OARB Bot

Inspiration

Our inspiration stems from the recent policy change in Thinkorswim that allows retail investors to exercise options without speaking to a real broker. This shift opens up a new frontier for retail investors to engage in options arbitrage, a domain traditionally dominated by institutional investors. We saw this as an opportunity to democratize access to sophisticated trading strategies.

What it does

Our bot automates the process of options arbitrage by scraping retail platforms for mispriced options and executing trades to capitalize on these inefficiencies. It allows retail investors to compete with Wall Street firms by identifying and acting upon arbitrage opportunities in real-time.

How we built it

We built the bot using Python for its backend logic, incorporating web scraping techniques to gather real-time data and API integration for access to the robinhood trading platform.

Challenges we ran into

One of the major challenges was dealing with real-time data scraping and ensuring that the bot could execute trades within the narrow time window that arbitrage opportunities exist. We also had to consider ethical implications, such as ensuring user data privacy and security. We are not able to have the bot execute the trades at the moment but it provides us with real time data so we can act on a trade when it informs us of it.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

We're proud of developing a functional prototype within the hackathon timeframe.

What we learned

We learned the intricacies of options arbitrage and how market inefficiencies can be both exploited and resolved through technology. We also gained insights into the ethical considerations that come with developing financial technology, such as the importance of transparency and data security.

What's next for OARB Bot

Post-hackathon, we plan to refine our algorithms based on real-world testing and test the prototype by allocating our own capital using this strategy. Long term, democratization of financial services: making options arbitrage, a traditionally institutional domain, accessible to retail investors.

Built With

• api
• python
• robinhood
• yahoo-finance