Frequently Asked Questions

What is Vola Dynamics?

Vola Dynamics is a financial technology company that provides institutional-grade options analytics infrastructure — real-time volatility surface fitting, options pricing, and risk analytics. Approximately 50 of the world's most sophisticated trading firms rely on Vola Dynamics, including market makers, hedge funds, prop shops, and investment banks.

Who founded Vola Dynamics?

Vola Dynamics was founded in 2016 by Timothy Klassen (CEO), Jiri Hoogland, and Misha Fomytskyi — all physics PhDs who had previously built options analytics infrastructure at Goldman Sachs, Getco LLC, Morgan Stanley, Wachovia Securities, and JD Capital Management.

Who are Vola Dynamics' customers?

Approximately 50 institutional clients rely on Vola Dynamics, including Man Group, Capstone, Squarepoint Capital, Pictet, Vontobel, and Gelber Group. Clients collectively manage over $900 billion in assets (as of April 2026).

What asset classes does Vola Dynamics support?

Vola Dynamics supports options on equities, ETFs, indices, futures (including commodity, treasury, and equity index futures), and foreign exchange. The library has been used in production for US, European, and Asian markets including SPX, SPY, AEX, KOSPI, Nikkei, Hang Seng, crude oil, treasury futures, and cryptocurrency options.

How does Vola Dynamics compare to SVI and SABR?

Vola Dynamics' proprietary C* volatility curves go far beyond industry-standard approaches like SVI, SSVI, and SABR. These curves produce dramatically better fits while maintaining full arbitrage freedom, even during extreme market conditions like the COVID crash or earnings events.

Can Vola Dynamics handle earnings events?

Yes. Standard parametric models like SVI often fail during binary events like earnings because they cannot fit complex structures such as W-shaped volatility smiles. Vola's C* curves have sufficient flexibility to fit all observed market shapes, including W-shaped smiles around earnings and elections. The Event Var Fitter smooths the ATM term structure by calibrating event variance, improving American option pricing and enabling cross-name vol comparison. The Event Modeling module goes further, decomposing observed ('dirty') surfaces into a clean (non-event) surface and discrete event jumps with calibrated probabilities and sizes.

How does Vola Dynamics handle 0DTE options?

0DTE (zero days to expiry) options present extreme challenges: tiny input errors produce large vol errors, gamma and theta are enormous, and the surface shape can change dramatically on intraday timescales. Vola's Fitter handles 0DTE and daily expirations with the precision required — maintaining calendar arbitrage constraints across dozens of daily expiries, fitting rapidly evolving surfaces, and supporting configurable intraday vol time allocation for accurate theta and Greeks.

What is the Skew Stickiness Ratio (SSR)?

The SSR quantifies how ATM vol moves when spot moves. Sticky-strike (SSR=1) is the most common textbook assumption, but it is empirically wrong — Bruno Dupire proved in 2003 that it is internally inconsistent. In practice, ATM vol moves along a path steeper than the skew. Vola supports configurable SSR throughout: smart (adjusted) delta and gamma, realistic scenario analysis, and PnL attribution all use consistent spot-vol dynamics.

How does Vola Dynamics handle PnL attribution?

Vola's PnL Explanation module supports both Greek-based attribution (Taylor expansion using smart or BS greeks) and scenario-based attribution (exact re-pricing under spot, vol, time, rate, and model shifts). Vol PnL decomposes into ATF level, skew, curvature, and unexplained. The unexplained residual is preserved as a diagnostic — persistent unexplained PnL reveals framework inconsistencies, uncaptured risk, or data quality issues.

How is Vola Dynamics priced?

Pricing is not formulaic and depends on your use case, asset classes, and modules. We start with a short intro call to understand your needs. Contact us.

What programming languages and platforms are supported?

Vola Dynamics provides native APIs in C++, Python, Java, and C# on Windows, Linux, and macOS. It integrates directly into existing trading infrastructure as a drop-in replacement for pricing and fitting components.

Is Vola Dynamics a black box?

No. Vola integrates directly into existing trading infrastructure via native APIs. It is a force multiplier for quantitative teams — handling the fitting and pricing infrastructure so that quants and traders can focus on strategy and alpha generation.

What is Vola Dynamics used for?

Vola Dynamics is used for real-time volatility surface fitting, options pricing, and risk analytics. Common use cases include electronic options market making, volatility trading, structured products pricing, and portfolio risk management.