Leav Graves

Leav Graves is the founder and CEO of Option Samurai and a licensed investment professional with over 19 years of trading experience, including working professionally through the 2008 financial crisis. His passion for finance began in third grade, and he's been immersed in the markets ever since, turning a lifelong curiosity into a full-time career. Before founding Option Samurai, Leav worked as an options trader and portfolio manager, specializing in both fixed income and equity strategies.

He brings deep expertise in options trading, risk-defined strategies, and portfolio construction, with a strong focus on volatility, automation, and decision-making frameworks. Over the years, he has developed proprietary trading tools, including a dividend capture engine, an options-enhanced portfolio tracker, and an AI-based trade assistant. Leav’s insights have been featured in Benzinga, The Street, Yahoo Finance, and Finance Magnates, and he was named runner-up in the Benzinga Fintech Awards. His mission with Option Samurai is to equip retail investors with institutional-grade tools to help them make smarter, more confident trades.

Education

• Bachelor’s Degree in Economics from Tel Aviv University
• Portfolio manager license from the Israel Securities Authority

References

• Interview on Benzinga (again) 
• Contribute to US News.
• Interview on Fox Business.
• Author at the Option Samurai blog 
• Featured on Finance Magnet
• Interview on Yahoo Finance

Experience

• Started actively trading ~2005 and have been actively trading since. Increased his expertise and moved into the professional space, only to return to the retail space with Option Samurai. 
• Founder and CEO of Option Samurai, a platform designed to help retail investors make better options trades.
• Former Chief Analyst and Portfolio Manager at Dividend Investments, where he managed fixed-income portfolios for clients, focusing on cash-flow optimization and tax efficiency
• Advocate for democratizing options education and bridging the knowledge gap between retail and institutional traders.
• Options trading expert with deep experience building and executing strategies based on technical analysis, volatility patterns, quantitative models, fundamental metrics, and options open interest data.
• Such as cash-secured put, covered calls, dividend capture, collars, etc.
• Built quantitative trading systems for trading stocks, bonds, and options.
• Wrote hundreds of educational articles about options in the Option Samurai blog and emails.
• Developed a proprietary dividend-capture model combining options overlays and ex-date logic.
• Experienced in building trading algorithms that use call and put options and advanced strategies using Python and Excel-based tools.
• Built Go/No-Go models for fundamental analysis using financial reports, focused on Israeli and U.S. equities.
• Designed and tested volatility-based reversion strategies and earnings plays for short-duration options to capitalize on volatility crush, time decay, movement, etc., using iron condors, vertical spreads, and other options strategies.