Our platform allows you to build any custom option strategy directly in the trade order form. Whether you're testing an idea, comparing different strikes, or fine-tuning the trade, this feature gives you complete flexibility and insight.
You can use it to:
- Visualize the trade and adjust the legs
- See how changes in strike or expiration affect trade stats
- Try different price assumptions (mid, mark, etc.)
- Add the trade to your Trade Log for tracking or paper trading
This is especially useful for traders using non-standard strategies or looking to experiment with advanced structures.
How to Access the Custom Trade Builder
- From the Custom Strategy Scanner - After scanning, click "Trade" next to a result to open the pre-filled trade window with that structure.
- From the Trade Order Form - Navigate to the trade tab and click "New Trade." Then, pick "Custom' from the drop-down menu and build your strategy manually.
Building a Trade
You can fully customize the trade:
- Pick a ticker - to start the process. We will import the price chart below.
- Pick Custom strategy from the drop-down menu.
- Add legs - Click the leg buttons (Buy/Sell Call/Put, Stock).
- Choose strike and expiration. Right now, we only support strategies with the same expiration for all the options.
- Adjust prices - You can change price assumptions to test different entry points (mark, mid, if price moves, etc.).
- Set quantity - You can change the quantity of each leg, and if you want more units, you can adjust the amount at the end.
You'll see live updates for:
- The breakeven point on the stock price chart
- Profit and loss graph, including stock price and breakeven point
- Bid/ask price of the strategy
- Return at the current price (and annualized)
- Breakeven points
- Probabilty of profit and loss based on option prices
- Greeks (Delta, Gamma, Theta, Vega)
This lets you quickly analyze the structure. You can adjust all parameters to try different variations. You can also open several tabs to do the analysis simultaneously.
Add to Trade Log
Once you're happy with the trade, you can click "Add to Trade Log" to save it.
- Use tags to track strategies
- Mark as paper trade to monitor hypothetical performance
This helps you track performance over time, even for custom or experimental trades.
Use Cases
Here are some examples of how traders are using the custom trade builder:
- Compare strike selection – Quickly test how changing a single leg's strike or expiration affects risk/reward and breakeven. This can help you understand the structure better or find an improved trade.
- Fine-tune trade pricing – Adjust entry prices to reflect different execution assumptions (mid, price improvement, etc.) and see how that impacts your trade.
- Experiment with custom structures – Be creative and find new ways to implement your view on a stock. Want to buy 53 shares + a put option + 3 call spreads? Not a problem. You can also see how different strategies/quantities affect this strategy.
- Prepare for earnings/adjustments – You can create a strategy and play around with prices to prepare for cases and learn how to react to them.
- Simulate Trades with Paper Trading - In order to improve over time - it's important to keep learning. You can add your custom trade to our trade log to track it and see how it changes over time so you can trade better in the future.
- Create and share trade ideas - if you are part of a trading group or an education - you can create a trade to show it to other traders to help explain your thesis.
- Build intuition and understanding - By changing every part of the trade - strikes, expirations, prices, quantity - you can instantly see how it affects profit/loss, probabilities, greeks, and more. This helps you develop a deeper, more intuitive understanding of options strategies.
Read More
- Read more about the trade analysis window in our knowledge base to understand all its features, graphs, and fields.
- Read more about the custom strategy scanner to understand how to scan the entire market for your strategy.
- Read more about the trading journal.
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