Box Spreads: Turning Options into Interest Rates

Shakespeare wrote, ‘Neither a borrower nor a lender be.’ But in the options market, box spreads let you be either—borrowing at implied rates or lending your cash for yield—at potentially more attractive rates than traditional financing and offer tax advantages.
This talk will demystify box spreads for beginners, showing how they work, why they matter, and how they can be used as a cash management tool. We’ll break down the mechanics step by step—so you’ll walk away understanding how a long box spread can mimic a Treasury bill, and how a short box spread can function like a discounted loan.
Whether you’re curious about how professionals squeeze extra basis points from cash or simply want to understand how options can be more than just bets on stock prices, this session will open your eyes to a strategy that blends financial engineering with practical money management.
By the end, you’ll see box spreads not as a complex options trade, but as a surprisingly elegant way to make your money work harder—or borrow smarter.

Rex Macey, CFA®, CFP®, has over 30 years of experience as an investment professional. Rex has appeared on CNBC, Wall Street Week, Fox Business News, and quoted in the Wall Street Journal (Google for more) He also held a patent related to incorporating mortality risk into the financial planning process. He earned a math degree from Vanderbilt and an MBA from the UNC’s Kenan Flagler business school in Chapel Hill. View his LinkedIn profile for more information.