Trading Workspace

Model an options position, analyze its risk, and place the trade

Trading Workspace Overview

The Trading workspace is where you model an options position and analyze its risk. It has three main areas plus a toolbar:

Options chain (left) — calls and puts with live prices and Greeks; where you build and adjust legs
Payoff diagram (right) — your position's profit and loss across underlying prices
Analysis panel (bottom) — aggregate risk, cost, and Greeks for the position

The toolbar across the top selects the underlying and expiration, controls the virtual clock, and adjusts the chart. The trade selector at the top-left opens an existing trade or starts a new one, and the breadcrumb shows the active trade. Drag the divider between the chain and the chart to resize them.

Beyond the symbol, expiration, virtual-time, and zoom controls, the toolbar has these buttons:

Data status: the activity indicator shows your market-data connection — green while streaming live data, blue while fetching data over REST, and grey when not connected to live data
Chain view: toggles the options chain between its basic and full views
New trade: starts a new trade
Jump to position: jumps to the nearest expiration cycle that has a position
Close position: fills the Model fields with the quantities needed to close the current trade
Clear model: clears all quantities from the Model fields
Save trade: saves the current trade
Model line: shows the model's T+0 line on the chart, separate from the current position line
New-position line: shows the new position's T+0 line on the chart

Loading a Symbol

Type a symbol into the search field (magnifying glass) at the top of the options chain and press Enter to load its chain — for example SPY, AAPL, or NDX. Supported underlyings include stocks, ETFs, and indices. The current symbol and its last price are shown next to the search field.

Choosing an Expiration

The expiration selector in the toolbar shows the loaded expiration with its days-to-expiration in parentheses (e.g., "RUT 2026-06-18 (24d)"). Open it to pick from every listed expiration — both standard and weekly series — or step one at a time with the left/right arrows. Data is fetched on demand for whatever expiration you navigate to.

The Options Chain

Calls and puts are shown in two separate, collapsible tables, sorted by strike. Each row carries:

Bid, Mid/Theo, Ask, Last — market prices, plus the mid / theoretical value
Extrinsic — extrinsic (time) value
OI and Vol — open interest and volume
IV and the Greeks — Delta, Gamma, Theta, Vega
Cost, P&L, Position — the cost basis, current P&L, and quantity for any leg of your trade at that strike
Model — enter a quantity here to stage that strike as a leg of the position you are building

Open interest caveats: on a past date with a historical data provider, Volume is the full-day total and Open Interest reads 0 (no historical OI is available). With Interactive Brokers as the live provider, OI is only sent during market hours — a chain first opened outside market hours shows 0, while a value received during market hours is saved and restored next session.

Reading the Greeks

The Greeks measure how an option's price responds to different factors:

Delta: price change per $1 move in the underlying (calls 0 to 1, puts -1 to 0)
Gamma: rate of change of Delta, largest near at-the-money strikes
Theta: time decay per day
Vega: price change per 1% change in implied volatility
IV: the market's implied expectation of future movement

Stratsigma computes IV and the Greeks with its own option pricing model rather than taking the data provider's values, so they stay consistent no matter which provider you use.

Modeling a Position

Build a position by staging legs from the chain's Model column. As you add or change legs, the payoff diagram and Analysis panel update instantly.

You can model an adjustment to an existing position two ways: type quantities into the Model fields, or drag a position to a different strike directly on the chain. To move several legs at once — for example, rolling a spread, or rolling both sides as an iron condor — Ctrl-click to select multiple positions and drag them together to their new strikes.

When you model a change to a trade you already hold, the workspace shows two states at once — your Current Position and the New Position you are modeling — in both the Analysis panel and the payoff diagram, so you can see the effect of an adjustment before committing to it. When the position is ready, save it or submit it to your broker — see Creating & Submitting a Trade in Create, Adjust & Manage Trades.

The Payoff Diagram

The payoff diagram plots Profit & Loss (vertical) against the underlying price (horizontal). The curved line is the position's value at the selected time; the kinked line is its value at expiration. When you are modeling a change, the current and new positions are drawn as separate curves so you can compare them.

A header above the chart shows the projection point — the date and time, how far it is from now, and any volatility shift applied. Hover anywhere on the chart to read the position at that price: Net P&L, Commissions, Delta, Gamma, Theta, and Vega. Below the chart, a price ladder lists P&L and the Greeks across a range of underlying prices. Use the zoom sliders in the toolbar to adjust the price and P&L ranges shown.

Virtual Time & Backtesting

Virtual time lets you move the workspace to any past or future moment to backtest ideas and run what-if scenarios — replaying how a position behaved on a historical date, or projecting it forward. On a past date, the chain and Greeks are rebuilt from the historical market data supplied by your connected data provider.

By default the workspace shows the present. The virtual-time controls let you project the position to another moment: step backward or forward by 5 minutes, 30 minutes, or 1 day, or click Now to return to the present (live, when a broker is connected). Click the time display to open Set Virtual Time and enter an exact date and time; for symbols that only have end-of-day data, the time snaps to market close. Times use the time zone you select in Settings.

When a trade is loaded, the chevron buttons jump through its lifecycle — to the trade's opening, the previous adjustment, the next adjustment, and the close (or the present, if it is still open) — so you can replay how the position evolved.

The Analysis Panel

The Analysis panel at the bottom summarizes the whole position. It shows a Current Position row and, while you are modeling a change, a New Position row, across these columns:

Max Risk, Cost, Current Cost
P&L and P&L%
Delta, Gamma, Theta, Vega
Theta-Delta Ratio and Days in Trade

Expand the panel to see the underlying price and a per-leg breakdown — each leg's quantity, strike, type, expiration, IV (and whether that IV is imputed), and its individual Greeks, including Rho.

Keyboard Shortcuts

Most Trading workspace and Broker Sync actions have keyboard shortcuts. Press K at any time to open the shortcut reference.

V — view and manage trades
F — toggle full / basic chain view
W — new trade
J — jump to nearest expiration
O — enter closing positions
R — clear all model positions
M — commit trade
H — set historical time
N — jump to now
K — show hotkeys
S — link selected trades (Broker Sync)
C — jump to ATM calls
P — jump to ATM puts
↑ / ↓ — navigate table rows
Ctrl + ↑ / ↓ — jump between filled model fields
← / → — previous / next expiration

Trading Workspace