An interactive options trading simulator that runs in the browser. You play as a derivatives trader during a four-year presidential term, trading stock, bonds, VXHCN volatility futures, and American options in a dynamic simulated market.
Try it | Part of the a9l.im portfolio
- Trade four instrument types: stocks, bonds, American options, and volatility futures with market, limit, and stop orders
- Build multi-leg strategies: construct spreads with live payoff diagrams, Greek overlays, breakeven analysis, and a time-decay slider
- Manage a margin portfolio: Reg-T margin with initial and maintenance requirements, short-selling with borrow interest, and forced liquidation on margin calls
- React to market events: a narrative engine fires Fed meetings, geopolitical crises, corporate scandals, and political developments that shift market dynamics, with branching followup chains
- Make consequential choices: compliance directives, insider tips, and lobbying opportunities shape your reputation and determine one of six possible endings
- Price dynamics: geometric Brownian motion, Merton jump diffusion, Heston stochastic volatility, Vasicek interest rates
- Option pricing: Cox-Ross-Rubinstein binomial trees (128 steps) with discrete dividends and finite-difference Greeks (Delta, Gamma, Theta, Vega, Rho)
- Options chains: 21 strikes across 8 rolling expiries with volatility-aware bid/ask spreads
- Price impact: Almgren-Chriss model with market-maker rehedging that creates realistic gamma squeeze and pin-to-strike dynamics
- Portfolio management: margin requirements, position netting, risk exposure, and the cost of leverage
Build from the parent repository root and serve dist/ (shared files load via absolute paths):
cd path/to/a9lim.github.io
npm run build
python -m http.server --directory distThen open http://localhost:8000/shoals/.
Vanilla HTML, CSS, and JavaScript with ES6 modules. There is no build, bundler, or package-install step; the app consumes the portfolio's shared modules and loads KaTeX from the configured CDN for its reference panels. Canvas 2D renders the charts, pricing/simulation/portfolio logic lives in local modules, and the lounge jazz soundtrack is synthesized at runtime through the Web Audio API.