Ledger of Alpha records long or short calls and puts — one contract per trade here, or a multi-leg structure of up to eight legs as a single trade. Options are available on Essential and Pro (and during your trial). New to the jargon? See the Options terms glossary.
Logging a contract
- On the trade entry page, set Asset to Options.
- Symbol is the underlying (e.g. AAPL) — the chart and quotes resolve it as the stock.
- Pick Call or Put, then enter the strike and expiration. A live DTE readout shows days to expiry.
- Side is Long (you bought the contract to open) or Short (you sold it to open — writing it). Brokers call those orders BTO and STO; Ledger of Alpha shows the position, not the order verb.
- Entry premium / Exit premium are per share; Contracts is your size. P&L uses the standard ×100 multiplier automatically.
Unrealized P&L on an open contract
An open options trade is marked against its own contract's price, not the underlying's. Current shows the contract's last traded premium, in the same units as your Entry, and unrealized P&L is (current premium − entry premium) × contracts × 100. A multi-leg structure is marked as the net of its legs, per combo — the same arithmetic that produced the net debit or credit you opened it for.
- If the contract has no quote, you get “—”, not a guess. Thinly-traded and expired contracts often have no recent trade, and a structure is only marked when every leg is quoted — a partial net would look like a real number.
- Prices are delayed last-trade prices. On a wide bid/ask an option's last trade can be hours old, so treat the figure as an estimate and use your broker for anything that has to be exact.
Fixed 3 Sep 2026: open options previously showed a wildly inflated unrealized P&L (and inflated the dashboard portfolio value with it) because the premium was being compared against theunderlying's share price — a $5.00 call on a $325 stock reported a five-figure gain. Nothing was stored wrong; it was a display calculation, so the figures corrected themselves as soon as the fix shipped.
How it reads in the trades table
- The Symbol cell shows the underlying, a colour-coded strike pill, and a line underneath with the contract, its expiry and its DTE — e.g. $155 Call · 15 Jan 27 · 135 DTE. A structure shows its name and leg count instead.
- Qty is labelled cts (contracts), or combos for a multi-leg structure.
- Two optional columns, Contract and Expiry, can be switched on from the column picker if you want to sort by strike or expiration. They read “—” on non-options rows.
Browse the live chain
Once you've set the underlying, click Browse chain in the option contract card to open a live chain from the market. Choose an expiration, switch between calls and puts, and click a strike — it fills the type, strike, expiration, and the mid premium for you (no need to look it up elsewhere). Chain quotes are delayed and cover currently-listed contracts only, so for an expired contract you still type the premium from your broker statement.
Expire worthless
If the option expires out of the money, click Expired worthless in the Exit section — it closes the trade at a $0 exit premium on the expiration date. A long option shows the full premium as a loss; a short option keeps the full premium as profit.
The option plan card
In options mode the Trade Plan card becomes an Option Plan card: break-even underlying, max profit and max loss, a payoff-at-expiry diagram, and DTE — all from your contract inputs.
Assignment and spreads
Early exercise or assignment turns an option into a stock position — log that resulting stock as a separate trade. For verticals, condors, straddles and calendars, turn on Multi-leg in the option contract card and record the whole structure as one trade — see Multi-leg option structures.