Options strategy builder, free.

What you get

• Up to eight legs on one expiry, added from the live chain with a buy or sell button, with quantities in coins rather than venue contracts
• Entry at the ask when buying and the bid when selling, or at mark for a theoretical position, locked when the leg is added while marks and greeks keep updating
• Presets for a long straddle, a long strangle, bull call and bear put spreads, a risk reversal and an iron condor, built on the nearest listed strikes
• The exact expiry payoff with net debit or credit, maximum profit and loss including unbounded cases, and every breakeven level
• Net model delta, gamma, vega and one-day decay for the whole position
• A model profit and loss curve with sliders for underlying move, implied volatility shift and days elapsed, and a scenario matrix across price and volatility

Why this is usually paid for

Options strategy tools are usually part of a broker’s platform or a paid analytics product. A payoff diagram is simple; pricing a position on a live chain with the venue’s own forward and volatility, and doing the arithmetic for breakevens and unbounded risk correctly, is the part people pay for.

Basis computes the expiry payoff exactly, piece by piece between strikes, rather than sampling a curve, so breakevens and maximum loss are the true values. The model scenarios reprice every leg with Black-76 on its own forward, keeping each strike’s implied volatility fixed plus the shift you choose.

How to use it

1. 1

   Open Options and go to the strategy lab

   The button below opens the options workspace. Choose an expiry, then Chain and strategy lab. A preset fills in the legs on the nearest strikes; the Buy and Sell buttons in the chain add legs one at a time.

2. 2

   Decide how entries are priced

   Buying at the ask and selling at the bid shows what the position costs if you cross the spread today. Mark pricing shows the theoretical position. The difference between the two is the cost of the spread, which on wide wings can be most of the edge.

3. 3

   Read the expiry risk first

   Maximum loss, maximum profit and the breakevens describe the position if it is held to settlement. An unbounded loss is labelled as such rather than shown as a large number, which is the most common way a short option position is misread.

4. 4

   Then stress it before expiry

   Move the underlying, shift implied volatility and let days pass. The model curve and the scenario matrix show how the position behaves on the way to expiry, which is where most options positions are actually managed or closed.

Questions

Also free