The Chicago Options Protocol

140+ years of combined experience trading the volatility curve — from the Chicago pits to the City of London and the Asian volatility desks.

Most options education sits at one of two extremes. Academic programmes teach you the Black–Scholes formula but never how to trade it through a vol shock. Retail alert services sell you signals but no protocol.
The Chicago Options Protocol occupies the space between — the live-risk pedagogy that institutional traders actually use, taught by the people who built it.
THE COURSE DIRECTORS

Four practitioners. Three continents. One institutional moment.

Cresvale International, the early 1990s. Kevin Connolly directed the firm's risk-management architecture. Santo Volpe, Hilton Fay and Michael Hadley traded under it across London, Hong Kong and Singapore. Three decades later, the same four practitioners reunite as Course Directors of The Chicago Options Protocol — bringing together the academic gravitas, the floor pedigree and the institutional risk discipline that are normally acquired only one at a time, and never in the same person.

Professor Kevin B. Connolly, Ph.D.

QUANTITATIVE RESEARCH · VOLATILITY AUTHORITY

Author of Buying and Selling Volatility and Pricing Convertible Bonds. Former Head of Quantitative Research at James Capel/HSBC. Former Director of Cresvale International, where he designed the firm's risk-management framework.

Santo Volpe

INSTITUTIONAL RISK · FAMILY-OFFICE STRATEGY
~35-year derivatives veteran. Co-founder and CIO of Eden Rock Capital Management. Former Global Risk Advisor at Refco. Today coaches family offices, billionaires and institutional allocators on derivatives portfolio construction.

Hilton Fay

FLOOR PEDIGREE · CROSS-CONTINENT TRADING

~40-year derivatives trader. Member of four New York exchanges before moving to LIFFE in London. Established the Hong Kong office of Vantage Derivatives, trading the curve and skew in KOSPI and Nikkei options at institutional size.

Michael Hadley

ASIAN VOLATILITY · PERFORMANCE COACHING

~35-year derivatives trader and credentialed performance coach. Career spans the New York Coffee, Sugar and Cocoa Exchange, LIFFE, and the Asian volatility desks at Cresvale, Refco Proprietary Trading and TransMarket Group in Singapore.
THREE ROUTES

Three ways to enter.

I.

The Curriculum

Level I and Level II, online or in live cohort, with the four Course Directors. From the foundations of the protocol to advanced volatility-surface trading.

II.

The Credential

The Chicago Options Protocol Certification (COPC). "Independently accredited". Live remote proctoring. Calibrated for credentialing credibility, not enrolment volume.
III.

For Institutions

In-house training, white-label licensing and cohort certification for desks, family offices and institutional allocators. Enquiry-only engagement.

BEGIN

Start with the ten-minute diagnostic.

A free qualifying test tells you whether you are ready to certify directly, ready for Level II, or best served by Level I. No sales call. No commitment. A clear answer in ten minutes.