worse. Pull up RVI on some of the major quote sites and the fundamentals block still shows a market cap of $63 million, a 734 percent dividend yield, an industry classification of "Real Estate Operations," and a next earnings date in 2022. That is leftover data from Retail Value Inc., the shopping center REIT that used to trade under this ticker. The vendor never fully flushed it.
Rule of the boat: on a fund this new, with a recycled ticker and a quarterly valuation cycle, you go to EDGAR or the fund's own newsroom. Nowhere else. If your data source cannot tell you whether RVI is a venture fund or a strip mall landlord, it cannot tell you what it is worth.
What RVI Actually Owns
Here is the audited portfolio as of March 31, 2026, straight out of the schedule of investments, plus everything the fund has announced since.
| Position | Type | Fair Value / Cost | Status |
|---|---|---|---|
| Databricks (Series K + L) | Preferred | $81.7M | Marked up 26.7% from entry |
| OpenAI | Class A Common | $75.0M | Added April 17 |
| Revolut | Ordinary | $50.2M | At cost |
| Mercor | Series C Preferred | $50.0M | At cost |
| Whatnot | Preferred | $30.0M | Added Aug 5, $20B round |
| Airwallex | Series G Preferred | $25.0M | At cost |
| Boom Supersonic | Series B-1 Preferred | $25.0M | At cost |
| Oura | Series E Preferred | $25.0M | At cost |
| Ramp (common + preferred) | Both | $25.0M | At cost |
| Canva | Class A Common | $25.0M | Added June 24 |
| ElevenLabs | Series D-1 Preferred | $20.0M | At cost |
| Stripe (+ June follow-on) | Class B Common | $14.6M plus | Follow-on June 29 |
| SpaceX | Public common | $6.8M | IPO allocation, June |
| Money market funds | Level 1 | $347.1M at 3/31 | 53% of net assets |
Net assets were $655.3 million across 27,247,215 shares, which is where the $24.05 NAV comes from. The single most important line in that table is the last one. On March 31, more than half of this "venture fund" was sitting in a government money market fund yielding about 3.6 percent.
Since then the fund has deployed roughly $137 million into OpenAI, SpaceX, Canva, and Whatnot, plus an undisclosed Stripe follow-on. Back of the envelope, that still leaves somewhere in the neighborhood of $180 million to $210 million in cash equivalents, or roughly $6.50 to $7.75 per share. Call it a quarter to a third of NAV in T-bill proxies.
That matters enormously for a put seller. It means a meaningful chunk of what you would be buying on assignment is not a Level 3 guess about a private company. It is cash.
The NAV Problem, Which Is Really The Whole Trade
Here is the structural quirk that drives everything. RVI marks its portfolio and calculates NAV once per business quarter. The private positions are Level 3 fair value, determined by the adviser using precedent transactions, funding rounds, and secondary prints. The share price, meanwhile, trades every second the NYSE is open.
Think of it like a boat sitting on a mooring in fog. The NAV is a photograph somebody takes of the boat once every three months. The stock price is a crowd on shore shouting guesses about where the boat is right now. Sometimes the crowd is right. In May, the crowd decided the boat was worth $77 when the last photograph said $24.
The crowd was wrong. It usually is at extremes, in both directions.
The premium round trip on this thing has been violent:
| Date | Price | vs Last Published NAV |
|---|---|---|
| March 6, IPO | $25.00 issue, opened near $22 | Discount on day one |
| March 31 | $26.54 | +10% to $24.05 NAV |
| May 13, peak | $77.39 | Roughly +220% |
| July 29, trough | $24.10 | Roughly flat to NAV |
| Mid August | ~$28.20 | About +17% |
A 68 percent drawdown from peak to trough in eleven weeks, on a fund holding money market funds and a dozen private marks. Nothing in the portfolio moved 68 percent. Only the story did.
Why The Options Are Rich
| Metric | Reading |
|---|---|
| Implied volatility (30 day) | ~86.6% |
| Historical volatility (30 day) | ~61.3% |
| IV rank / IV percentile | ~33% / 26% |
| IV high / low, trailing year | 120.6% (June 9) / 69.6% (Aug 6) |
| Expected move, 10 DTE | +/- 11.8%, range $24.88 to $31.56 |
| Put / call open interest ratio | 1.21 |
| Total open interest | ~11,400 contracts |
Roughly 25 volatility points of spread between what the market is charging and what the stock has actually delivered over the last month. That gap is your edge, and it exists for a reason worth naming out loud: the market genuinely does not know what this fund is worth between quarterly marks, so it prices uncertainty into every contract.
Note also that IV rank is only 33 percent. Vol is elevated in absolute terms but it is not stretched relative to this fund's own short history. It has been much higher. That argues for selling premium in size you can defend, not backing up the truck.
The Trade: Selling Out Of The Money Puts Below NAV
The setup writes itself. You have a fund trading at a 17 percent premium to a stale NAV, with roughly a quarter of that NAV sitting in cash equivalents, an 87 percent implied vol, and a demonstrated willingness to trade all the way back down to the low twenties. You do not want to buy $28 shares. You want to get paid for agreeing to buy $20 to $22 shares.
That is the entire thesis. You are selling insurance against a price you would happily pay anyway.
Strike Selection Logic
Anchor your strikes to NAV, not to the current share price. Three reference points:
- $24.05 is the last published NAV. Anything above that strike and you are agreeing to pay a premium to stated value.
- $24.10 is the July low. The market has already tested and defended roughly this level once.
- $21.00 is the 52 week low and represents about a 13 percent discount to the last NAV. At that level you are buying private venture marks at a real discount with cash backing part of it.
The ladder below uses model derived premiums at the observed volatility surface. These are theoretical values, not live quotes. Pull the actual chain before you place anything. On a name with 11,400 total open interest, the bid ask spread will take a real bite.
| Expiry | Strike | Est. Premium | Breakeven | vs $24.05 NAV | Return on Cash |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Sep 18 (32d) | $25.00 | ~$1.50 | $23.50 | -2.3% | 6.1% |
| Sep 18 (32d) | $22.50 | ~$0.85 | $21.65 | -10.0% | 3.8% |
| Sep 18 (32d) | $20.00 | ~$0.45 | $19.55 | -18.7% | 2.3% |
The sweet spot in my read is the October and November $22.50 strikes. They sit below the last published NAV, below the July low, collect a genuinely meaningful premium, and give you enough calendar to survive one full quarterly NAV print. The September $20 line is the sleep at night trade: small premium, but your breakeven is nearly 19 percent under stated NAV, and roughly a third of what you would own at that basis is money market funds.
The Catalyst Nobody Is Marking On Their Calendar
The March 31 shareholder update was published on May 29, about sixty days after quarter end. Which means the June 30 quarterly NAV update should land in the back half of August, along with the corresponding portfolio schedule filing. That is a defined, dateable event that will replace a four month old number with a fresh one.
This is the closest thing a closed end fund has to an earnings print, and unlike an earnings print, almost nobody is watching for it. If you are selling premium here, know that this date is inside your September and October contracts. That is a feature if you are short strikes well below NAV and a problem if you are short strikes near the money.
Bull Case
The fund is still roughly a quarter to a third in cash, which means the adviser has real dry powder to deploy into new rounds at current marks. The Databricks position is already marked 27 percent above entry, and Whatnot came in through a priced $545 million Series G at a $20 billion valuation, which is a hard valuation event rather than a model guess. There is no carried interest, which is a genuine structural advantage over a standard two and twenty venture fund. And if the OpenAI, Databricks, or Revolut positions get repriced upward at the June 30 mark, the NAV anchor moves up under the share price and the current 17 percent premium suddenly looks a lot more modest.
Bear Case
Three things worry me, in order.
One, the overhang. Robinhood Markets owned 52.18 percent of the fund as of March 31, and the fund has filed to register 14,217,271 of those shares for resale. That is more than half the share count sitting in a registered resale shelf above a thinly traded security. If that supply starts hitting the tape, the premium does not just compress, it inverts.
Two, the fee step up. The management fee is 2.00 percent of net assets, waived to 1.00 percent for the first six months after the IPO. That waiver runs out around early September. The all in expense ratio for the stub year already ran about 2.7 percent. On a fund holding a third in money market funds, you are paying venture fees on Treasury bills.
Three, Level 3 marks can gap. Every private position in this book is valued by the adviser using unobservable inputs. A down round at any one of Mercor, Boom, Oura, or ElevenLabs shows up as a step function in NAV, not a gradual drift. And RVII just listed on August 13 at $25 with roughly 80 Y Combinator names, which gives the same retail dollar somewhere else to go.
The SharkWater Take
I do not want to own RVI at $28. Paying a 17 percent premium to a NAV that is itself a quarterly estimate, in order to pay 2 percent a year on a portfolio that is one third cash, is not an edge. It is a subscription fee for a story.
But I very much want to own it at $20, and I am happy to be paid 5 to 11 percent on my collateral for saying so out loud. That is the entire trade. Sell the puts well below the last published NAV, size them so that assignment is a good day rather than a margin call, and let the 25 point vol spread work.
If you get assigned, you own a basket of Databricks, OpenAI, Stripe, Revolut, Canva, and a pile of T-bills at a real discount to stated value, and you flip straight into the wheel by selling calls into the next premium spike. If you do not get assigned, you keep the money and reload. Both outcomes are acceptable, which is the only kind of trade worth putting on.
Execution Notes
- Use limit orders, always. Average daily option volume is under 700 contracts across the whole chain. Market orders here are donations.
- Cash secured, not margin. A fund with a 68 percent peak to trough drawdown in eleven weeks is not where you want leverage on short puts.
- Size for full assignment. One contract equals 100 shares. At the $22.50 strike, that is $2,250 of real obligation per contract. Only sell what you can take delivery of without flinching.
- Close at 50 to 60 percent of max profit rather than riding to expiration. On a name with this much headline risk, the last 40 percent of the premium is the worst paid part of the trade.
- There is no dividend to cushion assignment. The fund has stated it does not anticipate being a predictable distributor. Your entire return on an assigned position is price plus whatever calls you write against it.
- Watch the quarterly update, not the ticker. Set an alert for the June 30 NAV publication and the corresponding portfolio filing. That number is the only thing that resets your anchor.
Fair winds and following seas.
Disclaimer: This post is for informational and educational purposes only and does not constitute investment advice, a recommendation, or an offer to buy or sell any security. Option premiums shown are model derived estimates, not live market quotes, and will differ from actual executable prices. Selling puts carries the obligation to purchase shares at the strike price and can result in losses substantially greater than the premium collected. RVI is a non diversified closed end fund holding illiquid Level 3 private securities whose fair values are estimates and may differ materially from realizable value. NAV figures cited are as of March 31, 2026 and are stale. Portfolio and financial data sourced from the fund's SEC filings and company announcements. Verify all figures independently before trading. Past performance does not guarantee future results. Do your own diligence and consult a licensed financial professional regarding your specific situation.
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