Wall Street Options Trick Becomes New Loan Hack for the Wealthy

In late 2021, as the housing market overheated and the Federal Reserve’s benchmark interest rate hovered near zero, Tony Yang found an unconventional way to fund his down payment.

He logged into his Charles Schwab brokerage account, built a trade he’d discovered on Reddit — and unlocked about $650,000 to help finance a Bay Area home.

Tony Yang

Source: SyntheticFi

The trade, dubbed a “box spread,” carried a kind of mystique. By combining two opposing options positions — one bullish, one bearish — Yang built a strategy that mimics a fixed-rate loan: upfront cash now, repayment at a set date, and a locked-in ...