Documentation / Trading Page

Trading Page

Understanding the main trading interface

Page Layout Overview

The trading page is divided into three main areas:

  • Top Toolbar: Contains trade summary, navigation controls, and action buttons
  • Left Panel: The options chain with call and put tables
  • Right Panel: The payoff diagram showing profit/loss of the option position under various scenarios

You can drag the divider between panels to resize them.

Expiration Date Navigation

The expiration navigator is located in the top tool bar:

  • Use the left/right arrow buttons to move between expiration dates one day at a time
  • The current expiration date and DTE (Days to Expiration) are displayed in the center
  • Click directly on the date to open a date picker for jumping to any date

Note: The system uses on-demand navigation — it will fetch data for whatever expiration date you navigate to.

Historical Date Navigation

Time navigation controls allow you to view historical market data as if you were trading on a past date and time.

This is useful for:

  • Backtesting trading strategies on historical data
  • Learning how options prices move over time
  • Analyzing past trades and what-if scenarios
  • Understanding how events affected option prices

The time navigator is located in the top toolbar area. It shows the current virtual time and provides navigation buttons:

Time increment buttons:

  • 5M: Move forward or backward 5 minutes
  • 30M: Move forward or backward 30 minutes
  • 1D: Move forward or backward 1 day

Trade navigation buttons (when a trade is loaded):

  • Double chevron left: Jump to trade opening time
  • Single chevron left: Jump to previous adjustment
  • Single chevron right: Jump to next adjustment
  • Double chevron right: Jump to trade close, or current time if the trade is still open

Now button: Returns to live mode (if a broker is configured) or current time.

Click the time display to open a date/time picker dialog where you can enter any specific date and time.

Note: All times are displayed and entered in the time zone you select in Settings.

Symbol Selection

To change the underlying symbol:

  1. Find the search field with the magnifying glass icon in the options chain header
  2. Type the symbol you want (e.g., SPY, AAPL, NDX)
  3. Press Enter to load that symbol's options chain

The current symbol and its price are displayed next to the search field.

Supported symbols include stocks, ETFs and indices.

Options Chain Tables

The options chain displays two separate tables stacked vertically:

  • Calls Table: Shows all call options for the selected expiration
  • Puts Table: Shows all put options for the selected expiration

Each table displays the following columns:

  • Strike: The strike price of the option
  • Symbol: The full option symbol (OCC format)
  • Bid/Mid/Ask: Current market prices
  • IV: Implied Volatility as a percentage
  • Greeks: Delta, Gamma, Theta, Vega
  • Vol: Daily trading volume
  • OI: Open Interest
  • Model: Enter quantities here to stage legs for a trade

Options are sorted by strike price with highest strikes at the top.

When viewing a past date with Massive.io as your historical option data provider, Volume shows the full-day aggregate for that date. Open Interest is always 0 — no historical OI data is available from Polygon.

When using Interactive Brokers as your live data provider, Open Interest is only sent during market hours. If you open a chain for the first time outside market hours, Open Interest will show as 0. For chains subscribed to during market hours, the last received Open Interest value is persisted to the database and restored on your next session.

Understanding the Greeks

Greeks measure the sensitivity of an option's price to various factors:

  • Delta: Price change per $1 move in underlying. Calls: 0 to 1, Puts: -1 to 0
  • Gamma: Rate of change of Delta. Higher near ATM strikes
  • Theta: Time decay per day. Options lose value as expiration approaches
  • Vega: Price change per 1% change in implied volatility
  • IV (Implied Volatility): Market's expectation of future price movement

Stratsigma calculates implied volatility and greeks using its internal option pricing model rather than using the values from the market data provider, if any. In this way, these values are consistent regardless of data provider.