'An Entirely Different Way To Trade': Options AI Makes Smarter Options Trading Available For The Everyday Investor

In its first-quarter 2020 Millennial 100 report, Apex Clearing, a full-suite of custody, clearing, and API solutions highlighted a massive spike in account openings across all generations. The rise in account openings came as market participants sheltered at home due to the COVID-19 coronavirus pandemic looked for ways to maintain engagement with the outside world.

Helping investors stay on track during the two-sided volatility is Options AI, a brokerage platform that makes options trading digestible. The firm’s CEO, John Foley, spoke with Benzinga regarding recent market participation and how Options AI is helping traders get on the right side of strategy.

Why Options AI?

Options AI was born out of an ongoing experience in the institutional trading industry.

“You will almost never see an institutional client do a single-leg option,” said Foley. “Spreads, or more complex multi-leg options strategies, typically have a better risk-reward profile than buying single-leg options.”

According to Foley, institutional traders identify bias and develop an informed price target, then use expertise in options to build a leveraged position in a particular asset with strategies that are both capital efficient and statistically pleasing.

When it comes to individual investors, accessing those strategies is often difficult and time-consuming.

Options AI has built innovative technology to help level the playing field and allows retail investors the ability to both see option market signals and generate trade strategies, visually.

“We translated the process,” the CEO said. “We came up with this concept of visualizing the options chain as a chart that shows users the expected moves and allows them to create smarter strategies in one click.”

Options AI has also eliminated per contract pricing with a flat fee model. All trades, no matter their size are $5, from calls to iron condors.

“Without flat pricing, the playing field is not truly level,” Foley added.

Flexibility And Speed

In the near term, Options AI is focused on technology expansion, partnerships and awareness.

The brokerage allows users to create trades even before funding an account. Upon application approval, users have access to trade creation tools and real-time data provided by its data partner dxFeed.

Additionally, Foley said the firm will be launching a new "fast trade" feature, allowing users to generate single- and multi-leg strategies according to the expected move.

“We think this innovation will provide traders with a smarter alternative to existing solutions, whereby costs can be lowered through spreads, and strike selection is based upon actual option market probabilities," he said.

“We’re confident that when traders see how accessible smarter options trading can be through our powerful visual interface, it will be tough to go back to more typical brokerage platforms," said Foley. “We are excited to be driving innovation in retail options trading.”

To learn more about options trading with Options AI, click here.

Photo by Vlada Karpovich from Pexels.