People

Imran Lakha

Imran Lakha

Formal First Name
Imran
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Imran Lakha is the Founder of Options Insight, a training company specializing in options trading. He provides career mentoring, webinars, and training programs perfect for students and retail traders seeking to add options trading skills to their knowledge base to help them navigate volatile markets. Prior to this, Lakha was a Macro Portfolio Manager at Bluecrest Capital. With over 20 years of experience as an equity derivatives trader, he has run equity index options trading desks for Merrill Lynch, Citibank, and Credit Suisse.

Professional Experience


Academic History

CREDIT SUISSE

  • Lakha began his career in 2001 when he joined Credit Suisse as a graduate.

  • He was first a trainee on the Exotic Equity Derivatives desk.

  • He joined the Vanilla Index Options Flow desk as a market-maker after training for a couple of years. 

  • He traded various books including global relative value, variance swap, and dispersion.

  • He became one of the top-performing junior traders.  


MERRILL LYNCH

  • After successfully trading through the financial crisis of 2008, he became Head of the European Index Options desk at age 29. 

  • He traded all major global indices, options, and variance.

  • He risk-managed large positions in vega, gamma, and skew.

  • He left to take a career break at the end of 2011 and traveled around South America and Southeast Asia.  


CITIBANK

  • After his travels, he re-entered the trading world at Citibank. 

  • He was quickly given the role of Head of European Index Options. 

  • He ran the desk until late 2017 but the idea of teaching was still prevailing.

  • He started giving weekly options classes after-market hours to a group of analysts and associates working on various parts of the trading floor. 


MEDIA & APPEARANCES

  • Imran has appeared as a guest on Real Vision and 2021 Real Vision Festival of Learning.