Using Optionsmith

1. What Optionsmith is

Optionsmith is a browser-based options workspace that connects directly to your Charles Schwab brokerage account. It does three things that normally require three separate tools:

• Construct — build multi-leg strategies by clicking strikes on a live option chain, and see the payoff curve update as you go.
• Submit — route the finished structure to Schwab as a single order, without retyping it into another platform.
• Manage — track the position through every roll and adjustment, with P&L that follows the whole ongoing position rather than just the latest leg.

2. Getting started

Five steps take you from nothing to a live order. The middle three are one-time setup.

1. Create your account

1. Go to the sign-in page and choose Create account.
2. Enter your email and a password. It must be at least 8 characters and contain an uppercase letter, a lowercase letter and a number — a strength meter and a live “Passwords match” check guide you.
3. Press Create Account. We email you a six-digit code.
4. Enter the code on the verification screen and press Verify Account. If it does not arrive, use Resend Verification Code.
5. You are returned to sign-in. Log in with your new credentials.

Forgotten your password later? Use Forgot password? on the sign-in screen — it emails a reset code and lets you set a new one in the same flow.

2. Complete your profile

On first sign-in Optionsmith sends you straight to Profile and keeps you there until two things are done: you have entered a First Name and Last Name, and you have accepted the User Agreement in the modal that appears. Press I Accept to continue.

3. Start your subscription or trial

Almost every page requires an active subscription or a running trial. New accounts normally receive a free trial; the Subscription button in the top bar shows how many days remain and lets you subscribe through Stripe at any point.

4. Connect Schwab

1. Click Schwab Auth in the top bar. You are handed off to Schwab’s own site.
2. Sign in to Schwab and approve access. Optionsmith never sees your Schwab password.
3. You are returned to the Dashboard and a green Schwab connection established badge appears for a few seconds while your accounts load.

5. Turn on live trading

Order submission is switched off by default, deliberately. Go to Profile and tick Enable Live Trading, then Save Changes.

Until you do, every submit button in the app is greyed out with the note “Enable live trading in your profile to submit orders.” Everything else — quotes, chains, charts, drafts, analytics — works normally. Many traders leave it off while they are learning the platform.

Saving your profile returns you to the Dashboard automatically. You are ready to trade.

3. The top bar

The top bar is present on every page of the app. It holds the symbol launcher on the left, primary navigation in the middle, and account controls on the right.

Symbol launcher

Next to the Optionsmith wordmark is a small symbol box (placeholder SYM) and a Visualizer button. Type a ticker and press Enter, or click the button, to jump straight to the Position Visualizer for that symbol.

• Press ↓ in the empty box to open a dropdown of your recently used symbols; ↑ and ↓ move through the list, Enter selects, Esc closes it.
• Recent symbols are remembered in your browser, and your most recent one is saved to your profile so it follows you between devices.

Connection and activity indicators

Beside the launcher is a small status readout that tells you what the app is currently doing against the Schwab API. It shows one of four modes:

When your brokerage link is healthy, a green Schwab connection established badge appears next to the wordmark. If it is missing, re-authorise with Schwab Auth (see Getting started).

Navigation

Buttons run left to right across the bar. Two of them are dropdown menus — clicking the button itself goes to the primary page, while hovering reveals the sub-pages.

Administrators also see Admin and Troubleshoot buttons. These are internal tools and are not part of the normal trading workflow.

4. Dashboard

The Dashboard (the Dashboard button, or the home page once you are signed in) is your live view of every open position. It combines account balances, portfolio totals, and a sortable positions table that updates on its own.

What’s across the top

• Profile and Subscription cards — your name, whether live trading is on, and your subscription status with a Manage link to billing.
• Account cards — one per Schwab account, showing net liquidation, buying power, cash and round trips. Click Add nickname on a card to give an account a friendly name that then appears everywhere.
• Widgets — optional stat tiles that track P&L for a single tag or strategy type, plus small spark charts for any ticker you like. Manage them with the Widgets button.

Portfolio totals

Two strips sit above the table. The first is your headline numbers; the second is net position Greeks (delta, gamma, theta, vega, rho).

The positions table

Each row is one position. Click anywhere on a row to expand it; the expansion shows a visual price rail of every leg (with strikes, marks and a live underlying marker) and an Actions panel.

• Sorting — click any column header. First click sorts ascending; click again to reverse. Your choice is remembered.
• Columns — the Columns button lets you show, hide and drag-reorder columns. Changes save instantly. Useful optional columns include DTE, P/L % Max Profit, and Closed P/L.
• Grouping — if you have more than one Schwab account, rows are automatically grouped under account headings.
• Colour — profit is green, loss is red. Manual positions carry a gold Manual badge and a gold edge. A position with a working closing order shows a pulsing ring.

Row actions

Filtering

The Filters button opens filters for tag, symbol, DTE range, open-P&L range, account, real-vs-manual, and stock-vs-option positions. When a filter is active, a green dot appears on the button and a banner above the table tells you how many positions are hidden — and specifically calls out any you opened in the last hour, so a fresh trade never silently disappears. Clear Filters resets everything. Filters follow you between browsers.

Keeping data fresh

Quotes, Greeks and live P&L refresh automatically. Positions reload themselves when an order fills, so you rarely need to do anything. When you do want to force a full rebuild from the broker, use Fresh Reload — it bypasses the cache and re-pulls recent history, so it is a little heavier than an ordinary refresh.

Manual positions

Manual Positions opens a ledger for trades you want to track that are not in your Schwab account. These records are kept in a separate store that broker syncs and rebuilds never touch, and they appear on the Dashboard with a Manual badge. Use + New Manual Position to enter a symbol and its legs by hand.

5. Trade — building an order

The Trade page is where Optionsmith earns its keep: you build a multi-leg strategy by clicking strikes on a live option chain, watch the draft assemble itself, and submit the whole thing to Schwab as one order.

Loading a symbol

1. Type a ticker into the Ticker box and press Enter.
2. Choose an Expiration from the dropdown. Each entry shows the date, days to expiry, and a coloured dot when you already hold options in that expiration (red for short, green for long).
3. The chain loads: calls on the left, puts on the right.

On the left is your Watchlist panel; click any symbol there to load it. The bar above the chain shows the last price, a liquidity score, and your selected account with its net-liq and buying-power figures (a Mask toggle hides the dollar amounts for screen-sharing).

The option chain

Each side shows Strike, Bid, Ask, Delta, and a Buy/Sell button pair. In-the-money rows are shaded, and the at-the-money boundary is marked.

• Click Buy or Sell on a strike to add that leg. The button on the side you picked switches to Clear; clicking the opposite side flips the leg instead of adding a second one.
• The Gamma Exposure control (Off / Volume / Open Interest) shades strikes by dealer gamma so you can see where it concentrates.
• Small markers in the Strike cell show any open position you already hold at that strike.

Two ways to build a strategy fast

Click a strike number (not the Buy/Sell buttons) to open a Quick Template menu right there, with one-click Vertical Spread, Iron Condor, Butterfly, Broken Wing Butterfly, Calendar Spread and Batman builders anchored on that strike.

Or open the Strategy Templates drawer for a guided builder with explicit width, direction and quantity controls. Hovering a template previews its legs on the chain before you commit.

The Order Drafts panel

As you add legs they collect in an Order Draft on the right. Each draft holds up to four option legs; adding more automatically starts a new draft. Within a draft you can:

• Adjust each leg’s quantity with its +/− buttons, or drag legs to reorder or move them between drafts.
• Read the live net Mid, and set a Limit price. The limit tracks the live mid until you type your own value.
• Toggle Debit/Credit intent on multi-leg orders.
• Add shares with the stock row, or log the draft as a manual position with Manual Position instead of sending it.

Submitting

1. Press Market Order or Limit Order on the draft.
2. The confirmation popup shows every leg, the price and duration (GTC or Day), a risk/reward summary, and the account. Optionsmith validates leg consistency and buying power here.
3. If you already hold that underlying, choose Add To Existing or Create New Position so the fill lands where you intend.
4. Confirm with Submit Order. You can fan a single order out to several accounts at once, each with its own quantity multiplier.

After submitting, the draft stays visible with a WORKING badge until it fills or is cancelled, and the Order Drawer opens so you can watch it. When it fills, a banner (and a sound) confirms it.

6. Position Visualizer

The Position Visualizer is the payoff-and-risk cockpit. Reach it from the Visualizer launcher in the top bar, or from Visualize on any position. It plots the profit/loss curve of a position — existing, drafted, or a mix — and lets you reshape it directly on the chart.

Reading the chart

• The curve shows profit and loss across underlying price, with the zero line, profit/loss shading, a NOW price marker and a Break Even pill for each breakeven.
• An expected-move band spans the top. Optional Open, Close and ATR markers add reference lines.
• The summary bar underneath reports Open Unrealized P/L, Prob. of Profit, Chart Max Risk, Chart Max Profit, Risk Reward Multiple and more — recalculated live.

Curve mode and the projection slider

The At Exp / Present / Both control switches between the payoff at expiration and the modelled value today. In Present or Both, a projection slider appears — drag it to model any date between now and expiration and watch the present-value curve move.

Building and adjusting on the chart

• Click a strike-axis label for a quick add-leg menu, or open Strategy Templates for the guided builder (verticals, condors, butterflies, calendars).
• Drag a leg’s pill sideways to change its strike. Dragging an existing position leg builds a roll for you — a close-and-reopen pair — and leaves a faint “before” marker; drag it back to its original strike to cancel.
• Click any leg pill to edit its quantity, change it, or delete it.

Themes and exposure overlays

A Theme selector restyles the chart (seven themes), and the Exposure overlay draws volume- or open-interest-based gamma bars along the strike axis. Hovering a strike shows a full call/put tooltip with bid/ask, Greeks, IV, volume and open interest. These preferences are remembered across every symbol you visit.

Order drafts and submission

Drafts here work exactly as on the Trade page — up to four legs each, multiple drafts, per-draft limit and market submission, and a Submit All path when you have several drafts going at once. You can also export the current legs as a Export TradingView Data string to recreate them on a TradingView chart.

7. Position detail & rolling

The Position Detail page is the full record of a single position — every leg, every adjustment, its groups, tags and notes, and the actions that manage it. Open it from Details on a Dashboard row.

The stat cards

Two rows of cards summarise the position:

The trades table

Every leg and adjustment is listed. You can select trades (the Action column), add optional columns via the column picker, and drag rows into groups to manage related legs together. Add Adjustment inserts a manual cash adjustment (for example, a roll credit) as its own row.

Managing the position

The action toolbar is organised by what you want to do:

• Close — select open legs, then Close Selected. For a big or multi-account position Optionsmith builds a close-order plan that submits several orders in sequence. Flatten Position closes everything at market; Take Profit Order stages a closing order at a target.
• Roll — select one or two open option legs and choose Roll Selected (see below).
• Set Stop — place a stop on a single selected leg.
• Organise — create groups, set a group type, add tags, notes and a nickname, and filter the table by group type.
• Analyse — jump to the Visualizer, a price chart, or the Performance view.

Rolling, step by step

1. Select the open option leg (or two legs) you want to roll, then press Roll Selected. All selected legs must be in the same account.
2. In the roll window, pick the target Expiration. Two chains appear.
3. Click Buy/Sell on the chain to choose your replacement legs. The right panel lists the legs being closed and the new legs, and computes the net credit or debit.
4. Set a Limit Price (or go market), review the resulting risk/reward, and submit.

Setting a close target by percentage

In the close and take-profit dialogs, the P/L % strip shows your position against cost basis, trade risk and max profit. Press 🎯 Set % to type a target percentage and have Optionsmith work out the corresponding limit price for you, rounded in your favour to the correct tick.

Performance Analysis

Performance opens a detailed history of the position: Rolling P/L Total, High, Low and P/L Range tiles, the underlying-price statistics, the latest Greeks, and a chart of rolling P&L over time with open and close events marked. A data table below lists every snapshot. Hover the chart for the exact value and time at any point.

8. Orders

The Orders page is your order tape — working, queued and filled orders across your accounts.

Finding orders

• Account filters to one account or All.
• Range covers Today, Past 2 Days, This Week, This Month, or Specific Dates (which enables the date pickers).
• The status chips FILLED, ACTIVE and ALL toggle which orders show. ACTIVE is working orders; FILLED is completed ones.

Reading a row

Each row shows the symbol, account, order ID, status, order type, entered and completed times, quantity, price, and every leg. Bracket child orders (a stop or take-profit attached to a parent) are indented beneath their parent and tagged SL or TP. Working orders also show a live Current Mid so you can see how far your limit is from the market.

Changing a working order

Orders that are still working or queued offer two actions:

• Cancel Order — requests cancellation. The row shows Cancel Requested until Schwab confirms.
• Adjust Order — replace the order with a new price or switch between market and limit. A Use Mid shortcut fills in the current mid for you.

The same controls are available in the Order Drawer — the Order Drawer tab pinned to the bottom of the trading pages — which refreshes every few seconds while it is open, so you can watch and manage a resting order without leaving the chain.

9. Closed positions & income

The Closed button opens your archive of fully-closed positions; its dropdown also holds Dividends & Interest.

Closed Positions

A summary strip across the top gives you Total P/L, Positions, Avg P/L Per Trade (per position, strictly), % Win Rate, Avg P/L Per Day and a Projected Yearly P/L, all for the current filter.

Filter by account, trade type, symbol, tag, group type and date range; the range defaults to the last six months. Every filter applies immediately. Click a position to expand its trades, where you can group legs, add adjustments, split trades into a separate position with Move to Position, or Hide it.

Per-position chips let you review it:

• Performance — the rolling-P&L history for that trade.
• Chart — a price chart for the period it was open, with the payoff zone drawn on.
• Tags, Notes, Nickname — labels for later filtering and review.

You can also add trades that never touched your broker with Add Manual Position.

Unhide Positions

Reached from the Unhide Positions button in the Closed Positions header. It lists everything you have hidden — from the Dashboard or from Closed Positions — and restores any of them with Unhide. Hidden positions keep all their trades, notes and tags while they are out of view; they are simply excluded from your P&L totals until you bring them back.

Dividends & Interest

A running record of dividend and interest payments, with Total, Dividends, Interest and Count for the current filter. Set the account, a description filter and a date range, then press Apply.

If you enable Add dividend payments to position tracking in your profile, a Position Link column appears. Use Link to Position to attach a dividend to the open or closed position it belongs to — it then counts toward that position’s P&L. When a new dividend arrives, a banner notifies you with a View Dividends → shortcut.

10. Analytics

The Analytics button in the top bar opens Position Analytics. Hovering it reveals three more destinations.

Position Analytics

Headed Analytics Foundry on screen. This page is filter-first: it deliberately shows nothing until you have chosen a data window and pressed Generate Data. Until then you will see the prompt “Click Generate Data to build analytical data”.

Choosing what gets counted

Two controls at the top change the meaning of every number on the page, so set them before you read anything.

Stat Level decides what counts as one “trade”:

• Position — one unit per closed position. The default, and the right choice for most questions.
• Group — one unit per trade group inside a position, with any ungrouped remainder as one more unit.
• Single Trade — one unit per individual leg, with P&L recomputed leg by leg.

+ Open folds your currently open positions into the same statistics. When it is on, the first panel’s heading changes from Closed Performance to Performance. Both settings are remembered between visits.

Filters

Filters are drafts — nothing recalculates until you press Generate Data again.

Clear Filters resets everything. Export Data for AI downloads a JSON file of every position matching the current filters, including leg detail — useful for feeding your trade history to an external model.

How the headline numbers are actually calculated

Several of these differ from the textbook definition, so they are worth knowing precisely.

The panels

Account Analysis

Risk exposure for your open book in a single account. Pick an account from the dropdown at the top right — nothing renders until you do.

Six cards run across the top:

Below those sit a Risk Exposure Gauge (with net delta and theta), a Risk Allocation by Ticker donut, and a Portfolio Health card that grades your diversification and risk level and warns you by name about any position with unlimited loss potential.

Risk Breakdown by Ticker

Sort with % Acct, Risk $, P/L or A→Z; clicking the active one reverses direction. Click any row to expand a per-trade table with columns Trade, Qty, Risk, % Acct, Δ Delta and Θ Theta.

Risk is spread-aware rather than naive. Where a short leg is protected by a long, the pair’s risk is the strike width and it is charged entirely to the short leg — the protective long shows — and a note such as “protecting 450C”. Naked shorts are labelled “naked (unlimited)”.

Rebalancing stock allocations

If any ticker holds stock, a Rebalance Stock Allocations button appears at the foot of the breakdown.

1. Set a Target % for each ticker. A running total and an “Over-allocated” warning appear in the header.
2. Optionsmith generates the buy and sell orders needed to reach those targets, showing shares to trade and estimated value.
3. Choose LIMIT or MARKET per order and set a limit price. Editing a buy limit re-derives the quantity so the order never exceeds the target allocation.
4. Press Submit, confirm in the order popup, and the order routes to Schwab.

History charts

Account Value Over Time and Risk % Over Time plot daily snapshots that Optionsmith records automatically. Hover for a crosshair and exact value. If you have just started, you will see “No history available yet” — the series fills in as snapshots accumulate.

Profit Garden

Profit Garden models the probability distribution of outcomes across your whole open book. Set Trade Type, Take Profit and Stop Loss, then press GO — nothing is computed until you do.

• Take Profit offers Hold to Expiration, a percentage of max profit, or an absolute dollar target.
• Stop Loss offers Hold to Expiration, Stop when Short Breached, a percentage of max loss, a multiple of credit collected, or an absolute dollar loss.

The Portfolio HUD reports Probability of Profit, Expected P/L, and Modeled Best / Modeled Worst, above a histogram of aggregate outcomes. Hovering a bar gives you the bucket range, its probability, and the cumulative probability on each side.

Garden of Blooms draws one flower per position: the cyan ring fills in proportion to probability of profit, the core glows green or red by expected P&L, and each petal is one option leg — gold for long, red for short.

Two modelling caveats worth holding in mind: only option legs are modelled (stock legs are dropped), and positions on the same underlying are treated as perfectly correlated while different underlyings are treated as fully independent.

Trading Plans

A trading plan is a written document you keep inside Optionsmith — your rules, position-sizing tables and notes, in one place you can consult while trading. Exactly one plan can be active at a time.

A plan has three kinds of content:

• Trading Rules — each with a category (Entry, Exit, Risk, Position Sizing, Psychology, General), a priority (Critical through Optional), and a switch to deactivate it without deleting it.
• Scaling Tables — free-form grids for position sizing or risk matrices. Start from + Sample Scaling Table for a ready-made profit-threshold ladder, or + Empty Table to build your own columns.
• Additional Sections — titled free-text blocks for anything else.

Export downloads the plan as a standalone, formatted HTML file with your rules grouped by category — handy for printing or keeping alongside a trading journal.

Wherever you are in the app, a vertical PLAN tab at the edge of the screen slides out a read-only view of your active plan, so you can check your rules without leaving the trade you are working on.

11. Profile & settings

The Profile page holds your identity and the settings that change how the platform behaves. Remember to press Save Changes — and note that saving returns you to the Dashboard.

12. Subscription

The Subscription button opens your plan and billing, handled through Stripe. Optionsmith offers a single plan; the page adapts to your current state.

• On a trial — it shows how many days remain and offers Start Subscription whenever you are ready.
• Active — it shows your renewal date and a Manage Subscription button that opens Stripe’s portal to update your card or cancel.
• Payment failed — Update Payment takes you to the portal to fix it.
• Expired or cancelled — Restart Subscription reactivates access.

13. Mobile

On a phone, Optionsmith switches to a touch layout with a five-tab bar along the bottom: Dashboard, Trade, Chart, Orders and More. The More menu reaches everything else — Positions, Analytics, Profit Garden, Account Analysis, Dividends & Interest, Closed Positions, Trading Plans, the Trade Visualizer, Subscription, Profile, and Schwab Auth.

The core workflow — viewing positions, building and submitting trades, managing orders, connecting Schwab, and editing your profile — all works on mobile. A few desktop conveniences are not carried over: the side drawers (watchlist, price chart, journal), the guided tutorial hints, and a handful of profile tools such as the tag manager, Discord publishing, transaction export and data purge. For those, use a desktop browser.

14. Troubleshooting

A banner says “Schwab Authorization Required”

Your Schwab link has lapsed — this happens roughly weekly by Schwab’s design. Click Authorize Now and sign in to Schwab again. It takes about fifteen seconds and your positions reappear on their own.

Submit buttons are greyed out

Live trading is off. Go to Profile, tick Enable Live Trading, and save. See §11.

“Schwab Auth” seems to do nothing

The button is inactive without an active subscription or trial. Check your Subscription status first.

A position I opened isn’t showing on the Dashboard

A filter is probably hiding it. Look for the green dot on the Filters button and the “positions hidden” banner, and press Clear Filters. If you had hidden it deliberately, restore it from Unhide Positions (§9).

Prices seem slow to update

Trial accounts refresh quotes less frequently than paid subscriptions; a banner on the Dashboard notes this. Otherwise, use Fresh Reload to force a rebuild from the broker.

An order shows a temporary-unavailable message

Optionsmith could not immediately confirm the order with Schwab. Check your Orders and positions before resubmitting, so you do not send it twice.

Still stuck?

Email support@optionsmith.com and we’ll help.

15. Glossary