General
A free, browser-based investing and quant finance curriculum, taught by writing real code instead of reading slides. 23 lessons across three tracks — Investing Fundamentals, Options Pricing, and Quant Investing — take you from "what is a stock?" to reading a balance sheet to a working Black-Scholes engine with all five Greeks. Quant Investing is there once you want to go deeper, not a requirement to get there.
High schoolers (13–18) interested in quant finance, applied math, or CS. AIME/AMC-track students are the bullseye, but anyone comfortable with pre-calc + Python can follow along.
Pre-calculus is enough to start. Lessons on the Greeks lean on basic differential calculus (partial derivatives, the chain rule). No prior probability or stochastic calculus assumed — we build intuition first.
Some Python is helpful but not required. The starter code gives you scaffolding; you fill in the math. By Lesson 3 you'll be comfortable writing pricing functions from scratch.
Curriculum
Each lesson is 10–20 minutes of reading + a 5–15 minute coding exercise. Most students finish all 23 in a few weeks, spread over evenings — the tracks are independent, so there's no requirement to binge one before starting another.
No — start wherever fits you, though most people start with Investing Fundamentals (stocks, markets, valuation, bonds, retirement accounts) since it's the on-ramp if you're new to finance entirely. Options Pricing is where the quantitative thinking really starts, and Quant Investing (CAPM, backtesting, portfolio optimization) is a short, optional advanced track once the rest feels easy. All three are free and independent.
Yes — all five Greeks (Delta through Rho), Implied Volatility, Option Strategies, and Binomial Trees are all live already. Next up: a bridge into VaR, GARCH, and Monte Carlo for the Quant Investing track. See /roadmap for what's shipping and when.
Yes — many students do. The Black-Scholes derivation uses derivatives (AP Calc AB territory) and log-normal distributions (AP Stats). Teachers, we're happy to help align lessons.
Technical
Entirely in your browser, via Pyodide (CPython compiled to WebAssembly). No server round-trip. No installs. Tests typically complete in under 200ms.
Your code edits persist via localStorage on your device. Lesson completions, XP, and streaks also sync to your account automatically if you sign in — free for everyone, not a Pro feature — so your progress carries over to a new device even though the code itself stays local.
Yes. The repo is at github.com/isaacgong0311-hash/strikelab. The curriculum is part of the platform; the pricing engine is MIT-licensed and forkable.
Pyodide works on all modern browsers (Chrome 90+, Firefox 90+, Safari 15+, Edge 90+). If you hit an issue, file a GitHub issue with your browser version and we'll investigate.
Pricing & Trust
The full curriculum (all 23 lessons), the playground, the Greek visualizer, achievements, and the paper-trading sandbox are free forever — nothing there is gated. The Pro tier ($9/mo) adds weekly coding challenges, a leaderboard, and office hours with the founder. School licenses fund the platform.
Yes. No real money is ever involved anywhere on the platform. The paper-trading sandbox uses a simulated $100,000 balance priced with StrikeLab's own Black-Scholes engine, not a live brokerage connection. See /privacy for what account data we actually collect.
No. We don't run ads. We don't sell user lists. The business model is freemium subscriptions + school licenses — both depend on users trusting us, so we behave accordingly. Full details at /privacy.
Isaac Gong, a high school freshman and AIME qualifier. See /about for the full story and why this project exists.