Although Capitally is geared toward long-term investors, some of them generate important part of their wealth from options trading. Tracking returns and value of option positions is cumbersome without the built-in support.
The idea here is to allow importing or adding transactions on stock options, so that one can see the returns and value of such positions - just like the rest of the portfolio. It is not meant to be a tool for advanced options trading - the same as it is not the tool for stock picking.
This means that metrics that relate only to options - like the Greeks - rather won’t be supported. However, it should be possible to clearly understand. What are your current positions, how they compare and how are various option strategies working for you - just like with the regular stocks.
This means the following to be handled at minimum:
Option transactions - Buy & Sell with Put & Call. Providing an underlying asset, premium, strike price and expiry date.
Displaying options as another position type under the asset, so once the option is exercised, the value and return stays correct.
Option transactions are handled by tax presets.
The current option value wouldn’t be sourced from markets. It might be a simple calculation based on the current market price of the underlying asset. The intrinsic value could be calculated (e.g. using the Black-Scholes formula) as well.
In-the-money or out-of-money state should be displayed for each lot.
Options should exercise or expire automatically. When exercised, the transaction that buys/sells the stock should be reconcilable with broker statements the same as Dividends are.
Options should account for splits.
My knowledge about options is very limited. If you’re interested in this feature, I’d love to hear what would you need to see and be able to do, to make importing your option trades worthwhile.
I normally sell CSPs (cash secured put) for ETFs or Stocks when I want to add to my positions and I also sell CCs (covered call) to go out of some positions
I try to get around 1-2% per month of income by doing this
I do this in IB account. At the moment I just generate a report in IB every month to check how much money I made in premium and I keep track of this in a separated spreadsheet
If you need for testing I can share some IB export with you
In the first instance just creating an asset category (points 1 + 2) in advance of creating the additional funtionality you describe (points 5 to 7) would be an appreciated initial step.
Personally I buy call options to gain leveraged exposure to stocks (while limiting my downside).
I’m also considering using options to (a) hedge long positions and to (b) generate income by selling covered calls on long term positions in my portfolio.
I think you should start by at least tracking market value and P&L on the positions for naked options and just the basic, covered call and protective put. You can later bring in more complex and range bound strategies, butterfly, iron condor, etc.
Please share the time-line for tracking the open and closed P&L on basic/naked option positions. I’m looking to sign up from Canada. Want to get a sense of the time-line before committing to your product.
Hello Phil, Options are not placed on the roadmap yet, so I can’t commit to a time-line. If there’s enough interest, I’d assume they could be part of Capitally somewhere within the next 6-12 months.
I know some users who trade options, and they track exercised options plus income and expenses while waiting for fully-fledged support.
