Weekly Breakdown

Week 1: Financial markets are a risk transfer mechanism

  • Meet the team and learn basic financial terms
  • Understand how industries use financial markets for managing risk
  • Learn about central bank actions and the impact of speculation in markets

Week 2: Financial derivatives & structured products

  • Learn about financial derivatives and how they work
  • Understand structured products and how they are used
  • Discover where trading happens and common market practices

Week 3: Directional & non-directional payoff diagrams

  • Learn how to price options and understand their value
  • Understand payoff diagrams to see potential gains or losses
  • Study different strategies for trading, both with and without market direction predictions

Week 4: Understanding institutional activity

  • Learn how big institutions trade and affect the market
  • Understand calendar spreads and forward curves in trading
  • Study strategies that don't rely on market direction and how to create custom derivatives

Week 5: Approach & tools - Private Traders Vs Hedge Funds

  • Learn about risk, probabilities, and how faulty assumptions affect trading decisions
  • Study advanced foreign exchange concepts
  • Explore options & advanced derivative concepts

Week 6: Deep dive into frequently used first-order Greeks

  • Learn about Delta and delta hedging
  • Study Vega trading & hedging strategies
  • Understand how maturity and volatility impact options trading and strategies

Week 7: Risk

  • Learn how to manage risk in trading
  • Understand market volatility and its effects
  • Compare professional trading to retail trading, and learn about performance bond systems (SPAN and SPAN 2)

Week 8: Option pricing

  • Learn how options trading works
  • Understand models used to price options
  • Study advanced option pricing concepts and practical tools for trading

Week 9: Bringing it all together – Part 1 of 2 (Oil example)

  • Learn about oil supply and demand from the EIA and global oil consumption indicators
  • Understand investor positioning in oil futures and how CVOL affects oil and energy prices
  • Study oil futures charts, and learn about weekly call spreads for oil futures

Week 10: Bringing it all together – Part 2 of 2 (Gold example)

  • Learn the importance of gold and its history in money systems
  • Understand how the U.S. dollar, real yields, investor sentiment, and central bank policies affect gold prices
  • Analyze gold with ratios to stocks, real estate, and oil, and explore future market trends and trading strategies