What You Can Trade
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What You Can Trade

Options

Trade single-leg call and put options from a signal: how a strategy buys to open, which brokers support it, and the expiration, strike, and exit controls.

Options are single-leg calls and puts. A call profits when the underlying rises, a put profits when it falls. TradeLabs trades the price movement in the option premium, not delivery of the underlying. A strategy always buys to open and later sells to close, and it never exercises a contract. Options trade in contracts, not shares.

An options strategy only ever buys to open. It does not sell to open a naked option, so the direction picks the option side rather than a buy or sell. That is why the direction labels read Calls, Puts, and Both.

Tip

Turn on Inherit trade details from message. It’s in the Signal source section of the General tab, and for most people it is the single most important setting on an options strategy. It is the difference between “buy some SPY calls” and “buy the exact contract that was called”.

With it on, the strategy stops using its own defaults and takes the contract straight from the call:

  • the ticker the call names (Ticker is pinned to ALL),
  • the strike the call names — the strike-position offset is pinned to 0, so it buys that strike rather than one near the money,
  • the expiration the call used, rather than a fixed number of days out.

You end up holding the same contract as the person you follow. That is usually the whole point of copying them.

It applies to Discord and Telegram strategies, where calls arrive as text for the AI to read. TradingView alerts already arrive structured, so there is nothing to inherit.

Inherit trade details from message One call, traded two ways THE CALL IN YOUR ROOM BTO SPY 540C 0DTE @ 1.20 Inherit ON Ticker Strike Expiration SPY 540 call today Every field comes from the call. Inherit OFF Ticker Strike Expiration SPY at the money 7 days out Your defaults win. A different trade.

The same call, with the setting on and off. Off, you get a different strike and a different expiry — a different trade.

Which brokers trade options

Set Instrument to Options and the broker picker narrows to these four.

BrokerWhat it adds
Interactive BrokersMarket or limit entry, extended hours
TradierMarket or limit entry, smart expiration
Charles SchwabMarket or limit entry, extended hours, smart expiration
RobinhoodLimit entry only

All but Schwab also trade multi-leg spreads.

Note

Robinhood has no market order for options. Its API only exposes the limit calls, so the editor hides Market and prices the limit at the ask, the marketable limit a market order stands in for.

Set up an options strategy

Open a strategy from the Strategies page and set the Instrument to Options on the General tab. That unlocks the options fields and restricts the broker choice to the four brokers above. If exactly one options broker is connected, the editor assigns it for you.

The strategy editor with an Options strategy openThe strategy editor with an Options strategy open The Options strategy editor, showing the expiration and strike-position fields

Direction

For options the Direction field reads Calls, Puts, or Both. It picks which side the strategy acts on, not a buy or sell.

OptionWhat it means
CallsOpen long calls, act on call signals only
PutsOpen long puts, act on put signals only
BothAct on whichever side the signal names

Expiration and strike

Two fields decide which contract gets bought. They live on the General tab under the Options group.

With Inherit trade details from message on, skip both. The app pins them and reads the strike and expiration off each call. Set them by hand only when the room posts “SPY calls, going in now” with no strike or date, or when you want every trade on your own expiry regardless.

  • Expiration picks how far out the contract is. Enter 0 for same-day, a number of days like 7, or a weekday name like Friday for the next contract on that day. When the source parses free-text signals (Discord and Telegram) you can also set it to read the expiration from the signal text.
  • Strike position sets where the strike sits relative to the current price, as a segmented control: In the money, At the money, or Out of the money, plus a strike offset. At the money is nearest the price, out of the money is cheaper but needs a bigger move, and in the money is pricier with less time decay.
Moneyness: how far the strike sits from the current price -2 -1 0 +1 +2 In the money At the money Out of the money deeper, costs more strike ≈ price cheaper, riskier Each step of 1 moves the strike one contract away from at-the-money. Set 0 unless you want it deeper or further out.

At the money is nearest the current price, out of the money needs a bigger move, in the money has less time decay

Entry and exit

Entry method and Exit method sit on the General tab. Market fills now at the current price. Limit fills only at your price or better.

Pick Limit and a price side appears:

Price sideWhere the limit sits
Bid, Mid or AskOn the live quote at that side. Ask fills fastest on a buy, bid on a sell.
From alertOn the per-contract price the caller wrote. Options only, and only on Discord or Telegram. IBKR takes it on entries, not exits.
Note

Tradier, IBKR and Schwab already use the caller’s price on a Discord or Telegram alert, so Bid / Mid / Ask only takes over when Smart price override is on. Robinhood is the opposite: the side always wins. The editor warns you inline when your pick won’t apply.

Size the trade on the Sizing tab: a number of contracts, a dollar amount, or a percent of Available Funds or Net Liquidation.

Risk and exits

Options carry real volatility, so the exit tools matter. All three exit controls are available for options and live on the Risk and exits tab. Each accepts a dollar amount or a percent.

ControlWhat it does
Stop lossClose the position if it drops this far
Take profitClose the position if it gains this much
Trailing stopFollow the price up and close when it pulls back this far

Once a take-profit value is set, a Take-profit behavior panel lets you close all at once or sell in stages. Once a trailing stop is set, a Trailing-stop behavior panel picks between five modes. See Trailing stops for the full detail.

Options also carry two guardrails of their own on the Protections tab: Buy same-day on the matching weekday, which turns an expiration like “Friday” into a 0DTE buy when today is Friday, and Auto-close 0DTE, which flattens same-day positions a set number of minutes before the close.

Next steps