Ten Years. One Truth.
It’s been over 10 years since I first started trading back in college, when I had more curiosity than capital. A decade of watching markets, making mistakes, learning, and slowly connecting dots that no textbook ever connected for me.
The biggest dot? Trading and poker are the same game.
Read the Table First
In poker, you don’t just play your hand. You play the table.
Every serious poker player knows this. The cards you’re dealt matter but what matters more is who’s sitting across from you and what mood the table is in.
Sit at a table with tight, cautious players? You open up. Apply pressure. Steal blinds. They’ll fold to aggression.
Sit at a table with loose, aggressive maniacs? You slow down. Tighten your range. Play premium hands. Wait for them to make the big mistakes and they will.
Same cards. Completely different strategy. Because the table changed.
I’ve thought about this a hundred times while watching markets. Because markets work exactly the same way.
VIX is Your Tell.
When India VIX is low under 15 the table is calm. Players are predictable. Premiums decay steadily. This is the environment where options selling does its best work. Credit spreads, short strangles, short straddles, patient strategies that grind out small, consistent gains while time works in your favour.
But this month, India VIX was sitting above 25. And this table looks nothing like that.
Nifty is making 400–500 point intraday swings. Headlines are moving markets in minutes. The players at this table are aggressive, unpredictable, and playing big.
And here’s where most traders get it wrong, they don’t change their strategy when the table changes.
They walk into a volatile, high-VIX game still trying to patiently collect premium. They widen their strangles, hope for mean reversion, add more margin. The market punishes every single one of those decisions.
The Costly Mistake
When VIX crosses 20, you stop selling premiums and start buying them.
Here’s why: high implied volatility exists because the market is actually delivering big moves. Theta — the option seller’s best friend slows down dramatically when markets are moving fast. The premium you planned to collect over 5 days gets obliterated in a single 45-minute move.
Options buying flips this completely. Yes, premiums are expensive when VIX is high. But one sharp directional move covers the cost and then some. The risk-reward profile of being a buyer in this environment is fundamentally different from what it is in calm markets.
This is not about being bullish or bearish. It’s about matching your strategy to the market’s current personality.
Right Algo, Right Market
This is exactly how we think about algos at Stratzy.
Not every algo works in every market just like not every poker strategy works at every table. A premium-selling algo is built for low-volatility, range-bound conditions. Deploy it when VIX is at 25? You’re playing a passive strategy against a table full of maniacs.
Our options-buying algos are designed for this environment elevated volatility, sharp moves, premiums that pay out when direction delivers. When VIX rises above 20, these strategies step forward while the premium-collection plays step back.
Here’s a list of our options buying algos:
The best traders like the best poker players don’t have one move. They have a playbook, and they know exactly which page to turn to.
Right now, the market is playing aggressive. Match the energy.