 So excited we've got a special guest joining us today Tom saws not from tasty trade a couple quick housekeeping notes You know make sure you get a pen and a paper We've got a lot of stuff to cover today. I want to make sure you don't miss anything Do you have any Facebook or phones? Distractions please put those away get your helmet on as Tom likes to say and and let's get going so Before we jump in one quick disclosure, we've got to do anytime. We have an investment Presentation just a disclosure about tasty works Obviously you are responsible for the investments you make options are not suitable suitable for all investors There is risk involved and tasty works and navigation financial are separate unaffiliated companies So got that out of the way and so we're gonna jump in and I want to start by Introducing our special guest Tom saws and off and I put a brief bio up here for those who have been in the Trading investing specifically options trading world for any amount of time. You're probably familiar with Tom But instead of reading his bio, we've got him live with us today. So I want to just introduce him Tom How are you today? I'm awesome. Thanks for having me here. This is so cool. Love it. Thanks Yeah, so What really where I wanted to start is just for those that aren't necessarily familiar with your background and how you got started Take us through Starting out as a floor trader with the CBOE all the way through, you know starting and building toss And then now what you're doing a tasty trade Well, I'm a little older than you. That would be an understatement I started this business actually in 1980 and this is the only business I've ever been in I started right out of college and graduated in 1979 and got right into the financial service business My first job out of school was working for Drexel Burnham, which is no longer around we I lasted about nine months before I've met a couple of crazy guys that worked at Drexel and they said if you move to Chicago and Just go to the floor of the you know Chicago board options exchange We'll put up 50 grand and and you can trade with it and and we can trade and you can be our broker And then I didn't even know what it all meant But I went to Chicago one day when I walked on the floor to see what it was like to see if I wanted to move out here And I packed my car the next day and started driving to Chicago So it was a no-brainer. So I had been in Chicago for you know I was like 22 23 at the time and I've been in Chicago for the last, you know, almost almost 36 37 years and I spent 20 years on the floor of the Chicago board options exchange I loved it. I was one of the survivors After trading almost the entire time in the S&P 100 pit, which was the OEX at the time I Decided, you know when the market started to go duly listed and everything started to get electronic We thought about you know, it's kind of time. We had built a nice firm, you know, 50 employees We were prop traders. We had built a really nice business for ourselves But we kind of felt that the business was going to change and it was time for us to do something different So as partners with a guy named Scott Sheridan, we had been together for almost, you know trading Building a prop business up, which means independent traders trading your own capital We had built a money management business up or we're managing about a half a billion dollars And we built the trading business up with about, you know, 50 or so traders on multiple exchanges here And we decided to take everything we had and rolled into a crazy idea I had which was called think or something and We didn't exactly know what think or something was gonna be but we knew it was time to do something different and we launched this firm You know and and we decided to build technology was our first venture into technology it was our first venture into the customer side of the business and the retail side and We went away from the market making side into the retail side and we thought hey This will be fun for the rest of our lives and we built think or something and I loved it It was an amazing experience. We got to build the technology. We got to disrupt the whole business We got to introduce spread trading. We got to introduce introduce single-click functionality You know, we became the number one rated brokerage firm the only mistake And I don't really think it's a mistake But at some point along the way we went public through a series of acquisitions And once we were public in the meltdown came in 2008 2009 TD Ameritrade was able to buy us that you know the good trade for them And we didn't want to fight it. We thought it was we voted against it but I wanted to you know not to make a big stink and and They pay a lot of money So we sold think or swim and we decided to build tasty trade and the last Almost going on seven years now. We've been building tasty trade and tasty works and we disrupted the Financial technology business in from 2000 to 2010 and now we're trying to disrupt the financial media business Which is more traditional media Bloomberg CNBC places like that and and kind of changed the way investors interact with content and Along the way we decided that it was important for us To build tasty works because we didn't want to rely on partnerships with firms like TD or any other firm out there Because we couldn't control the fee structure and we couldn't control the future of what the technology would look like So we kind of put the band back together and built tasty works Which now finances tasty trade and tasty trade is you know amazing network and tasty works is an amazing platform And you know we're loving it. It's just it's a lot of fun I mean anytime you get to spend your life doing the stuff you love I mean it's cool and that's Steve that is my life in a nutshell. It's all I've ever done very nice But and I know you know on tasty trade I've heard you talk about and we'll get more on the tasty works here in a minute But I've heard you talk on tasty trade a couple times about you know some of the some of the Trading strategies that are kind of in one-click functionality with a lot of platforms now And and you guys were really the ones that originated those even down to the names like iron condor and strangle and that kind of thing Can you talk about that a little bit? Well we popularized you know when we left the trading floor there was a bunch of names of stuff on the trading floor of course But when we left the trading floor, you know, you couldn't even route a spread order I mean I love to tell the stories because we built all this crazy functionality on toss going back to 2000 and 2001 and we had this vision where customers could actually route an order with a single click But nobody could fill the order because none of the exchanges could handle electronic spread So what we do is we take the order electronically a single click and then we have to break the pieces apart and find different firms to sell it it was a joke and eventually we kind of we kind of Used a lot of leverage and put the exchanges on the spot and said listen You got to build this functionality because people want to trade this stuff and they were like what do you mean this stuff? What is this stuff? And I'm like they're spreads, you know, there's things like iron condors They're like what's an iron condor you know And we would get into these things like everything from a broken wing butterfly to a diagonal to a strangle swap or something and It was just kind of funny how it all evolved and then you know funny thing is six months later You know virtually all the exchanges offered that's what disruptors do you come in you bring in a concept You find people that you know that believe in what you're talking about and how to approach I wanted to make the markets accessible to everybody and so in order to do that We had to deliver the front-end technology to the customer prove to the exchanges people would use it and then come up with creative names and And kind of sell the concept We learned very early on if you can just because something was more complex Didn't necessarily mean it was riskier So what we tried to do was extend duration of positions Reduce the Delta of different positions so that people have less risk and we felt that they would learn more and be strategic and it works And it helped people to really embrace finance and to become engaged with derivative strategies So talk a little bit about your just kind of overall trading methodology today You know similar to what we teach at navigation trading, you know being a net seller of options And the probabilities talk about your kind of overall trading methodology and how it's kind of evolved over the last let's say five years Well, it's changed a lot You know in the last two decades and I've been this is my fourth decade and we are completely different traders today than we were In for example in 1987 or 1985 or two or 1995 or even 2005 Because we have you know, we built a think tank and we research everything all you know database engineers scientists and our focus now is on really understanding like optimal mechanics and so our trading has changed a Lot we've gotten smaller in terms of trade size. We've gotten we put a lot more positions on today We use a lot more underlines We manage our trades much earlier than we ever did before and we are very focused on some volatility based context not content but context which allows us to make quick decisions on whether Something is you know suitable for trading and then of course, you know, as you know Just like you do we are very focused on liquidity And we are very focused kind of on what we call market awareness and product indifferent Indifference we don't really care what product we're trading as long as there's liquidity as long as there's high enough implied volatility rank and and as long as as we kind of understand And understand the strategy and it fits in with the rest of our portfolio and positions So that's a dramatic change From 20 years ago thinking oh the market's going to go down. I'll just buy, you know 100 puts or a thousand puts or you know Or 10 puts or whatever it is or put spreads or do something like that We we don't do any of that stuff anymore completely different, you know approach to portfolio management Yeah, I think you know just the navigation trading methodology and what we teach our members every day You know, I think two of the two of the things that have really come out of some of your studies is one Closing our winners at a percentage of max profit. I mean that's just added a tremendous amount of Consistency to our to our profitability and and the other is You know and this is something that I think you guys just really kind of came out with as far as data and statistics And that is rolling your positions to the next expiration cycle Early, you know when there's two to three weeks to expiration You know, so those two things You know We've always been a fan of selling selling premium when implied volatility is high But I think those two things have been real game changers for our for our profitability Absolutely a steve We did a piece two days ago that was I don't know if you saw it But it was exactly on that topic of rolling and managing and it showed How much you reduce your overall portfolio risk and what we call your standard deviation of risk And when I looked at it, I'm like I can't believe nobody else has ever, you know Researched this or studied this this way, but the amount the reduction in overall, you know, just just overall risk to To trading in general It was so dramatic when you roll early and you manage early and get the combination of both You essentially eliminate all the back end of the duration risk and you eliminate And and you you take out all that kind of gam exposure towards the end of your trades and you end up with this Very manageable kind of risk profile And it was amazing and and so it's spot on with exactly what you were just saying It really is incredible when you look at kind of, you know, optimal approach to trading and it's so cool that you're You know that you're including that and embedding it in your teaching because It really does make a difference with people Yeah So switching gears a little bit, um, you know, still staying on the topic of of the way that people trade, you know, traditionally The financial industry has led us to believe that the best way to trade is to find an expert Who knows something more than us, whether it be a an economist, a financial analyst at a big bank Some type of newsletter guru that that made some prediction 10 years ago And he's still he's still living on that. I wrote a I wrote an article A few months back and and did some training and the title of it was your opinion does not matter And you know, I don't want to put words in your mouth, but I think we're on the same kind of page about that Can you talk a little bit about that whole concept? Sure, and and I am on the same page as you in fact I've probably written about that, you know a ridiculous amount of times like you have Um, I don't believe anybody knows anything about market direction and if anybody did I'd have to be up there with You know, I mean nobody's watched every tick in the s&p's for 37 years like I have. I mean, I'm a junkie So I don't think it's possible. You could have watched more tape than me over the last, you know A couple decades and I don't have any idea what's going to happen any time and I think I do I want to believe I do but I know that I don't and I know nobody else does I know there's no amount of money That you can throw at any kind of technology whether it be artificial intelligence machine learning You know, whatever else it is to figure out kind of what's going to happen next And I've also watched, you know throughout the years. I've had an opportunity to To be partners with or to sit down with Multiple firms that that are multiple people and firms that have that have built great Businesses trading businesses and market making businesses and And counterparty businesses and I've watched them and all the success And all the wealth that I've watched be created over, you know, multiple decades is all about mechanics And nobody gets that so when I see somebody come on, you know, some network and I see them talk about I think the market's going to go to, you know, 28 50 this year. I think the market's going to go down, you know 20 17 percent or up 16 percent or whatever else it is It's all bull. It doesn't mean a single thing to me because nobody knows Right, but what we have learned Is that there are optimal sets of mechanics out there that if you stick with them You can you don't you also don't know what's going to happen next But you put yourself in a position to take advantage of opportunity and what are we we're opportunists And and really good traders and really successful people in the world of finance because the playing field is level You take advantage Of opportunity and not everybody sees opportunity There's a lot of people that follow the herd and there's not that many people that that really understand what it's like To seize an opportunity Right Yeah, I think in my membership is probably sick of me saying this because I say it all the time But you know our trading methodology is based on statistics and probabilities Not hype or emotion or you know trying to follow the latest trend or following some some stock guru. So So thank you. Thank you for your thoughts on that. I I'm on the exact same page as you. I mean you and I think alike So before we before we jump into the tasty works overview I've got one more question that I really didn't want to ask but My membership keeps pounding and wants to hear more and more about this and I'm sure you know where I'm going bitcoin so I so Two thoughts two part question one What are your thoughts on bitcoin as a an actual monetary currency? For buying and selling and then two as a trading vehicle Okay, it's really funny because I just finished about an hour long interview with barons a few minutes ago On this exact same topic, which will be coming out this weekend I have been I have been minimally involved at bitcoin for the last four or five years So I started buying bitcoin as kind of a joke and almost as a as a gimmick just to feel like what was going on in fact I was the first person to interview the the founder of Ethereum and You know, we started doing our first bitcoin round table almost, you know, four and a half years ago I don't know if you were able to see it, but it was it was crazy because I had no idea what bitcoin was I bought my first bitcoin at right around 700 and then I bought it all the way down to about 200 so so, you know, just fooling around and then I lost my bitcoin wallet And couldn't find it to sell it eventually paid some hacker to come in Find our bitcoin wallet give him 10 of all we had and and then ultimately, you know sell out my bitcoin And now I've been trading it in the futures market, but very small So I have had a lot of experience in bitcoin as far as a as far as an actual currency and and applicable use I don't think we're anywhere close, especially at the current levels because there's way too much nervousness about You know accepting bitcoin Does it have you know, is there Is there going to be a major Um, is blockchain here to stay and the answer is Absolutely, there's going to be a lot of things that change over the next decade And there will be a lot of blockchain and ledger technology that drives everything is bitcoin here to stay probably But will bitcoin be used as something other than a speculative asset? That remains to be seen for a number of years right now I think bitcoin is an is a non-hedgeable or un-hedgeable Speculative asset that has no real economic purpose other than it's a trading vehicle now Is that good or bad? I think it's great Because I think it engages people in the world of finance and I think it I think it has had a very You know positive and profound effect On our business and getting people interested in finance if the 12 million, you know Coinbase accounts are real and things like that. I think it's really cool And and I think that's great, but I think it's nothing more at this point It's nothing more than a speculative bubble like asset that is Just it's good for fun But you can see by the amount of bitcoin trading on the cbo and the amount of bitcoin trading on the cme right now There's nothing there like it's there's no validation of the product yet So ledger technology absolutely will play a big role going into the future and and just how we Interact with the counterparty and how we cut out many many mill men from you know from here on out Bitcoin and other digital currencies. They're here to stay But I don't know if they're going to be much more than a speculative again bubble like asset for quite some time And looking into your crystal ball. Is this is this a fair price that bitcoin is trading at right now? 16,500 it was down like almost 1700 today. I would say that I would Bet If I had to pick a direction and pick a bet I think bitcoin trades closer to a thousand than it does to 30,000 So if you were looking at right here at 16,500 and says it's going to be 15,000 lower 15,000 higher I think it trades 15,000 lower first So I think bitcoin has a really good chance of going back under 5,000 and if you look at bitcoin right now the implied volatility I'm just guessing because we figured this out internally. It doesn't really have a You know, it's hard to figure out. It's not hard, but it's just we don't we don't do it very often I think the implied volatility of bitcoin is about 130 Which means that you're you're looking at it could easily The expected range in there is you know zero to 35,000 Let's call it for the next based on current implied volatility The range is zero to 30 35,000 for 2018 So I think you can easily see bitcoin back under 5,000 maybe under 1,000 And again, you can see 30,000 too, but but if I was betting pot outs to the downside Couldn't agree more Well, cool. Well, let's uh, let's jump into tasty works And so if you want to take over the screen hit your screen sharing button there And while you're doing that First first question is And and first first kind of thing that I think a lot of people are drawn to tasty works for Before they even see the awesome functionality is The commission structure I mean, how do you how did you guys Why did you guys decide to come out with the commission structure that you do? And uh and talked about that a little bit Let me tell you about this because this is really interesting So when we were building tasty works and building the logic behind it and one of the reasons I wanted to build tasty works And I hope that everybody appreciates this I hope the industry did because I think we've saved individual investors, you know up to 300 or 400 million dollars this year by coming out with our rate schedule and forcing all these other firms to lower theirs We ran Hundreds of thousands if not millions of Monte Carlo simulations with respect to commissions When we were had a marketing arrangement with TD and other places like that We had we could not impact their rate schedule So when we launched tasty works, we we looked at how our Customers were doing trading. We looked at how we were doing We looked at the whole industry and we decided if you're going to trade small and trade often the only thing That was different between you as a customer and firm a as a counterparty was the fee structure So we said if we can get the fee structure Down by 75 percent over what the average customer paid when we were when we owned thinkorswim The average ticket meaning the average trade was right around 10 dollars the average trade At tasty works the average trade is around let's call it two dollars and 20 cents So what we found was that we were able to knock off about 80 percent Of the transaction revenue by coming in with a very aggressive Model which meant that you Steve if you're trading and if i'm trading And everybody's listening is trading on tasty works You're trading at essentially the same fee structure as the counterparty, which is the firm making the markets There's no disadvantage to the street in this case We felt that way It truly was a level playing field So we came out we we ran all these studies like I said hundreds of thousands probably into the millions of studies We did all these Monte Carlo simulations And we found that with all things being equal to give up to theoretical and being able to do what you wanted to do with these low commission rates made it a very Fair made it a very fair game And if we could offer all the functionality like other people can have these rates But nobody has the functionality that we have you know or the speed of the platform or kind of the The sophistication and complexity of the platform. So that was the that was kind of the genesis final thing And so talk about how that's changed your trading for example, you know with with a with uncovered options like Strangle or straddle or something like that, you know We always we always roll the untested side and we can roll from one expiration cycle to the next Right typically with our defined risk trades, whether it's a vertical spread or iron condor Because of those transaction costs We've typically just kind of put it on and either either kind of win or lose And you're typically not rolling it to the next expiration cycle because of the transaction costs involved Has that trade changed the way that you trade defined risk? It's changed the way I trade everything. So let me tell you what my and I hope we're I hope we're I hope we're really hitting this on the head with everybody that's listening so they understand this but When we built toss years ago This was 1999 2000 we threw everything at the wall because we didn't know What individual customers how they thought and how they traded and we had never traded as a customer either So we threw everything at the platform. You name it. I built everything but I didn't I didn't know what would actually stick at the time So I figured the best strategy was give them everything and make it really cool when we built tasty works Now remember I have the same cto woody ma who built thinkorswim is building tasty works And it's the same dev team And what I said because I brought put the whole team back together and what I said to these guys was listen This time I want a platform that's really fast So we built it the middleware of this platform that you're looking right now is all high frequency technology We partnered with a high frequency firm in chicago and we said that we wanted to build We wanted middleware that delivered your orders to the street in 20 milliseconds when the average firm is up around 700 And that's all the major firms are six seven eight 900 milliseconds. We're 20 milliseconds wrapped around 20 milliseconds and we want to say listen, we want to be 50 times faster or 40 times faster And we want to be stable and we don't want any of the bloat in the platform We don't need all these things that we don't use anymore We need just the ability to roll trades Manage trades and adjust trades And that was my challenge to woody and his team And that's what they delivered to us was a very simple fast stable platform We have not been down for one minute in all of 2017 and this was the first year of the platform It's the most stable platform in the business And it is the quickest platform now all the functionality is not in place like I told you before We're launching a analysis page and then within the next 10 days You know, there's a bunch of there's a crazy ton of other features that will come out in 2018 but it took us, you know five six years to build a lot of cool stuff into toss It's taken us, you know Little less than that to build it into Tastyworks, but it's still a complex piece of software But the coolest thing about this technology and let me show you I just have the best buy open here, which is really nothing. I'm just I just was looking at it for earnings this afternoon One of the coolest things about this platform and and again the stock that we're looking at right here is buy And the current closing price today is is is a 20 right where this line is it's 24 57 Hey, Tommy, I think I think you got an extra b in there. You're looking at bed, bath and beyond I'm sorry. I meant bed, bath and beyond bed, bath and beyond. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry Bed, bath and beyond. Sorry about that. I always mess up those two But bed, bath and beyond had earnings this afternoon. That's what I was talking about and The stock closed at 24 57 And the neat thing about this platform Steve was that we wanted something where let's say you wanted to do a credit spread For earnings this afternoon click on the bid 27 half calls just some out of the money call outside of the expected, you know Earnings range and by the 30 calls Now that's basic for virtually any platforms But the neat thing about this platform is if I wanted to widen the two and a half dollar wide spread to five dollars Just pull that strike down if I wanted to sell instead of the 27 and a half Calls because I wanted to collect more premium. Just drag that drag the 27 half strike to 25 and I can move the 32 and a half strike to 30 So there's no clicking of any numbers my challenge to Woody was Make this all drag and drop make it super simple So anybody can do this even if you don't know what a vertical spread is or whatever else And if you wanted to create an iron condor out of this Just click on the bid of the 22 and a half puts and buy you know the 20 call the I'm sorry the 20 puts and then you have an iron condor in this case It's a skewed iron condor because you have a five dollar wide Call spread and a two and a half dollar wide put spread if you wanted to make it a classic iron condor Just drag this down and both sides are two and a half wide And this is just neat if you wanted a five dollar wide put spread because you want to kind of a Wider put spread just to get a bigger credit just drag that side out there If you want to make it a wider iron condor like five dollars just drag that side there There's no clicking no changing anything the credits popped into the bottom of the page You can see if you wanted to change this spread and make it into an iron fly what you guys like to do Then there you go. There's your there's your five dollar wide iron fly And that is so simple For anybody that wants to trade spreads and remember We lowered the rates by 80 percent So you only pay to put the trade on and everything you close Because you manage if you manage early and you manage often and you adjust the position every closing trade costs you nothing That's awesome And and there's no nothing else like that No other complex platform that has any of this kind of functionality into it now again You can do this inter month You can do this whatever else and then all your greeks kind of pop into the bottom of this page right here Just so you can see kind of you know about you know all about this trade And and it doesn't matter to us kind of what the underlying is But up here at bedbath and beyond the first thing we show Unlike other other platforms is the IV ramp which is implied volatility measured against itself And the reason we show implied volatility measures against itself before we even show the price It's just because of a quick scan you can figure out. Hey, do I want to trade this or not? You know so so that's the neat thing about this about this particular trade interface And if you wanted to see it For example in a curve mode We'll show you this too and you can again if you wanted to drag this out and make it into an iron condor You just drag any one of these tiles And then like I said in the next couple of days there will be a Analysis tab that is overlaid on top of this curve mode So you will be able to see and adjust all the positions and look at them You know from if different things happen like if implied volatility goes higher price moves And you can look at all the Greeks and all the analytics and you can create simulated positions And you know everything's in the light. So this is what we call the curve mode and this is the table mode Excellent. Yeah, I think I mean that analysis tab is going to be huge I think so many people especially when they're first learning are visual learners And you know the toss analysis tab is what we've taught a lot of our courses and videos on and so That from what I understand in talking to folks at TASA works and some of the functionality It's going to be better and better than the than the toss one too. So can't wait for that Well, remember so so myself and tom Preston and woody we built that analysis page on toss in 1999 2000 So a lot has changed And and you know the technology that's available to us has changed too. It's not just you know I mean some of the technology we built on toss is amazing But it was also the first time there was a Java platform and the first time that anybody had tried anything like that And and we built it in 1999 and and we finished it up in 2000 This is 17 years later. So the technology today is much faster. You can do more stuff with it And we will have a lot more, you know, as soon as we launch the analysis page We'll be able to add things to it that we never, you know, we can't we couldn't possibly add to toss because You know the the back end wasn't there. We just didn't have the data and we didn't have the capabilities It was too, you know, it was too deeply integrated or or Integrated with the sit with the platform the stuff we're doing today is going to be you know, you're going to see it There's you'll be able to add artificial intelligence. You'll be able to have machine learning to it you'll be able to add different forms of of Month to month and all these theoretical outcomes and all these correlations And so it'll be really neat because You'll see you'll see your risk in a whole different way when it's all, you know It'll take months and months, but you'll see it. It'll be pretty it'll be pretty incredible in a pretty short period of time And is that is that going to be available on the mobile version or just the desktop? It'll be available only on the desktop at first The guys are saying that it's doable on the mobile version, but the problem is that that haven't figured out how to um, how to do the simulations on there because it it just there's not a lot of room to There's not a lot of room to it. There's not a lot of room to create enough uh The ability to drag and drop like we have in elsewhere on the platform it will be available on our ipad app Gotcha, so as soon as the ipad apps launched you will have an analysis page on the ipad app Cool. Yeah, keep going Okay, so well, this is just the first introduction to kind of the the neat part about the tasty works platform and I can change Let me change some underlying here Like let's go to tesla for a second for example because it it was pretty active today. So test ends up closing down Whatever two hours today and the neat thing about this platform is if you um, when you first log on to it, um, it has As a default I have all the futures I look at, you know at the top of this platform And here's the bitcoin future by the way and and then you know just a lot of different underlines that that I look at But if I was to type in an underlying like let's just say I want to look at caterpillar I just click on the offer or the bit of caterpillar it pops in Caterpillar at the top of the page with the iv rank it pops in a little small daily chart of caterpillar here It pops in your caterpillar positions over here It pops in caterpillar into the chart tab over here. It pops in caterpillar into the Trade page. So the design of this platform is you never have to click on anything You just click I mean you only have to click on something once and it populates all the other pages If I click on tesla for example bit or offer it doesn't matter. It populates everything from the trade page um, all the way down, you know To just quotes to positions trade activity trade Everything and then obviously tesla positions over here If you you know want to see him I got a bunch of tesla positions on to this account And I just scroll this up so I can See all my you know working orders. These are just all filled orders from today things like that and they all pop in in the side of the page the column the right hand columns can Configurable and detachable So, you know, you can get out of the way if you want or however you want to use it But the platform is designed so that everything sits in front of you all the time and you never have to change pages You never have to go from page to page to page. That was one of the things that we learned from You know building toss years ago We wanted we wanted the the one of the user to stay on the main page all the time So you don't have to move anything we also offer three different modes a table mode, which is traditional a curved mode and An active trader mode, which I don't think we'll have time to get in today But we'll do the next time we look at it and most of us use the table mode primarily And in the table mode like for example, if I Open up something if I have a dot here it means I have a position in january And what happens here is it's pretty simple the first two columns are configurable the middle two columns are bid nest So obviously they're not this line is where the current stock is and If you Had more strikes open you can see that we also show you You know the one and two standard deviation moves So I can show you the first line is the one standard deviation move and the second line is the two standard deviation Move and that gives you an idea of kind of, you know Where the risk is and you know if you're curious about that stuff and then opening Let me open a few more strikes and opening trades in here is really really simple So we have multiple ways to do it first you can click on Anything that you want to trade like I showed you before so in tesla if you wanted to do a credit spread you can go Let me open a few more strikes actually you can see more stuff 16 strikes so if you wanted to do a credit spread and you want to sell the 35 delta Option you can sell the 42 and a half calls and buy the 45 calls like a two and a half dollar widespread for example If you wanted to if you want to see where the price that is Oops, sorry. Sorry. Sorry. I have shares in here. So I'm going to sell the what I say the 42 and a half calls by the 45 calls and you can see that spread is 78 cents Which is right around one third the width of the strikes and you're always going to get that if you go to about the 35 delta option If you want to turn this into an iron condor you can go to the 35 delta put And do that. That's how simple that is if you want to delete these You can just right click and hit delete leg or hit delete leg Or you can hit the clear button and start over again If you wanted to do a classic iron condor you can just go up to the top of the page and it go And it pops in for you So you can do that as well. You can move the strikes down So you can widen it out on either way And that's what I just showed you before or you can widen the strikes on one side Or widen the strikes on both sides to whatever quantity we don't care what quantity use And we don't care what level strikes you use and when you set up an iron condor You can choose to go to the curve mode as well So you can see it in a visual inside of the distribution curve and you can drag these tiles Anywhere you want you can look at all the different, you know underlying prices too You can drag tiles and then the green area is the wind area the red area is the loss area Go back to the table mode And all your Greeks pop down into this line right here So you can kind of see what's going on with this particular trade and again If you wanted to route this trade you just hit review and send once and if you want to review it fine If you didn't want to you just double click on it the trade pops into this column here So it's really fast And if you want it if you want to adjust the trade you just right click and hit replace order And that just lets you go from let's say 93 cent credit to 92 cent credit And if you want it to go in here and you want to cancel or just look at it go on It is lightning fast And I'll clear the trade and kind of start over another nice thing is in this menu up here You can choose vertical strangle straddles whatever you want So if you just want to sell a strangle in here, it will go to the nearest out of the money strikes You'll sell the strangle. You'll adjust. You're done. That's it pick whatever delta you want and Boom off goes the trade your default quantity could be whatever you want And we've made it as simple as possible. The other neat thing about this platform Let me just close these up for a second is if I have a position on in in Like tesla, which I currently do and let's say Uh, let me pick an option here. So let's say I have the 3 10 calls, which I'm currently shorting here So let's say I want to roll these calls from january to february the neat thing about this platform We made rolling as simple as possible. You just right click quick roll and you're done Drops right in there to the jan feb the jan feb Calendar roll and that's all you have to do to move to something and this would be a 7 10 credit from one month to next month if you wanted to change the February february strike you can move it to the 15th and now you have a 378 credit Hit review and send and send and that's all you have to do And it's so simple if you wanted to let me clear this and let's say you wanted to roll I'm short the 295 calls and the 3 10 calls in tesla if I click on both lines And highlight i've just clicked on both lines which highlights it and then choose to roll I can roll both of those the 10 lot and the 15 lot There's no other platform that does unrecognized spreads in any quantity and lets you just roll those puts the combined credit there You hit review and send and send and there's your order first thing for tomorrow morning all set up We made it so simple that you can roll multiple strikes multiple quantities complex spreads Adjust roll we've taken all of the guesswork all the complexity out of every option table mode every vertical Sequence that you have to look at to make this the simplest platform in the world and the least expensive and the fastest And that's what's so exciting about kind of what we're doing. So if I want to cancel this I just click on it cancel order gone So cool. So cool. So I know I know options on future You're coming soon and is is is that roll functionality going to be available on options on futures or is that an issue with at the exchange level? Well, the difference is when you trade options on futures just to be Clear about how how options on futures work and and let me pull up something just to show you Um, so we will have options on futures here in in a very short period of time But when you see the options on futures and I don't have all the let me go to january 19th Which is 30 days when you look at options on futures The only difference is that you're in january you're because remember what is a future? it is it is the The price of a future is the cost to carry and the dividends built in and that that's how you determine price There's nothing else to it. There's no natural contangular like that just owning a owning a future is owning a basket of stocks An index future so like owning the es which is the s and p 500 is just a basket of stocks so the only difference between january futures and um and march i'm sorry between march futures and june futures Or between the different options is where you are in the individual cycle so if you're trading march futures and you want to um roll to To june futures the only difference is going to be the cost to carry and the dividends which may change The underlying price so for futures because of anything like cost to carry or it could be seasonality if you're doing like crude oil or You know or wheat or corn or some any one of the softs You're going to have similar deltas at different strikes like for example if you trade ibm um If you're in the 80 if you're in the let's say the 160 calls an ibm If you're trading january you could trade the 160 calls in march or june and it's the same strike But if you're trading crude oil and you're trading the 50 delta call at 57 right now You're trading in jan if you're trading the the 50 delta call in june You're probably trading the 59 calls or the 58 calls. So what's going to happen is we're going to roll by delta So it's going to be very sophisticated and no platform has that yet. So that's being built in is you will roll by delta That's that's great. That's awesome. Yeah, it is. It's really cool So I know so, you know currently we have we had somebody build us a An indicator that kind of goes below our charts that shows the we like to you we're religious about using ivy rank And then we also use ivy percentile I know i've heard I think you guys are coming out with a similar type of a think script or some type of Uh indicator building language Uh any any thoughts on on timing for that kind of thing? Yes. Well, we built think script I actually had um think script was was was my my design But I didn't build it. I'm not a coder, but uh think script something that that we built. So we built a version Um into tastier works. We haven't named it yet, but it's a scripting language into our charting platform And we just delivered it to our to our dev team Now we have to build a front end so the customers can interface with it It's very similar except it's a simple language a little simpler than think script And it's much faster. So it's the same kind of approach. We'll be able to to Graph whatever you want into from our database and our database is extensive now And so so there's gonna be a lot of stuff you can do It's also going to include a lot of our so we have a very clean and scrubbed research database And we're going to include it into our new, you know scripting language in our in our charting platform So it'll be available to all of our users free of charge. It'll be the next couple of months It's just a function of priorities. So Steve, we're working on The the next release for us will be the analysis page after the analysis page will be options on futures after options on futures will be portfolio margin after portfolio margin will be um the new paper trading platform and after the new paper trading platform will be the api And then the scripting language and api should come out about the same time Excellent You're getting all the cool stuff. I'm telling you it's it's it's going to be It's an incredibly functional platform and most users Will save even over the reduced rates at most other firms most users will still cut their commissions in half yeah So There's one other thing that I've that I think is a really cool And it's just a little feature here, but um, you didn't you didn't touch on Take a look at that or go back to that page that shows like that p50 and talk about what that means So let's just say I went out and I This is tlt which is um a bond, you know the the bond ETF and and Bonds were getting killed the last couple of days. So let's just say that I Into this down move. I wanted to sell just as an example. I wanted to sell the 121 Puts because they have a delta of 27 So that means they have probably about a 75 percent probability of profit making at least one penny on this trade just based on the delta So I click on the bid collect the 87 cents. So what we wanted to do Is you know, we're like you we want we encourage people to trade small trade often and manage your winners and what we want to know is what is the probability And we do this running thousands instantaneously Thousands of Monte Carlo simulations on this one specific trade on this one specific underline Looking at a ton of history for tlt And based on tlt ranges based on where tlt's been The statistical chance Of making 50 percent On this trade. So so let's just say we collected 90 cents. We'll make this simple. It's the mid-price, right? 87 90 so let's just say we collected 90 cents. What is the statistical chance of making 45 cents? Because remember how you talked about the optimal managing a 50 percent of winners? So that's what p 50 is it's managing a 50 percent So when I said there's a 75 chance based on the delta of this option expiring worthless There's an 86 chance that you make 45 cents And that's neat. Yeah, it is. It's such a cool feature that there no other platform has that No, you know, it's just such a cool Here's your delta on a five lot here your delta on this trade is 134 So your delta obviously divide by five to find your delta of one But your quantity can be whatever you want and here's your prop. That's your probability profit I said 75. It's actually 77 and here's your p 50 chance of making your 45 cents, which is 86 And it works for everything that we do right It's just We we built a lot of really cool stuff. We haven't even included We haven't even scratched the surface because remember the platform is a year old We only launched it on january 3rd. It's not even a year old and what we wanted to do a year ago Was we wanted to introduce to the you know self-directed investors We we wanted a platform that was super fast and super stable and that was our primary goal for 2017 2018 add functionality Awesome Yeah, and I mean guys this is this platform is is built for active traders, right? It's not built for somebody who's gonna put their money in mutual funds. They don't even offer managed accounts I mean this is designed for the way that we trade at navigation trading And it's such a powerful tool Tom talk about One question that i've gotten from several members is obviously tasty works is a newer platform Like you said, it's only been around a year Talk about the financial strength if if people have questions about Is it is it risky that i'm using this put my money with this platform that's it's only a year old talk about that Uh, I mean, you know, I I don't Think it's risky. Obviously, uh, we have um I mean we have just under just under a billion dollars in assets and We but we don't hold the money remember when you're at an online brokerage firm The money is held at a clearing firm and So and everything has you know besides besides civic there's there's also additional, you know, there's additional insurances So additional insurance policies on accounts. So I think they're you know, it's a million dollars cash And it's uh, I want to say 30 million, but i'm not 100% sure it's either 25 or 30 million in equity And that's for you know, just money that's not invested but as far as the firm goes I mean, we're we're very well capitalized. Let's put it that way and everything's out there at public But again, we don't even hold any of the money. So the clearing firm we use is a firm called apex which is the same firm that um, they have about Three million accounts of which we're just a tiny percentage And they do about a million Something trades a day So I think they're one of the you know, biggest firms out there and probably one of the most secure firms I'm pretty happy with them. In fact, I'm very close to the the people that own it and Uh, they're one of the best they've run one of the best prop firms in Chicago for I don't know the last 20 years or so peak six So I think you know, you have to realize if you're if you have your money with uh With apex you're whether if you're with robin hood if you're at better mint if you're a wealth front Um, essentially you you basically name the firm all these firms are at the same You know, there's the same the same clearing firm. There's not that many clearing firms out there The reason we don't self clear is it's just not a business. We're interested in doing So we feel pretty confident. Um, you know about the firm that's holding our capital holding our customer capital I feel better about it than I do with having my capital big firms I'm more nervous about having personal money at jp morgan than I am how to get an apex. Let's put it that way Yeah, I think the whole different level of understanding I think that's the perception, you know, they think okay td ameritrade for examples this big firm My money must be more safe there But not really understanding how the clearing works and and when I first got asked this question about tasty works I really didn't know how to answer it and so I was talking to your partner Christy ross and you know, one of the other things that she said about apex is 90 percent of their assets is held in reserves You know, so so that's fairly so so the difference between Like a firm like apex and a firm like, you know td. It's not just td But it's any one of the big firms is the big firms ladder out all the capital And if you remember in 2008 2009 big firms, you know gotten a lot of trouble because they couldn't even their money funds Didn't even get back to par to a dollar So, you know, they had lots of lawsuits things like that We never had any of those issues going back into the in the meltdown of 2008 because we hold everything in cash So we don't ladder out any of the customer investments So people and and I don't I understand why people don't you know Don't really get this because it's not something that's discussed But all the big firms, you know, and and whether it be wells fargo whether it be You know Merrill Lynch, whether it's you know, city group td fidelity Schwab, whoever else it is They all ladder out their cash and I find You know laddering out cash is far more risky than holding cash in overnight repos and overnight paper Because overnight paper has no durational risk But laddered out paper if bonds start to drop is very risky And so I have you know, I love the way we do it I think it's much safer and and and I think that firms that that hold their money in short-term paper You know, I mean their business is banking our business is trading And so I find the trading business is is much safer than the than the long-term banking business at least from my perspective Excellent very good Well, tom I really appreciate you coming on with us today unless there's anything else any other real Cool functionality things that you want to share with us I think that was a great overview and it was great getting kind of know your background and And where you came from and everything you guys have coming out for us really appreciate it Any any last any last things to add? No, I I just want to say that you know This is the first time we've been able to do something together. It was really cool And I I hope that the people around you know Enjoyed it and I appreciate it at least and and I think it's important And I'm open to doing it as often as you want to so just give me a holler Give me a little bit of a notice you know with brit and thanks to alan and everybody else that That's on today and you know appreciate Yeah, and and for those who who've been chatting you're getting answers from jason and alan both of these guys alan runs the trade desk at tasty works Jason's involved at the at the trade desk at tasty works That this this firm is so customer focused if you pick up the phone and call them or shoot them an email The response time and you know any question you have is going to get answered right away It's it's a it's a pretty incredible customer service support staff that they've got going on That's awesome. Thanks so much steve for the opportunity appreciate it. Thanks tom. Have a good one and we'll talk to everybody later