Who is Aarav?QUIPU

Est. by Aarav SikriwalFree, every edition

The Knot Record

Aarav’s PCchecking…

Morning editionOptions, from chart to tradeOne trade, the open to the close

Marketsloading…

9:30 a.m.The opening bell

An options instrument that shows its working

QUIPU works a trade out in the open, from the chart to the order — every number carrying the sum it came from, the rule it is read against, and which way it points.

By Aarav Sikriwal

Search a company by name — “advanced micro” finds AMD — and the whole screen fills with it: the live price, the options chain with every greek translated into plain English, five years of revenue and margins, the earnings record, who owns the shares, SEC filings, retail chatter, and every news article it can find. Then it reads those articles and says which facts only one outlet reported.

Each search opens its own tab, like a browser. The live half — price, the intraday chart, options and greeks — refreshes itself every 15 seconds. The slow half, the news and filings and financials, is fetched once and left alone, because quarterly figures do not change between ticks.

It is named for the quipu, the knotted cords the Inca kept their records on: the tribute, census and stores of an empire, held on lengths of string. The chart beside this does what the name says. Scroll, and it is pulled into a record, its turns kept as knots.

Today’s edition follows one trade through the day: how QUIPU finds it, reads it, builds it and sizes it, and what the numbers say on the way. Continued in Markets →

10:00 a.m.Markets

From a hunch to a trade, in four steps

Below everything else on a stock, QUIPU walks it from the chart to the order. The trick is knowing what to read first.

GraphicHow to read the screenSearch a stock and it fills with boxes. The four steps are in there, out of order.

Find. Can you trade it cleanly, and are its options cheap or expensive against this stock’s own year?

Find. Can you trade it cleanly, and are its options cheap or expensive against this stock’s own year?

Direction. Nine signals, each scored against its own table and weighted into one verdict: which way, how sure, to what target, and where you are wrong.

Build. The strategy that fits that verdict and the volatility, its expiry and strikes, and its odds.

Size. How many contracts your account can carry, and every exit written down before you go in.

12:00 p.m.The greeks, said out loud

Real output · AMD at $547.36 · the $547.50 call, seven days out · a $1,000 budget

Delta 0.50 means nothing.

A greek on its own is a number nobody can act on. So QUIPU multiplies every greek by a real position and writes the sentence a person would actually say. Pick an expiry, a side, a strike and a budget; it does the rest.

Delta 0.5175 — If the share price rises $1, this position gains about $51.75. You are holding the equivalent of 52 shares of exposure, not 100. Delta doubles as a rough probability: the market is implying about a 52% chance this finishes in the money.

Gamma 0.0197 — Delta is not fixed. After a $1 move your way, delta goes from 0.517 to 0.537, so the next dollar pays $53.72 instead of $51.75. The position accelerates when it wins and decelerates when it loses. It works in reverse too, which is why gamma is what shorts fear.

Theta −1.2124 — Time costs you about $121.24 per day, every day, weekends included, whether the market opens or not. Over the 7 days to expiry that is roughly $848.68 of decay if nothing else moves — 51% of what you paid. Theta is the rent on optionality.

Vega 0.3021 — If implied volatility moves 1 point, from 54.8% to 53.8%, the position loses about $30.21, and gains the same if IV rises. You are not only betting on direction; you are betting on how jumpy the market expects things to be.

What has to happen — You paid $1,670.00 for 1 contract. It is worth nothing at expiry unless the price is above $547.50, and you only start making money past $564.20 — a move of +3.08% inside 7 days. That is comfortably inside the ±5.86% the options market is pricing, which is also why the contract is not cheap. Most you can lose is the $1,670.00 you paid.

Under that, profit and loss at expiry across a spread of outcomes, from −10% to +10%, in dollars and in percent. Same-day expiries get their own wording, because “0 days of decay” is nonsense.

2:00 p.m.Ask the Record

When should I use it?

Readers write in. The Record answers.

Dear Record, I have a stock in mind and a hunch about it. Where do I even start?

— Hunched, in Hoboken

Dear Hunched, Search it, by name if you like. Below everything else on the page, the four steps turn your hunch into a verdict: which way, how sure, to what target, and the point where you are wrong. Or they tell you, politely, that the signals do not agree with you.

Dear Record, I am about to buy an option. How do I know if I am overpaying?

— About to Pay, in Brooklyn

Dear About to Pay, Before you pay, look at Find: it says whether that stock’s options are cheap or expensive against its own year. Build gives the odds, taken from the market’s own prices. Then read the greeks, said out loud, for what the premium is actually buying.

Dear Record, I have a price in mind but no idea what to build around it.

— Price, No Plan, in Jersey City

Dear Price, Take it to the Workshop. Name the price and it builds the structures around it, each with what you pay, the most you can make and the most you can lose.

Dear Record, Something I hold moved today and I do not know why.

— Holding, Wondering, in Queens

Dear Holding, The trade log marks it to the market and says what did it.

Correction. An earlier reader called QUIPU a signal service. It is not. It does not place trades and it is not advice. It is there so you can see the whole sum before you decide.

4:00 p.m.The closing bell

From the editor’s desk

Everything QUIPU knows, it fetches as you ask: prices from Yahoo Finance, filings from the SEC, the news from several feeds, and a year of options history rebuilt from Alpaca. None of that can be done from inside a web page, so it runs as a program on my own computer and reaches you through a secure tunnel. It is free to run and free to use, but only while that computer is on. Right now it is checking….

Your trade log, your account size and your settings live in your own browser, on your own device. They never reach my PC, and nobody else can see them.

Everyone shares one computer and one connection, so the same stock asked for by several people is fetched once, and each visitor gets a generous allowance a minute. If you hit it, QUIPU asks you to give it a moment.

— Aarav Sikriwal, editor

Corrections & disclosures

QUIPU is an educational tool, not financial advice. Its probabilities come from the options market’s own prices and assume no edge; the rules of thumb it applies are practitioners’ conventions, not laws. Market data may be delayed. Today’s trade is an example of QUIPU’s output, not a recommendation.