BETA: the Trade Builder is new. It is built and tested, but it has had little real-world use yet — check what it proposes against your own judgement and let us know if something looks wrong.
Editions: Regular edition and above (and the Free Trial). It is not available in the Free edition.
The Trade Builder helps you find a trade and put it on the Options Analysis (OA) grid as a model. You choose a strategy (iron condor, butterfly, broken-wing butterfly, vertical spread, calendar, diagonal and more), say roughly what you want — a net delta, a credit or debit, a width, a budget — and it lists the real trades on the chain that fit, best first. Pick one, press Copy Combo Candidate, and the legs appear as model legs with the Risk Graph, exactly as if you had loaded a saved model.
The Trade Builder never sends an order and never saves a model file. It only fills the model columns; everything after that (drag and drop, Commit, Convert, Save Model) is the normal OA flow.
Related:
There is one builder per Options Analysis window. It is a normal window that stays open while you work in the OA, and it closes with the OA. The three ways in are the same gate: Ctrl+B, the item at the top of the models block in the Model Mgt dropdown, and the toolbar button next to it.
The builder follows the expiry tab you have selected in the OA: switch tab and the search runs again on that chain (the DTE box shows the tab’s days to expiry). If the selected chain cannot host the trade, the builder tells you and uses the nearest loaded chain that can.
No refresh on exp switch (top right) stops that: with it ticked, changing tab leaves the candidates, legs and summary as they are, so you can move between expiries without losing the list. It ticks itself as soon as you place a trade on the grids, because after that you are usually just looking at the trade on other expiries. Untick it to follow the tabs again; the builder then searches the tab shown at once.
The Strategy list uses the same names as the Trade Rules templates, so a trade you build as an Iron condor is an iron condor by construction. The line under it shows the strategy’s bias and tags.
Most strategies are composed: the list only chooses a starting point, and two dropdowns change it.
| Dropdown | Meaning |
|---|---|
| Type | Put, Call or Iron (puts and calls together). It also turns a condor into a put condor or a call condor, a calendar into a double calendar, and a diagonal into a double diagonal. |
| Lean | Bullish, Bearish or Neutral: where the body of a butterfly sits, or which side carries the wider wing of a broken wing (the wide wing goes on the side where you would lose most — lower for a bullish lean). |
Changing Type or Lean rebuilds the structure and puts the boxes back to that structure’s defaults. Ratio spreads, short strangle, long call/put, cash-secured put and covered call are fixed strategies without Type and Lean.
Target delta is the delta of the whole trade per unit, in points, not the delta of any one strike. Its sign is the lean of the trade, whatever the option type: bullish is positive, bearish is negative, neutral is about zero — for puts, calls and irons alike. A put credit spread is bullish (+), a call credit spread bearish (−), an iron condor near zero.
Sensible defaults are filled in: neutral 0 (range −5 to +5), bullish +10 (range +3 to +25), bearish −10 (range −25 to −3). The Range is a hard limit: a trade outside it is never offered. The target only ranks what is inside the range.
Applies to lets you pin the number on one leg instead: choose a leg (for example the long upper put) and the box then means that leg’s own delta, with the rest of the structure built around it.
| Control | What it does |
|---|---|
| Target delta + Range + Applies to | As above. Untick the box to rank by nothing but cost; the range still limits the search. |
| Target cost ± tolerance | Rank by closeness to a net cost per unit: credit negative (−150 = collect 150), debit positive. Candidates within the tolerance count as on target. A target never empties the list, it only orders it. |
| Max from ATM | Keep the delta-anchored strikes (the short strikes of most strategies) within a distance of the at-the-money strike, in % of ATM or in points. |
| Units | How many of the strategy to build (a 1:2 ratio × 2 is 2 long, 4 short). |
| Max loss budget | Size from a budget instead: as many units as fit, rounded down. It needs a defined max loss (see Max loss); if one unit already loses more than the budget, the candidate is refused. |
| Control | What it does |
|---|---|
| Width (min to max, unit) | Wing width range. Points moves in steps of the chain’s strike interval (the default, kept in step with it), Strikes counts listed strikes, Delta places the wing a number of delta points further out. |
| Wide wing | Broken wings: the range of the wider wing (always wider than the other wing). |
| DTE / Back DTE | Days to expiry. With an expiry tab selected the DTE box simply shows that tab. For calendars and diagonals, Back DTE sets the back leg’s expiry: the builder keeps that time distance between the legs when you change tab, and warns if no loaded chain is close to it. |
| Back delta | Diagonals: the long back leg’s own delta in points (70 = a deep in-the-money long leg). |
| Selected strike intervals only | Use only the strikes on the strike interval(s) checked in the OA’s Strike Intervals list, including after Ctrl+Down (minimum interval). Width steps follow that interval. |
Boxes that do not apply to the chosen strategy are greyed out.
Your own starting values. People tend to build the same kinds of trade again and again, so the builder remembers your answers for each type of combo (an iron condor is one type, a bullish put credit spread another). Every box in Targets and limits and Structure is saved for that type, per symbol, as soon as you change it — target delta and range, the leg it applies to, cost target, the ATM limit, widths and their unit, back delta, the time distance of a calendar, units, the max loss budget and Selected strike intervals only. The Type and Lean you choose are remembered too, for the strategy you picked in the list: pick Broken-wing butterfly (bullish lean), switch Type to Call once, and it opens as Call from then on. The DTE boxes are not saved: they follow the expiry tab you are looking at. The next time you pick that type, the boxes start there and the line under the strategy says Your saved values for this combo are loaded. Reset to defaults (top right) forgets them for the type shown and goes back to the standard values. Copying a stored combo changes nothing here.
Below the boxes, the builder lists the trades it found, best first. A line above it says how many were found and on which chain. Click a column header to sort; click a row to see its legs.
| Column | Meaning |
|---|---|
| # | Rank by closeness to the targets you use. |
| Trade | What it is and its strikes, named by the same recogniser Trade Rules uses. |
| Expiry | The expiry; a time spread shows both (2026-11-07/12-07). |
| Delta | Net delta per unit, in points. |
| Width | Widest wing in price points. |
| Net per unit | Credit negative, debit positive. |
| Max loss | See Max loss. |
| Delta from | Live when the strikes stream, otherwise how the delta was estimated. |
The search tries every anchor strike on the chain inside your limits (thinned on very large chains, with a cap on the number of builds) and keeps what fits. Drag the bars between the lists to give more room to the candidates, the shortlist, the legs or the summary.
For the selected candidate, the leg table shows each leg’s quantity, strike, right, expiry, delta, where the delta comes from, and price (a * means estimated). The summary underneath states what the trade is, the spot and units, net delta, debit or credit, max loss and breakevens at expiry, and any warnings (for example: some deltas are estimates; a leg has no price; the nearest expiry to your DTE is further away than you asked).
Looking at one chain at a time is limiting, so the builder keeps a shortlist. Select a candidate and press Add to shortlist; then move to another expiry tab and select the stored item and press Find on this chain: the builder looks for the same shape there — the same strategy, net delta (within ±3 points) and wing widths in price points — and lists the matches. Every shortlist row also shows its best match on the chain now shown (On this chain, Net here, Max here), so you can compare the same trade across expiries side by side. Calendars and diagonals keep their time distance.
The shortlist is kept per symbol and is saved between sessions. An item keeps its shape (not its strikes), so it stays useful after the chain it was found on has expired (the Found on column shows that chain); it removes itself after 60 days. Remove deletes the selected item.
There are two copy buttons, and each works on its own list. Copy Combo Candidate copies the candidate selected in the candidate list (the trade whose legs you see below it). Copy Stored Combo copies the stored trade selected in the shortlist: because a stored trade keeps its shape and not exact legs, it is copied as its best match on the chain now shown, the trade described in the On this chain columns (the button is greyed out when there is no match). In both cases SOAP2 checks every leg first (a contract must be known and the strike must be on the OA’s ladder; otherwise it tells you which one is missing and places nothing), then places the legs as model legs through the same path as Load Model, and shows the Risk Graph.
Clear the current models first (ticked by default) does what Model Mgt ▸ Clear All Models does before placing. That clears the model legs of every expiry tab, including the back leg of an earlier calendar or diagonal, and cancels their data requests. Untick it to add the new legs to what is already on the grid.
Search again reads the OA again and repeats the search; strikes that now stream use their live delta. Placed legs subscribe to live data like any model leg, so their deltas turn live on their own.
Nothing is saved: use Save Model in the OA if you want to keep it.
A strike only has a live delta when its row on the shown tab is streaming. Everything else is estimated (Black-Scholes with the best volatility available: the strike’s own, the volatility-surface fit, or the chain’s at-the-money volatility) and labelled so in the Delta from column and the warnings. The builder never opens extra data requests to firm up its estimates; once you place a trade, its legs stream and the figures become live.
Does it place an order? No. It only fills model columns.
Why is my list empty? The range is too tight for the chain (widen the delta or width range), the ATM limit is too small, or the selected strike intervals leave too few strikes. The line above the list says what happened.
Why is Max loss n/a? See Max loss; the summary gives the reason.
The shortlist item is gone. It is over 60 days old.
Can I use it for a strategy that is not in the list? Build the closest one, place it, and change the legs on the grid as usual.