Education was a big theme of this year’s Options Industry Conference in Palm Beach Gardens, Florida, as it has been for a number of recent OICs.
The upshot is that providing more and better education results in better experiences for retail traders, which leads to more options order flow for brokers and exchanges.
The Wednesday afternoon panel Shaping the Future of Options Education: Empowering the Next Generation explored how education has helped boost the options industry over the past five years, and its potential for driving future growth.
Panelists were Mark Benzaquen, Principal, Investor Education at OCC; Jermal Chandler, Head of Options Strategy at tastytrade; and Brent Kochuba, Founder of SpotGamma. The moderator was Jessica Inskip, Director of Investor Research at StockBrokers.com.
The panel drew a distinction between “protail,” or professional retail traders at the intermediate level, and beginner traders. The protail group wants an edge by having the same technology and tools that institutions have. “If we build something targeting the institutional community, that’s what they want,” Kochuba said. “We target ‘protail’, who thinks about their edge and what education and tools they can access.”
Beginner traders mostly want modular, customizable mobile trading platforms, without a lot of other “fluff,” Benzaquen said.
Chandler recalled when he was a beginner trader with little understanding of market nuance. It took time to learn the ropes, and to this day he sees the value in learning from bad trades, which he has freely discussed on his Engineering the Trade show.
To the question of what mediums are best to distribute options education, Benzaquen noted that a complex trading topic can’t be properly covered in a one-minute TikTok video, but a quick hit like that can capture people’s attention and direct them to more substantive content such as online courses.
“Once you get their attention, you can engage in a different format,” Benzaquen said. “When you capture their attention you have to figure out how to hold it.”
Chandler said he works to vary the presentation within his half-hour show to keep it interesting and keep viewers engaged.
Regarding the biggest current and future trends, panelists said education about options contracts with same-day expiries will continue to be in demand; there may be an immersive, virtual reality capability at some point; and there will be other big future trends that aren’t yet known.
