Ishan Shah

cofounder @updown_markets

[Imran @lmrankhan]

Don’t expect to find PMF the day you launch. It’s an iterative process that can take months or years. Just dont give up

[Ishan Shah @strangeraisin]

Day 1 update:

NVDA ripped to $230 and the $225 calls I bought last night on @tradeupdown went from $1.40 → $4.64.

Took profit early rather than hold through the day.

$50 → $165.69.

+231% to start the challenge.

I’ll be making more trades and posting every thesis + position, so follow/copy me on @tradeupdown.

[Ishan Shah @strangeraisin]

Day 1, 1:00 AM Monday
$50 into NVDA $225 calls at $1.39, expiring today.

Thesis is pretty simple: NVDA is sitting just under $225, China may be reopening some access for Alibaba + ByteDance to buy Nvidia chips, and I’m looking for a small move through $225 after the open.

also one of the cooler parts of what we’re building at @tradeupdown is I can put this trade on at midnight and only risk $50. I don't have to buy a full contract or wait for the market to open.

not looking for a moonshot here, just trying to scalp a few % and roll it into the next trade.

[Ishan Shah @strangeraisin]

Day 1, 1:00 AM Monday
$50 into NVDA $225 calls at $1.39, expiring today.

Thesis is pretty simple: NVDA is sitting just under $225, China may be reopening some access for Alibaba + ByteDance to buy Nvidia chips, and I’m looking for a small move through $225 after the open.

also one of the cooler parts of what we’re building at @tradeupdown is I can put this trade on at midnight and only risk $50. I don't have to buy a full contract or wait for the market to open.

not looking for a moonshot here, just trying to scalp a few % and roll it into the next trade.

[Ishan Shah @strangeraisin]

the 4pm market close might be the strongest worker protection wall street has ever created

[Ishan Shah @strangeraisin]

the weird thing about brokerages is they own the transaction but barely own the reason you made it

twitter, reddit, discord, group chats are doing most of the discovery

whoever owns both probably has a much better product

[Ishan Shah @strangeraisin]

Top Kalshi trader vs. MIT Quant

My cofounder @Sebastianq2001 and I are doing a public $500 → $10,000 trading challenge on @tradeupdown.

We both start with $500. No deposits after that. Every trade, thesis, position and PnL gets posted publicly on Updown as we go.

Anyone can follow along, copy our trades, or clown us.

First to $10k wins.

We’ll be trading intervals and 0DTE options on stocks and crypto. Follow the whole thing on Updown.

[updown @tradeupdown]

introducing updown.

the social onchain derivatives exchange.

trade options and intervals on US equities, anywhere, anytime.

[Ishan Shah @strangeraisin]

coinbase got big by making crypto easy. robinhood got big by making stock trading easy.

now both are adding everything: stocks, crypto, options, futures, prediction markets, banking, whatever else.

feels like this is how fintech keeps resetting. you win by making one thing way better, then success pulls you into becoming a financial supermarket, the product gets more bloated, and eventually someone else gets to start over with one thing again.

[Ishan Shah @strangeraisin]

@koolkrypto223 hackers might actually have stronger hands than the eth foundation

[Ishan Shah @strangeraisin]

if options were invented today, nobody would ship the options chain.

you’d pick the asset, how long you want the trade on, how much you want to risk, and go.

the fact that we still make people scroll through 50 strikes to express a simple view is kind of insane.

[Ishan Shah @strangeraisin]

options are insanely useful and the UX is still garbage.

FINRA found 21% of investors had traded options, but only 22% of options traders could correctly answer a basic question about the value of a call at expiry.

meanwhile the market is doing 18b+ contracts a year.

people clearly want the product. we just keep making them use an interface built for people who already know what they’re doing.

[Ishan Shah @strangeraisin]

We want UpDown to be THE social onchain derivatives exchange.

There should be a place where traders from anywhere in the world can trade derivatives, share ideas and learn from each other without needing to already understand every part of an options chain.

We want to make the circle of people who understand and trade options a lot bigger.

[updown @tradeupdown]

introducing updown.

the social onchain derivatives exchange.

trade options and intervals on US equities, anywhere, anytime.

[updown @tradeupdown]

introducing updown.

the social onchain derivatives exchange.

trade options and intervals on US equities, anywhere, anytime.

[Ishan Shah @strangeraisin]

@krugman87 yeah, that’s pretty close to where my heads at too. once you strip away the rest of the chain, feels like you can hide a lot of the options plumbing and make the front end feel much closer to a perp.

shot you a dm with some stuff, would love your take.

[Ishan Shah @strangeraisin]

new Journal of Financial Markets paper found that after sports betting was legalized, stock option search interest fell ~20% in high gambling states.

during major sporting events it fell ~20% again.

around earnings, option attention in those same states was 100 to 150% higher.

options and sportsbooks might be competing for the same customer more than finance wants to admit.

[Ishan Shah @strangeraisin]

66% of SPX options volume was 0DTE in July.

Cboe’s data also shows 0DTE volume has nearly tripled since the start of 2024 while average trade size keeps falling.

at this point 0DTE is basically the main SPX options product.

[Ishan Shah @strangeraisin]

prediction markets spent 2 years turning volume into the only number anyone cared about and now everyone is shocked that volume is getting gamed

[Ishan Shah @strangeraisin]

@protrade47 @Polymarket @PolymarketTrade $50 to $160k trading weather is insane lol. genuinely curious, would you trade these markets on shorter timeframes too? like hourly temp/rain markets instead of just daily settlement

[Ishan Shah @strangeraisin]

@viiniijunior ngl that Mecklenburg call aged insanely well. 37.5 AfD / 37.1 SPD and the exit poll came in 37 / 35.5 lol

[Ishan Shah @strangeraisin]

@buuxbt @fomo @crossmint this might honestly be the most underrated part. consumer trading dies fast when someone has to stop, KYC, fund a wallet/account, then come back