When I worked at Parallax I used to carpool with 3 good friends I worked with. On our rides back and forth, we frequently talked about trading situations that came up on the desk, “Yesterday a broker showed me this, I responded with that, how would you have handled it?”
It was the equivalent of game film for trading. I used to joke that if we recorded the calls on Periscope (remember Periscope?) it would be must-see tv for the fintwit crowd.
Given privacy and compliance, it was a non-starter idea. More broadly I thought that what I call“over-the-shoulder” educational material would be popular. The same way you watch Twitch to see how someone plays a game. Watching their mind work in real-time. Or watching somebody learn to play a song on the guitar by ear especially if they haven’t heard the song before. You pick up a bunch of stuff from what’s typically left out of a scripted tutorial. The mistake they make and how they correct it. Or how they started in the first place with the equivalent of a blank sheet.
I want to hear their reasoning out loud. I want it to be raw.
A few years ago, I watched this guy solve an insane sudoku as he narrated his thinking. It's one of the most delightful YouTube videos I've ever watched.
On the heels of the Moontower Discord Voice chat I hosted a week ago, I thought heck let me try my hand at an over-the-shoulder video. I planned to talk about how to think about synthetic futures in the options market. I opened up my Interactive Brokers account option chains and a spreadsheet and just started riffing.
Since I did no prep, I figured instead of just recording a video I’d just livestream on X/Twitter. From one thought to the next, I end up covering almost an hour of info.
The feedback to what I saw as merely an experiment was tremendous. It got nearly 13k views and lots of love. I guess I’ll be doing more of this kind of thing.
I uploaded it to YT. I hope you find it useful.
An unscripted tour of key option concepts as I look at live data including:
- Synthetic futures
- Implied interest rates
- Reversal/Conversions
- Box rates
- Tracking structures in IB
- P/L attribution of a strangle
- Tickers used: TSLA IBIT SPX