// why i took the course
I've always been curious about markets. For as long as I can remember, I'd see people talking about options and futures and go down the rabbit hole (YouTube, Reddit, X). I'd read for an hour and come out feeling like I understood less than before. When a course came up that would put me inside an actual trading environment, I signed up immediately. I didn't want another theoretical explanation. I wanted to actually do something.
// starting from zero
I want to be honest about where I was at the start: I knew nothing. I'd heard the words options, Greeks, futures; but couldn't have explained any of them clearly. The course spent a few weeks on derivatives foundations while playing trading games, then three weeks specifically on options before we touched a live position. Even after all of that, the gap between grasping a concept in class and trusting it with real money was daunting.
// the call with ben
My partner Ben and I were both inexperienced with trading. We got on a call for a few hours, talked through the market and the different strategies we had just learned in lecture, and landed on an iron butterfly on S&P 500 futures. Our thesis: the market looked range-bound near 6,900, implied volatility was elevated (premiums were expensive), and nothing major seemed to be coming. Classic setup for a premium-selling structure.
Short ATM straddles at 6,900, protective wings on each side. Positive theta, short vega, delta-neutral at open. We made the wings asymmetric: 600 points on the downside, 250 on the upside, because a downside move felt like the bigger risk. It looked clean. We locked the trade on February 26th.
Two days later, the Iran war started.
// what the war did to the trade
We had no idea it was coming. Nobody in our position did. But the moment U.S./Israel strikes on Iran began on February 28th, the thesis we'd spent hours building was operating in a completely different world. Geopolitical risk flooded back into markets. Implied volatility spiked. Our short vega position, which profits when vol falls, started bleeding.
The first few weeks were still volatile but survivable. The VIX spiked 18% on March 2nd, the S&P dipped and recovered, and we were executing futures hedges to keep delta in check. Nine hedge actions over the life of the trade. By March 10th, theta had been grinding in our favour and we were up around $55k. By March 16-17, the GTC/AI conference gave markets a lift and we hit our peak.
| date | event | p&l |
|---|---|---|
| 2/26 | ben and i finalise the iron butterfly; thesis locked | — |
| 2/28 | u.s./israel strikes on iran begin. war breaks out. | — |
| 3/2 | vix spikes 18%; s&p dips 1.2% intraday then recovers | — |
| 3/10 | theta grinding; position recovering strongly | +$55k |
| 3/16-17 | gtc/ai conference lifts markets: peak of the trade | +$61k |
| 3/18-20 | oil surges; strait of hormuz fears spike vol hard | −$31k |
Then the floor came out. March 18-20, oil surged on Strait of Hormuz fears. The volatility spike was fast and brutal. We went from +$61k to -$31k in a span of 48 hours. There was nothing subtle about it.
// the hardest part
The loss itself wasn't what hit hardest. It was the internal conflict that ran through the entire second half of the trade. My professor had spent weeks on one core message: systematic thinking. Define your rules, stick to them, don't let instinct override the framework. That's what separates disciplined trading from gambling.
But when you're watching a position deteriorate in real time, every instinct fires. You want to act. You want to do something. Holding to a systematic approach when your gut is screaming at you is a completely different skill from understanding the approach intellectually. I don't think I fully resolved that tension during the trade. I'm not sure anyone does on the first go.
// final week repositioning
After our first go, we wanted to do a short-term, high-risk position since our first trade was quite protected. For fun, we saw that we had limited time left (only a week) and implied vol was at its highest since Liberation Day, so we entered 100 short straddles at 6,400: a concentrated bet that vol was expensive and would come in. The SPX rebounded ~200 points on April 1st, pulling spot away from our strike. Directional and gamma losses outweighed the vol benefit. The trade didn't recover.
In hindsight, it was exactly the kind of move my professor warned against: a high-conviction, concentrated bet made under time pressure and stress. We broke rule six before we'd even written it down.
// what i'd do differently
// closing thought
We built a carefully reasoned trade and a war started two days later. That's markets. No model accounts for everything, and no amount of preparation makes you immune to the things you don't know to look for. What I took from this wasn't the P&L: it was the experience of actually being inside a position when the world shifts, and having to make decisions with incomplete information under real pressure. That's the thing no classroom fully prepares you for. I'm glad I got a version of it here.