Options Trading Software for Indian Brokers

What is options trading software?

Options trading software lets you work with an option strategy instead of with single orders. A strategy is made of several options bought and sold together — its legs. Placed by hand, that is several separate orders, typed one after another, while the prices move under you. Placed across more than one account, it is that many orders again.

Stocks Developer gives you one screen for the whole job. You build the structure once on a live option chain, check what it is worth and what it can lose, and then place every leg into every account you choose in a single click.

It is a tools-only platform. You choose the strategy, the strikes and the size. Nothing is sent until you click Place.

Build the strategy on a live option chain

The chain updates in real time. Pick the underlying and the expiry at the top, then build the structure the way that suits you:

• Click B or S beside a strike. Buy or sell, one click each, exactly the strikes you want.
• Or pick a ready-made shape — a straddle, a strangle, an iron condor and others. The screen builds the legs around the current price for you. The shapes are shapes, not recommendations.

Every leg you add appears in a basket under the chain, with its own live price and value.

The whole screen at a glance — click any picture on this page to see it full size.

Once a leg is on the basket, a minus and a plus button beside it walk it to another strike. You do not have to delete the leg and start again, and the rest of the structure stays exactly as it is.

Place every leg into many accounts at once

This is the part that is hard to do by hand and easy here.

When the structure is ready, Review and place opens one window listing your accounts. Tick the accounts that should trade it, give each one its own size, and place. One click sends every leg into every ticked account.

Those accounts can be at different brokers. The platform is broker-independent, so one click can put the same structure into accounts at eight brokers at once.

Each account shows the available margin your broker reports for it, so you can see which accounts have room before you commit. Each account is placed independently, so a problem in one never stops the others.

If you trade the same set of accounts at the same sizes often, save it as a named allocation. Next time it is one click.

See the payoff before you place

As the structure comes together, the screen works out its payoff at expiry: the profit or loss at a range of underlying prices, with the maximum profit, the maximum loss and every breakeven called out.

The chart draws two lines: what the structure is worth at expiry, and where it stands today. Every strike and every breakeven gets its own row in the table beside it, because those are the only prices where the answer changes.

Where a structure has no cap on one side, the screen says Unlimited rather than printing a figure that would not be true. That is a real answer, not a missing number — it is what a sold option with nothing bought beyond it actually means.

These figures are arithmetic on the prices your legs show right now. They are not a forecast, and they are not advice.

Know what crossing the spread will cost

Every leg goes in at market, so the price you get is the price on the other side of the spread. On a thinly traded strike that gap is real money, and it is invisible until the fills come back.

The screen measures it for you. Each leg carries a plain tag when it needs one — wide, very wide, not traded or no quote — and the basket totals the likely cost of crossing, in rupees, before you place.

It warns, it never blocks. A far out-of-the-money leg is legitimately wide, and you may have a good reason for it. The screen’s job is to make sure the cost is not a surprise.

Buy legs go before sell legs

Whatever order you built them in, the bought legs are always sent first.

The reason is margin. The bought leg is the one that caps your risk, and the sold leg is the one that raises what your broker needs. Sending them the other way round would leave a defined-risk structure briefly standing as a naked short. You do not have to think about it — the screen simply does it.

You can go one step further and tick wait for the buy legs to fill before selling. Then the sell legs go only once the protection is confirmed on. If the buys do not fill within a few seconds, the sell legs for that account are not sent at all, and whatever did buy stays on. It is checked by default, and you can clear it.

A target and a stop-loss on each leg

Each leg can carry its own target, stop-loss and trailing step. It is optional, and most structures use none of it.

You set the unit once for the whole column — a percentage of the fill price, a distance in points, or an exact price. Then you decide who holds the stop-loss:

• Your broker — a real stop order rests at your broker.
• Our platform — we watch the price and send the exit when your level is hit. This works on every broker we support, including brokers that offer nothing like it themselves, and it is the only choice that can trail.

Per-leg protection is available on intraday structures. The screen checks the combination before it lets you place, and says plainly what needs changing.

Save a strategy and reuse it

Save a structure with a name and one click loads it back onto the chain.

What it saves is the shape, not the strike numbers. A leg is remembered as something like the call two strikes out of the money, so a structure saved last week comes back centred on this week’s price instead of on strikes the market has already walked away from. If you do want one leg pinned to an exact strike, there is a tick box for it.

Saving never places anything. Neither does loading. Placing is always the Review and place step, and always your click.

What it costs

Nothing extra. The Options screen is part of your plan, on every account, with nothing to switch on.

You pay only the normal account price — ₹295 to ₹495 per account per month, inclusive of all taxes — and every new account gets a free 1-month trial on every broker. If your broker needs a static IP, it is a small tax-inclusive add-on from ₹100 per month, or you can bring your own for free.

See the pricing page for the full details.

It is in beta — start small

The Options screen is open to every user, and it is still marked beta while we finish testing it.

That means one thing in practice: check your order book at your broker after you place a structure, and start with a small size on one account before you use it for real size. There is a Send feedback button at the foot of the screen, and what it sends decides what gets built there next.

What this screen does not do

• It does not decide what to trade. You choose the strategy, the strikes and the size.
• It does not tell you whether a structure is a good idea, or suggest a strike, an expiry or a size. The ready-made shapes are shapes you can pick from, not recommendations.
• It does not place anything on its own. Nothing is sent until you click Place.
• It does not work out your margin requirement. It shows the available margin your broker reports, so you can see which accounts have room. What a structure actually needs is decided by your broker and the exchange.
• It does not close the structure for you. You square off when you decide to.

New to options? Option terms explained covers call and put, strike, expiry, lot size, premium, breakeven and the common multi-leg shapes in plain English.