Announcing Quantcha’s New Free Trial Model

We’re excited to share a new way for investors to try out Quantcha Options Suite at no cost. Effective immediately, all users linked to a supported brokerage account will receive full subscription access for the first five days of each month (May 1-5, for example). This temporarily elevated access requires no additional steps beyond linking the brokerage account with their Quantcha account and includes the full functionality of a subscription.

Quantcha currently provides integration with major brokerages, including Charles Schwab’s TD Ameritrade, Morgan Stanley’s E*TRADE, and Tradier. To learn more about our brokerage integration, please see the documentation.

Quantcha’s Latest Research Report on Trading Earnings with Options Now Available

We’re proud to announce that our latest research report, An analysis of trading earnings releases using options, is now available. This report analyzes the behavior of options and implied volatility before and after earnings announcements.

The report focuses on answering common questions about trading earnings with options, including:

  • Why trade options around earnings?
  • How are earnings options priced?
  • What about trading earnings directionally with options?
  • How do we compare returns of long and short strategies?
  • How important is option liquidity?
  • What is implied volatility crush (IV crush)?
  • What is earnings IV crush?
  • How much does IV crush after earnings?
  • Can we predict the earnings IV crush?
  • Can we infer anything from the volatility surface?
  • Can we still lose by selling overpriced IV?
  • How can we hedge against directional moves?
  • How do calendar trades hedge out directional risk?
  • How can we employ calendar trades to capitalize on IV crush?
  • How does this analysis hold up across the broader market?

It also includes details on how anyone can gain special insights regarding trading options around earnings via option-centric data.

The report is also available as a PDF for download.

Quantcha’s Latest Research Report on Market Corrections Now Available

We’re proud to announce that our latest research report, What do we know about market corrections?, is now available. This report analyzes market correction cycles as indicated by a 10%+ drop in the S&P 500.

The report focuses on answering common questions about market corrections, including:

  • How often do corrections happen?
  • How long does it take to enter a correction from a high?
  • What can we expect once we enter a correction?
  • How does the market perform during a correction?
  • Is it worth trying to call a bottom?
  • How long does it take to recover from the bottom?
  • What happens after corrections?
  • What can we do with the data we have?
  • What happens if you invest at the start of a bull run?
  • How do we know when a correction is coming?
  • How do we know when a correction is easing?
  • What kind of returns can we expect from different correction milestones?
  • Is there an ideal strategy for correction investing?

It also includes details on how anyone can gain special insights regarding correction progress via option-centric data.

The report is also available as a PDF for download.

Announcing Quantcha’s Stress Tester

We’re proud to announce the launch of our new portfolio stress tester. It provides a straightforward experience for investors to project how their portfolios will handle arbitrary market conditions at a future date, including changes in interest rates, as well as underlying prices and volatilities.

The stress tester complements our powerful book manager to further equip investors with the tools they need to manage sophisticated option portfolios. Whereas the book manager provides superior in-depth analysis and experimentation with underlying-specific books, the stress tester offers breadth analysis for potential market scenarios.

Check out a video walkthrough of the stress tester on YouTube.

Learn more about stress testing option portfolios with Quantcha.

Announcing Quantcha’s support for Two-Factor Authentication

We’re proud to announce that Quantcha now requires two-factor authentication (2FA) for all accounts. When users log in, they must additionally enter a security code that has been sent to the email address associated with their account.

This step helps guard against the risk of an attacker guessing their credentials since they would also need access to the user’s email account in order to log in on their behalf. Further, the code emails provide early warning to users in the event someone else figures out their Quantcha credentials.

Quantcha’s 2FA requirement applies whether the account is secured with an email/username and password or a 3rd party login, such as Facebook or Twitter.

Announcing Quantcha’s Calendar Search

We’re proud to announce the launch of our new calendar search functionality. Modeled after the options search engine, the calendar search makes it easy for investors to identify optimal calendar spread opportunities based on an underlying, a timeframe, and a price target range.

In addition, you can also use a variety of filters to zero in on the near and far legs based on expiration ranges, delta requirements, and strikes. There are also net Greek filters so that you can zero in on trades that meet specific criteria.

This launch also includes several key updates to the trade analyzer, including support for analyzing any trade on an expiration at or before the earliest-dated option leg. While the book manager provides the ultimate flexibility for modeling trades and complex strategies, this addition to the trade analyzer makes it easier to evaluate prospective trades before merging them into existing books.

Check out a video walkthrough of the calendar search on YouTube.

Learn more about trading calendar option strategies with Quantcha.

Limited Offer: First Month Free with a Linked E*TRADE Account

Are you an E*TRADE customer who wants to see how Quantcha can help take your options investing to the next level? For a limited time, you can test drive the platform absolutely free for your first month.

  1. Subscribe to Quantcha Personal. This process requires a PayPal account, which you can create for free as part of the process (we explain why here if you’re interested).
  2. Link your E*TRADE account here. This will involve you logging in to your brokerage account on their site and authorizing them to issue a token we can use to request data for use in Quantcha. You can easily remove this link at any time here. A demo of both linking and unlinking is available here.
  3. Email us here and include the email address of your PayPal account. We will verify the TDA link and refund your initial payment. However, it’s important to note that you will be billed for future months for as long as you remain subscribed. You can cancel your subscription at any time.

This whole process should only take a few minutes, but if you have any questions about any of it, please let us know at hello@quantcha.com.

This offer is only valid in November 2020, so don’t wait.

Announcing Quantcha’s Integration with E*TRADE

We’re proud to announce that we have launched our integration with E*TRADE. This enables E*TRADE brokerage customers to manage their account positions and orders directly from Quantcha. In addition, linked brokerage customers enjoy real-time quotes throughout the platform. Create and link your account today.

Managing an E*TRADE Options Book
Managing an E*TRADE Options Book

The Quantcha Options Suite complements E*TRADE’s existing options platform with sophisticated options book management, detailed trade reporting, proactive alerts, and a wide variety of trade discovery and analysis tools. To learn more about how Quantcha can complement E*TRADE’s existing option trading experience, check out our integration launch video on YouTube.

E*TRADE integration launch video
E*TRADE integration launch video

Create and link your account today.

Announcing Quantcha Learn & InvestOps

We’re proud to announce the launch of two major initiatives designed to help investors be more successful: Quantcha Learn and InvestOps.

Quantcha Learn

Quantcha Learn, available at https://docs.quantcha.com/learn, is our new online course library. Anyone can follow the lesson-based curriculum to learn about investing, financial engineering, and Quantcha through carefully structured courses. These courses include instructional content, hands-on exercises, and quizzes to help check your knowledge.

Everything in Quantcha Learn is freely available to anyone. You don’t need to register to access the content, although registering with Quantcha Learn makes it easier for you to track your progress through courses over time.

We plan to regularly release new courses covering a wide range of topics related to options and Quantcha.

InvestOps

Part of our culture at Quantcha is to proactively seek feedback from investors so that we can consistently improve our platform. Besides feature ideas, one thing people at every level of experience tell us is that they’re looking for ways to evolve their investment process with more structure.

To help with that, we are publishing the investment process patterns we reference internally when building Quantcha. We call this process InvestOps, which is shorthand for investment operations. It’s not guidance on the kinds of investments you should make, but rather a structured approach in how to build and manage an investment plan. While it’s not specific to options investing, it was developed from years of experience building tools for options investors.

InvestOps courses

We’ve published a series of three Quantcha Learn courses to help you get started:

InvestOps templates

The Getting started with InvestOps course includes some useful templates for managing your process, including:

  • view development worksheet for organizing the research that goes into developing an investment view.
  • A trade plan for outlining trade positions, entry prices, exit conditions, adjustment strategies, and more.
  • A postmortem review for analyzing the results of the investment and process.

These templates are provided as starting points and may be modified and redistributed however you like.

If you have any questions or feedback, please let us know at hello@quantcha.com.

Announcing Quantcha Alerts

We’re proud to announce the launch of Quantcha Alerts, a new feature designed to deliver proactive notifications to support your options investing. Want to receive an email when a stock crosses a price threshold, a trade reaches a target profit, or a book exceeds a delta range? Quantcha Alerts is for you.

Configuring alert properties
Configuring alert properties

Alerts are configurable. You can combine a variety of alert conditions, which include timeframes, stock and option properties, and portfolio scenarios, such as likely option assignment, to receive alerts when key opportunities and risks arise.

A sample alert notification
A sample alert notification

Alerts are customizable. Every condition allows you to specify parameters that fine-tune the type of notifications you receive and when. You can decide how far out to keep an eye on ex-dividend dates, and at what assignment risk you’d like to be alerted for your short calls.

Configuring an Option Assignment condition
Configuring an Option Assignment condition

Alerts are integrated. If you link a brokerage account with Quantcha, you can configure alerts that watch your portfolio for important conditions, such as approaching earnings dates or opportunities to close positions at a desired price.

Configuring a Portfolio Event condition
Configuring a Portfolio Event condition

To learn more about the details of using Alerts, check out this article and this video on YouTube.

Quantcha Alerts Introduction on YouTube
Quantcha Alerts Introduction on YouTube

We’re planning to keep adding new conditions to the Alerts toolbox. If you have any requests, please reach out at hello@quantcha.com.