learning options from scratch
The basics
A shortcoming I feel in my writing is none of my posts make for a good calling card. There’s no obvious “banger”. A friend described moontower as a “slow burn”. If you read it consistently you feel like you know me (and you do…I don’t have the energy or Huberman-esque levels of productivity to get me in trouble so yea WYSIWYG).
To me, it feels, in a good way, like one long conversation. (I hope the more you read it the more you’re attached to it. A literary stuffie.)
But because I often feel like I’m picking up where we left off, I realize I don’t address some basic info. For example, we cover a lot about options and trading. But unless you are part of the 40 people who first started reading moontower 5+ years ago you’d never know that I haven’t covered the absolute basics of options.
The closest thing to it is a non-exhaustive list of Arbitrage Identities. Even this is not hockey-stick diagram basic.
My recommendation for basics is to check out all the free educational stuff on the Option Industry Council website:
Within, you shall find the OIC Academy
You’ll need to create a login and password to access the educational materials, but it's free and excellent.
The OIC education initiative is led by Mat Cashman. We’ve had several conversations recently because I’ve been looking for a place to point others for a good foundational education.
Mat has 20 years experience as options as a trader and market-maker. (We started the same year).
He started his career on the trading floor of the Chicago Board of Options Exchange in 2000 and has since traded multiple asset classes across a wide array of exchanges including the CME, CBOT, and the Eurex Exchange. In 2005, Mat helped launch the London trading desk of DRW, a Chicago-based options trading firm, and was instrumental in building the DRW presence in the London trading community. After his time in London, Mat returned to Chicago to join Toro Trading, and was quickly named a partner, overseeing all aspects of their growing U.S. Index Options trading business. During Mat’s time in the options industry, he has always been heavily involved in training and overseeing new traders and has created multiple options education programs along the way to share his knowledge of trading and optionality with people new to the industry. At OCC, Mat is responsible for providing support to a comprehensive options resource center that provides information and education about options. In addition to his responsibilities with OCC, Mat also serves as an instructor of The Options Industry Council (OIC), conducting option seminars and presenting online webinars to all segments of the investing community, including registered representatives and advisors as well as individual investors.
He knows options inside-out. And his mandate is to be a resource for the option industry. You can hit him up on LinkedIn. You can tell him I told you to bug him.