Rolling Hedge

For most applications, hedges expire. That is, you buy portfolio life insurance and buy put options on ticker: SPY, 15% lower than where the market is today. Those options expire in 83 trading days, i.e. they're about 4 months out for that third Friday of the month when they expire.

So what do you do in 72 days when Theta is starting to decay like a caveman's teeth, and there's soon to be no portfolio life insurance? Well, you have to re-buy the puts. You let the old ones expire probably. And then just buy new ones, say, 15% down and 90-ish days out. And maybe you do this every month, and you sell the old puts and buy new ones. And maybe you offset the cost of those puts by selling covered calls 10 or 15% above the market so you're not destroying your investment results by having spent too much on hedges.

That's the plan, anyway. Doesn't always work.

See: Hedge Ratio.