The good news is you can actually earn it back if markets move. If you are long call options at let's say 3150 points in the S&P (i.e., the level of the S&P as of writing), every further move to the upside increases your long position and your theoretical profit. To lock this profit in you sell on up moves and you buy on down moves, adjusting your market maker book back to neutral. If there are a lot of market makers around who have been forced to bid for call options, this is exactly what they are doing. All of them, all the time.
Suddenly this level become very sticky. Every bit of volatility is being used to recover the lost time value of the options that the market makers are now sitting on. And as these positions slowly waste away, the urge to compensate for this by hedging with every little move becomes stronger, slowly bringing the market to a standstill.
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