Ex-IMC semiconductor options trader Lihong Wang on seeing the whole market's flow, betting the entire AI stack, & why foundation models are good enough to beat the S&P 500. Lihong Wang (@Lihong062) | Discretionary semiconductor options trader @ IMC Trading | Now co-founder of Freeport, a YC-backed event-driven perps exchange "You see what everyone's doing, you trade against the people who are stupid, and you get out of the way or you follow the people who are smart." We cover: - How a bet actually gets made on a vol desk: not predicting the future, just selling what's expensive and buying what's cheap - The edge of the seat: being counterparty to 20-40% of flow in certain options markets, a view "maybe a few dozen people on the entire planet" have - Knowing who HAS to trade: reverse-engineering banks' structured-product hedging from issuance data - How desks blow up: overestimating correlation, and why NVDA -17% on DeepSeek didn't mean AMD -12% - The trader group chats: ~3x beta to the S&P, median 30% drawdown in July, and everyone still bullish - His portfolio: 50 chip/AI stocks covering the entire stack, up 470% bottom-to-peak, then a 70% drawdown ("I'm literally down an entire Ferrari today") - Why trading firms may be the third-largest consumers of AI tokens on the planet - Moats vs. growth: why Cursor got funded with no moat, and what that means for careers in the age of AI - His hot take: foundation models can already beat the S&P 500 risk-adjusted. The model isn't the hard part, the harness is Highlights: 00:00 Intro 01:09 How discretionary options bets get made — and blow up 10:23 A message from Onyx 10:53 Warehousing benign flow through July's deleveraging 16:40 Seat leverage and how trading firms allocate talent 22:03 Why quant traders are levered long the AI stack 26:27 Playing the AI hand: leverage, moats, personal brand 36:42 From IMC to Freeport: AI agents for event-driven trading 45:26 Perp DEX endgame: liquidity, fragmentation, and SEC rulemaking 51:21 Sourcing semiconductor alpha from trader dinners 56:05 Narrative edge, DeepSeek puts, and a 70% drawdown 01:04:24 Is AI a bubble? Compounding, path, and Kelly leverage 01:08:39 US, China, and comparative advantage under ASI 01:12:17 Risk-taking when you're post-economic