What You Can Trade

Spreads

Trade multi-leg option spreads from your signals: which brokers handle them, the fields a Spreads strategy shows, and how risk and exits work.

A spread is a multi-leg option position: two or more option legs on the same underlying, bought and sold together as one order. TradeLabs reads the whole leg structure from your signal and submits it as a single spread order. The parser handles verticals, calendars, diagonals, iron condors, iron butterflies, straddles, and strangles.

Spreads share almost every field with single-leg Options. The one real difference is that the trade carries at least two legs and a net price instead of one contract.

Note

Spread details come from the free-text body of a signal, so a Spreads strategy reads its trades from a Discord or Telegram provider that posts full spread alerts.

Which brokers trade spreads

Spreads run on three brokers: the single-leg Options set without Charles Schwab. When you pick Spreads as the instrument, the broker choice is restricted to these three accounts, and a Spreads strategy routes to one broker at a time.

Broker	What it adds
Tradier	Market or limit entry, smart expiration
Interactive Brokers	Market or limit entry
Robinhood	Limit entry only

If a spread signal fires on a strategy pointed at any other broker, the trade is skipped rather than filled.

Note

Charles Schwab trades single-leg options but not spreads. A multi-leg order needs Level 2 options approval at Schwab, and the path has not been placed end to end yet, so the broker is left out of the Spreads picker instead of failing mid-signal. See the Schwab page for the detail.

Note

Stop loss, take profit, and trailing stop run app-side on Tradier, because Tradier rejects a bracket attached to a multi-leg order. TradeLabs watches the position and closes it when your exit is hit.

Set up a Spreads strategy

Open the Strategies page, create or edit a strategy, and set the instrument to Spreads. That reveals the options-style fields below. For the full editor walkthrough see the strategy editor guide.

On the General tab, set Instrument to Spreads, then pick your signal source. Spread details are parsed from message text, so choose a Discord or Telegram provider that posts full spread alerts.
On the Brokers tab, assign one of the spread-capable brokers: Tradier, IBKR, or Robinhood.
Set Direction (Long only, Short only, or Both), Expiration, and Strike position.
On the Sizing tab, set your default quantity in contracts, dollars, or percent.
On Risk and exits, add a stop loss, take profit, or trailing stop if you want them.

The strategy editor open on a spreads strategy Spreads use the same expiration, strike position, and direction fields as single-leg Options

The fields a Spreads strategy shows

Tip

Turn on Inherit trade details from message (Signal source section, General tab) if you’re copying someone’s spreads rather than running your own. It pins Ticker to ALL, the expiration to read from the message, and the strike offset to 0, then fills all three from each call — so you get the legs that were actually called instead of the closest match to your defaults. Discord and Telegram only.

Direction — Long only, Short only, or Both. It filters which spread signals the strategy acts on.
Expiration — a fixed number of days (for example 0 for same-day or 7 for a week out), a weekday name, or -1 to read the expiration straight from the signal text. Turning on Inherit trade details from message sets this to -1 for you. Either way it only works on Discord and Telegram, the sources that parse a message body.
Strike position — In the money, At the money, or Out of the money.
Entry and Exit — Market or Limit on Tradier and IBKR. Robinhood has no market option order at all, so a Robinhood spread strategy is limit-only and the Market choice is hidden.
Smart expiration detection — Tradier only. Resolves a vague or expired signal date to the next valid expiration. Protections tab in the app; Instrument details → Behavior in the web builder.
Smart price override — Tradier, IBKR, and Robinhood. Biases the limit toward the live quote when it is newer than the signal price. Protections tab in the app; Execution in the web builder.

Risk and exits

Spreads support the full set of exits. On Tradier they run app-side, since Tradier will not accept a bracket on a multi-leg order.

Stop loss — a dollar amount or a percent.
Take profit — a dollar amount or a percent, with a take-profit behavior for closing all at once or selling in stages.
Trailing stop — available on spreads. It follows the position and locks in gains as the spread moves your way.

Heads up

A spread caps both its risk and its upside by design. Adding a stop loss or take profit layers on top of that defined range; it does not remove the built-in cap.

Next steps

Set up the broker you plan to route to: Tradier, IBKR, or Robinhood.
Build the strategy end to end in the strategy editor guide.