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 use the same broker set as single-leg Options. When you pick Spreads as the instrument, the broker choice is restricted to these four accounts, and a Spreads strategy routes to one broker at a time.

Broker	Limit orders	Smart expiration	Smart price override
Tradier	Yes	Yes	Yes
IBKR	Yes	No	Yes
Robinhood	Yes	No	Yes
Schwab	No	No	No

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

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, Robinhood, or Schwab.
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 with the options-style fields spreads use Spreads use the same expiration, strike position, and direction fields as single-leg Options

The fields a Spreads strategy shows

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. The -1 inherit option 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 method — Market on every broker; Limit is available on Tradier, IBKR, and Robinhood.
Smart expiration detection — Tradier only. Resolves a vague or expired signal date to the next valid expiration.
Smart price override — Tradier, IBKR, and Robinhood. Biases the limit toward the live quote when it is newer than the signal price.

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, Robinhood, or Schwab.
Build the strategy end to end in the strategy editor guide.