Gianluca Longinotti is an experienced trader, advisor, and financial analyst with over a decade of professional experience in the banking sector, trading, and investment services. Known for his rigorous approach and deep understanding of market dynamics, Gianluca specializes in derivatives and cyclical analysis, with a strong emphasis on options trading strategies and macroeconomic frameworks.
Gianluca is the founder of Cycle Quest, a project focused on applying cyclical models to financial markets, economic indicators, and more. With an international academic background and a passion for data-driven decision-making, Gianluca empowers traders and investors with expert insights, clear strategy frameworks, and cutting-edge tools.
Education
- Bachelor’s Degree in Economics from University of Brescia (Italy)
- Two Master’s Degrees in Economics and Empirical Finance from Sorbonne University (France)
References
- Founder at Cycle Quest
- Contributor at Traders Union
- Author at Tokize.com
- Author at Crypto Adventure
Experience
- Over a decade of experience trading options, with a focus on defined-risk strategies such as vertical spreads, iron condors, and diagonals
- Deep understanding of options pricing models like Black-Scholes and binomial trees, applied daily to position evaluation
- Active user of the CBOE indices as a benchmark to build and test different trading strategies with options
- Expert in managing trades using the Greeks (Delta, Theta, etc.) to dynamically adjust risk
- I regularly post live trade setups and market reads on Gianluca’s Trades via the Option Samurai blog and my personal Stocktwits profile
- Skilled in building algorithmic strategies in Python and Pine Script, with a focus on short-term price action and event-driven plays
- Creator of backtesting environments tailored to options logic using Python’s Pandas and NumPy stack
- Daily use of TradingView, Interactive Brokers, and Databento for execution, charting, and data analysis
- Developed custom automated dashboards in Plotly and Streamlit for real-time tracking of trade performance and volatility curves
- Frequently design strategies aligned with FOMC and macroeconomic indicators for directional and volatility bias
- Strong foundation in fundamental analysis, with deep dives into financial statements and earnings behavior
- Implemented statistical arbitrage and volatility modeling techniques to detect mean-reverting edges
- Experienced in handling expiration risk, assignment logic, and optimizing trade timing around options cycles
- Advocate for integrating behavioral finance principles to mitigate biases and improve trader discipline
- Regularly consult with traders on strategy design, risk control, and automation to elevate their performance across market regimes
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The edge of market Breadth
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This is the third part of our in-depth look into the various edges traders base their decision making . You can read the previous part here and all of the series here. This methods are based on...

Trading Implied Volatility - Part 3
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In this article, I wish to discuss the importance of volatility and implied volatility to options trading. The volatility of a stock is a measure of how "fast" it moves in each direction. If we say...

Trading Implied Volatility - Part 2
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This is the second part of a four (very important) part post about how to better trade implied volatility. Most sources (educators, websites, etc.) give a lot of misinformation about trading...
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Trading Implied Volatility - Part 1 - Predicting stock movements
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Predicting stock movements is the holy grail of investors, and many studies, tests, and systems have been developed and are being developed to do so. Four professors from Columbia, Georgetown, and...
The edge behind Market Sentiment – Part 2
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This is the second part in the series about the edge of the market sentiment. Press here to read the first part about relative strength edge.
Market Sentiment
As we talked about in the last...

The edge behind Market Sentiment - Part 1
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This will be the first part in a series of posts dedicated to exploring and explaining the edge behind the market sentiment tool. The market sentiment tool is designed to help traders understand...

How to read the Market Sentiment
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This article will Explain how to read the Market sentiment gadget. This gadget is a quantitative tool designed to help investors understand the current market conditions and help them hone their...
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