can be viewed as a long strangle at one pair of strike prices, and , plus a short strangle at the same pair of strike prices. The long strangle contains the two long (buy) options. The short strangle contains the two short (sell) options. A short box-spread can be treated similarly. Example As an example, consider a three-month option on a stock whose current price is $100. If the interest rate is 8% per annum and the volatility is 30% per annum, then the prices for the options might be: The initial investment for a long box-spread would be $19.30. The following table displays the payoffs of the 4 options for the three ranges of values for the terminal stock price : The terminal payoff has a value of $20 independent of the terminal value of the share price. The discounted value of the payoff is $19.60. Hence there is a nominal profit of 30 cents to be had by investing in the long box-spread. Prevalence Surveys done by Chaput and Ederington on the Chicago Mercantile Exchange's market for options on Eurodollar futures showed that between 1999 and 2000, some 25% of the trading volume was in outright options, 25% in straddles and vertical spreads (call-spreads and put-spreads), and about 5% in strangles. Guts constituted only about 0.1%, and box-spreads even less (about 0.01%). Ratio spreads took more than 15%, and about a dozen other instruments took the remaining 30%. Robinhood incident In January 2019, a member of the Reddit community /r/WallStreetBets realized a loss of more than $57,000 on $5,000 principal by attempting a box spread through Robinhood, which provides commission-free options trading. The user, who initially asserted that "[the spread] literally cannot go tits up," did not realize that the American options he was using carried the risk of being exercised, and had his spread liquidated entirely when this happened to one of its legs. (He had been exposed to as much as $212,500 in risk with the spread open.) Robinhood subsequently announced that investors on the platform would no longer be able to open box spreads, a policy that remains in place as of October 2022. See also Jelly roll (options) References Further reading The box-spread reveals an arbitrage profit insufficient to cover transaction costs. . Post-market simulations with box-spreads on the S&P 500 Index show that market ineffiency increased after the 1987 crash. The box-spread is