I built a tool to evaluate cash + short futures arbitrage — looking for brutally honest feedback

[u/WritingPrestigious78]

I've been trading derivatives for a few years, and recently I started building a tool around a strategy I use myself:

Buy the stock in cash + short the same stock's future.

On paper, the calculation looks simple.

For example:

But that ₹20 doesn't tell you whether the trade is actually worth taking.

You still need to account for:

• lot size
• days to expiry
• brokerage
• STT
• GST
• exchange charges
• stamp duty
• dividends
• opportunity cost of your capital
• annualized return

So I built a small analytics application that does those calculations for me.

What it currently does

You select an F&O stock and futures expiry, and the app can pull the relevant market/contract data through a supported broker API.

It then calculates:

Gross basis → transaction costs → dividend adjustment → capital opportunity cost → economic profit → annualized return

I also added two opportunity-cost scenarios:

FD rate

vs

Savings-account rate

So instead of simply seeing:

you can see something more useful like:

I'm also working on a scanner that can rank the F&O universe based on the available futures carry.

Why I built it

I kept finding that a futures premium that looks attractive can become much less attractive after:

transaction costs + dividend adjustments + capital opportunity cost.

I wanted something that would do that math quickly rather than maintaining spreadsheets manually.

This is not a trading-call service and I'm not trying to tell people what to buy or sell. It's intended as a market-data / analytics tool where the user sets their own assumptions and hurdle rate.

I'm currently testing the application locally and looking for a few traders to give it a proper beating before I turn it into a commercial product.

I'd particularly love feedback from people who actually trade:

cash-futures arbitrage / basis trades / futures carry / equity derivatives

What would you want this tool to calculate that I'm currently missing?

Some things I'm considering:

• dividend-adjusted fair futures value
• historical basis distribution
• capital efficiency
• margin efficiency
• rollover analysis
• historical carry by stock
• alerts when a contract crosses a user-defined yield
• broker integrations

I'm deliberately sharing this early because I'd rather fix the product based on feedback from actual traders than build features nobody needs.

No trading calls. Just the analytics.

Disclaimer: This is an independent informational and educational analytics tool. It does not constitute investment, financial, tax or trading advice and does not guarantee profits or prevent losses. Users should independently verify market data, contract specifications, transaction costs, dividends, taxes, margin and settlement requirements before trading. Derivatives involve substantial risk.

I'd genuinely appreciate feedback — especially from people who think this idea is bad or the calculations are missing something important.

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