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.

Note

Options is the most popular instrument on TradeLabs. If your signal provider posts full alerts, turn on inherit trade details so the strike and expiration come straight from the message.

Which brokers trade options

Single-leg options run on four brokers. The same four also handle multi-leg spreads. When a strategy is set to Options, only these brokers are selectable.

Broker	Limit orders	Smart price override	Smart expiration	Extended hours
Interactive Brokers	Yes	Yes	No	Yes
Tradier	Yes	Yes	Yes	No
Charles Schwab	No	No	No	No
Robinhood	Yes	Yes	No	No

Schwab is market-only for options. The extra order controls above only appear once the strategy is routed to a broker that supports them.

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 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.

Option	What it means
Calls	Open long calls, act on call signals only
Puts	Open long puts, act on put signals only
Both	Act 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.

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.

Strike position from in the money to out of the money 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 sits on the General tab with a matching Exit control. Market fills immediately at the current price. Limit fills only at your price or better, and it is available on Interactive Brokers, Tradier, and Robinhood only. Schwab is market-only.

Set the trade size on the Sizing tab. Quantity can be a number of contracts, a dollar amount, or a percent of portfolio value.

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.

Control	What it does
Stop loss	Close the position if it drops this far
Take profit	Close the position if it gains this much
Trailing stop	Follow the price up and close when it pulls back this far

Once a take-profit value is set you can choose how it closes: all at once or in stages. A trailing stop adds an activation threshold and its own behavior modes. See Trailing stops for the full detail.

Next steps

Connect a broker: Interactive Brokers, Tradier, Charles Schwab, or Robinhood.
Build the strategy end to end in the strategy editor guide.
Trading both legs at once? See spreads.