Related:
Requires: Regular edition or above (not available in the Free edition)
This guide takes you from "what is a rule?" to a trade that SOAP2 watches for you all day, using a ready-made template. That is how nearly everyone starts, and most people never need anything more. You will not need to split a trade into parts, write a rule from scratch, or understand any maths.
Important: Trade Rules is new (BETA). SOAP2 only reports and recommends. It never places, changes or cancels an order, and every number in a ready-made template is an example to tune to your own plan, not advice.
You have a plan for each trade, even if it only lives in your head: "I will get out with 21 days left", "I do not want the short strike to get within 3% of the market", "I take profit at 50%". Trade Rules let you write that plan down once. SOAP2 then checks it against your real position every minute, with no window open, and tells you the moment the plan is being broken.
Four words are enough to understand everything else:
| Word | What it is | Example |
|---|---|---|
| Rule | One thing to watch, said like a sentence | Days to expiry falls below 21 |
| Level | The number that triggers it. A rule can have several, from mild to serious | 21, then 14, then 7 |
| Action | What you want to be told to do at that level | Alert, then Reduce, then Close |
| Template | A ready-made set of rules for one kind of trade | Iron condor, Put credit spread |
A complete rule therefore reads: Days to expiry · falls below · 21 → Alert, with 14 → Reduce and 7 → Close on the same line. One rule, three levels.
| Action | Plain meaning |
|---|---|
| Alert | Look at this trade. |
| Adjust | Change the position (move a strike, add a hedge). |
| Roll | Move it to a later expiry. |
| Reduce | Make it smaller. |
| Close | Get out. |
These run from mild to severe. They are recommendations: you decide, and you place any order yourself.
You need three things:
Which trades are watched? A trade whose status is Monitored is always watched. An unmonitored trade is watched only while it is open in an Options Analysis window. Only trades that have rules are evaluated.
The editor opens. A new trade has no rules yet, so the grid is empty.
Click Templates ▸ Suggested for this trade in the toolbar. SOAP2 looks at your open legs and tells you what they form, for example Iron condor or Put credit spread, and offers the matching template. It does nothing until you click a suggestion.
If you already know what you hold, skip this and go to step 3.
Click Templates ▾. The templates are grouped by family (Butterfly, Credit spreads and condors, Debit spreads, Time spreads, Ratio spreads, Long options, Short options). Pick the one that matches your trade. Section 5 below helps you choose.
The template's rules appear in the grid. SOAP2 also fills in the trade's Strategy (for example Iron condor) and adds a few Tags (for example Non-directional, Pos Theta), so you can find the trade later. A Strategy you typed yourself is never replaced.
Nothing is saved yet, so look around freely. The Now column shows what each rule says about your trade today:
| Colour | Meaning |
|---|---|
| Green | Fine. The rule is not triggered. |
| Yellow | Alert level reached. |
| Orange | Adjust or Roll level reached. |
| Red | Reduce or Close level reached. |
| Grey | Cannot be evaluated (see "How much to trust a number", section 9). |
If a freshly applied template is already red, that is useful information: the example levels are tighter than your trade. Either the trade needs attention or the levels need tuning to your plan.
Click a level in the Level column and type. A level looks like 21 Alert, 14 Reduce, 7 Close. The Now column updates at once, so you can see the effect of a change before committing to it. Section 6 explains how to read levels.
Save is what switches monitoring on. Until you press it, everything you did lives on a private copy on screen, and closing the window without saving throws it away.
Press Alt+J (or Trades ▸ Trade rules dashboard). Your trade is listed with its worst open rule on one line. From now on SOAP2 checks it every minute, and writes a line starting with [Rules] in the Message Log whenever a rule changes state.
That is the whole basic workflow: open, apply, look, tune, save, watch.
The dashboard lists every watched trade, most worrying first.
| Column | Meaning |
|---|---|
| Status | The most severe open breach: yellow Alert, orange Adjust/Roll, red Reduce/Close. ok when nothing is breached, ok (acknowledged) when every breach has been acknowledged, n/a when nothing could be evaluated |
| Alerts / Actions / Ack'd | How many open alerts, how many open calls for action, how many acknowledged |
| DTE | Days to the nearest open leg's expiry |
| Data | How trustworthy the numbers are (section 9) |
| Worst open rule | One line, for example Time exit: REDUCE – 10 (needs ≥ 14) |
Select a trade to see each of its rules underneath: current value, levels, state, how long ago it entered that state, and your note.
You will also see the status in two other places, so you often do not need to open the dashboard at all:
You have seen the warning and do not want it nagging you? Select the row on the dashboard:
Neither can hide a worse situation. If the rule gets worse, or recovers, the acknowledgement ends by itself, so an old click can never mask a new problem. Acknowledgements survive a restart of SOAP2.
| Your trade is... | Pick | Family |
|---|---|---|
| A butterfly centred below the market | Bearish butterfly | Butterfly |
| A butterfly centred above the market | Bullish butterfly | Butterfly |
| A butterfly or iron fly at the money | Neutral butterfly / iron fly | Butterfly |
| A put broken-wing butterfly (wide downside wing) | Broken-wing butterfly (bullish lean) | Butterfly |
| A call broken-wing butterfly (wide upside wing) | Broken-wing butterfly (bearish lean) | Butterfly |
| Short put spread + short call spread | Iron condor | Credit spreads and condors |
| A short put spread | Put credit spread | Credit spreads and condors |
| A short call spread | Call credit spread | Credit spreads and condors |
| Long a call, short a higher call | Call debit spread | Debit spreads |
| Long a put, short a lower put | Put debit spread | Debit spreads |
| Short near expiry, long later expiry | Calendar / diagonal | Time spreads |
| Long one put, short more puts below | Put ratio spread | Ratio spreads |
| Long one call, short more calls above | Call ratio spread | Ratio spreads |
| A single long call or put | Long call / long put | Long options |
| A short put and a short call, no protection | Short strangle | Short options |
| A short put backed by cash | Cash-secured put | Short options |
| Stock plus a short call | Covered call | Short options |
If nothing fits exactly, or you just want the basics, Time exit (DTE ladder) is a one-rule template that works for any trade. Not sure? Use Templates ▸ Suggested for this trade.
Section "Templates" of the companion guide, SOAP2 Trade Rules Templates, explains every rule in every template, with its default levels.
The simple view of the editor shows these columns:
On · Rule · Metric · Unit · Fires when · Level · Action · Other settings · Now · Note
Every rule reads like a sentence from left to right:
Days to expiry · falls below · 21 → Alert
This says which way the number has to move for the rule to trigger:
| Choice | Triggers when... | Typical use |
|---|---|---|
| falls below | the value is below the level | days left, cushions, breakevens |
| rises above | the value is above the level | short-strike delta, margin |
| falls to or below | the value reaches the level or lower | stop loss |
| rises to or above | the value reaches the level or higher | profit target |
| crosses above / crosses below / crosses either way | the value passes the level once | the "lean" rules (section 7) |
A rule can hold several levels, each with its own action: 21 Alert, 14 Reduce, 7 Close. Always list them from the mildest to the most severe. For a "falls below" rule, the numbers go down (21, then 14, then 7). For a "rises above" rule they go up (20, then 30). Save will refuse levels in the wrong order and tell you which direction it expects.
The rule's state is the most severe level that is currently reached.
| Rule in the templates | The number is... | Example reading |
|---|---|---|
| Time exit | Days to expiry of the nearest open leg | 21 Alert, 14 Reduce, 7 Close |
| Short put cushion | % between the market and your highest short put | 5 Alert, 3 Adjust: alert when the market is within 5% |
| Short call cushion | % between your lowest short call and the market | same idea, upside |
| Short strike delta | The biggest delta among your short strikes (16 = a 16-delta short) | 20 Alert, 30 Adjust |
| Breakeven cushion | % from the market to the nearest breakeven at expiry. Negative means not profitable at expiry at today's price | 3 Alert, 1 Adjust, 0 Reduce |
| Profit target | P&L as a % of cost (or of Planned Capital if you set one). In the butterfly templates: P&L as a % of the max loss | 25 Alert: tell me when I am up 25% |
| Stop loss | The same P&L %, negative | -50 Close: tell me when I am down 50% (in a butterfly: when half of what it can lose is gone) |
| Margin to capital | Worst-case loss ÷ Planned Capital, as a ratio | 0.5 Alert, 0.7 Reduce means 50% and 70% |
Why butterflies use the max loss: a broken-wing butterfly can be opened for a few cents, so a “% of cost” swings wildly (a $500 loss on a $20 credit is -2500 %). The max loss (the most the position can lose at expiry) is a steady yardstick. Ratio spreads, whose risk has no fixed limit, measure against your Planned Capital instead. Check rules warns you when a P&L % of cost meets a position that cost almost nothing.
Every distance is a cushion: positive means safe, negative means the market has gone past it.
You do not need to touch the Other settings column. It only tells you when a rule uses a setting the simple view hides (a ratio, an absolute value, per-unit, re-arm). The Advanced button shows every setting; both views edit the same rule.
Butterflies and debit spreads have one rule that looks different: Delta crossed above 0 (lost bearish lean), for example.
A bearish butterfly is mostly non-directional but is built to have negative delta. If its delta turns positive, it has lost the lean it was designed for, and you probably want to adjust or re-centre. The rule triggers once, the first time delta passes zero, and then stays flagged however often it wobbles back and forth. This stops the same warning from flapping all day.
Two things to know:
Everything before Save happens on a private copy.
Once you press Save, what is saved cannot be undone from the editor, but you can always edit the rules again.
SOAP2 never shows a rule as "ok" when it simply does not know. A rule that cannot honestly be evaluated shows n/a (or stale), never green.
The Data column on the dashboard says how the trade's figures were obtained:
| Data | Meaning | What happens |
|---|---|---|
| Live | Read from the trade's own Options Analysis window | Normal |
| Estimate | No suitable Options Analysis window, so Greeks and margin are approximated | Normal, marked as an estimate |
| Degraded | The estimate rests on a guess (a leg with no price or no volatility) | Price-based rules can raise at most an Alert, never Reduce or Close. Time rules are unaffected |
| Stale | TWS is disconnected; these are the last known figures | Price-based rules read stale. Time rules still work |
| Missing | No open position could be found | Every rule reads n/a |
Typical reasons for n/a: a leg has no price yet; the trade holds stock or futures (so P&L % cannot be computed: this includes the Covered call template's profit target); Planned Capital is not set for a margin rule. The Note column tells you exactly what is missing.
Margin figures are SOAP2's own worst-case-at-expiry estimate, not your broker's requirement.
Tuned a template until it matches your plan? Save it so it is one click next time:
A ready-made template can never be overwritten: it always opens as a copy, so the original is never lost. Applying a template is also always a copy, so changing or deleting a template later never changes a trade you already set up.
The full story (the Template editor, categories, Switch and Remove) is in SOAP2 Trade Rules Templates.
Nothing happened after I saved. The Message Log records changes. A rule that is already fine says nothing, and one that is already breached when you save is logged once. Open the dashboard to see every rule's current state.
The dashboard is empty. No monitored trade has an enabled rule yet, or the trade is Unmonitored and not open in an Options Analysis window.
A rule says n/a. Read its Note. It says what is missing: a price, a volatility, Planned Capital, or a stock leg.
The Rules label is missing in my Options Analysis window. It is hidden for the Model Trade. Select a real trade.
Can a rule place an order? No. Rules only notify and recommend.
Is the example template a recommendation? No. The levels (21 days, 5%, 50% and so on) are common starting points. Tune them to your own plan.
I rolled the trade. Do I start again? No. The rules follow the trade. Time rules count only legs that are still open, so a leg you closed weeks ago cannot trigger a Close.
My trade is made of two different structures. See the advanced guide, SOAP2 Trade Rules Advanced: Hybrid Trades. Most trades never need it.
[Rules]