Every short leg is covered by a long of the same type — the builder only accepts defined-risk structures.
One trade per session, at a time and on the days you choose.
Close by profit target, stop loss, or the 4:00 PM ET close.
Building from a template
Start from a template — a single long leg, a vertical spread, an iron condor, and other common structures — then customize it. The template seeds the legs so you only adjust the parts you care about.
Defining legs
Each leg specifies four things:
Strike selection decides how each strike is picked at entry. Rather than typing a fixed number, you choose a rule — by delta (e.g. the 16-delta strike), a number of points OTM, by premium (the strike whose price is closest to a target — the ask when you buy the leg, the bid when you sell it), at the money, or a multiple of the expected move. Choosing strikes relatively means the strategy adapts to where the market is each day.
Entry rules
One trade per session, at a chosen time — for example, shortly after the open.
Optionally restrict to specific weekdays.
A strategy opens one trade per session — a single entry, ever. To run several entries in a day, build one strategy per entry time and combine them in a portfolio, which backtests each entry independently and aggregates the results.
The entry time is also a deadline: it defines a one-minute entry window, and the trade is only ever attempted inside it. An entry order that hasn’t filled by the end of that minute is abandoned rather than left to fill later — when a bot runs the strategy live, the platform cancels it for you. An entry meant for 9:45 never becomes a fill at 9:52 on strikes picked seven minutes earlier.
Exit rules
Define how each position closes:
Exit at a percentage of maximum profit.
Exit at a percentage of maximum loss.
Exit at a set time, or hold to the 4:00 PM ET close.
The live preview is the real thing
The preview panel doesn't run a watered-down estimate — every configuration you assemble is a real backtest over the full history, at the standard $100,000 per-session capital, with your fee schedule applied to what you see. Results stream in session by session for a new configuration, and appear instantly when you come back to one you've already tried. If the form still has errors, the preview is covered with a prompt to fix them first.
Saving — and cloning instead of editing
Save keeps the strategy on your list with the results it already has; nothing re-runs. Saved strategies are immutable — the configuration that produced the results can never drift out from under them. To iterate on a saved strategy, clone it: the builder opens pre-filled, and your changes become a new strategy (which may already have results if you previewed that variation before).
Keeps the strategy with the results it already has — nothing re-runs.
The configuration can never drift out from under its results.
Opens the builder pre-filled from the saved strategy.
Your changes become a new strategy of its own.
Tips
The preview re-runs on every edit, so iterate like an experiment: adjust only the short delta, watch the metrics move, then adjust only the exit. Two changes at once and you won’t know which one mattered.
Fixed strike numbers stop making sense as SPX drifts over months of history; delta, points-OTM, and expected-move selections adapt to each day’s market, which is what makes a strategy testable across the whole archive.
Two configurations with similar total return can have wildly different max drawdowns and losing streaks. The one you’d actually keep running through a bad week is the better strategy.
When a variation works, save it and clone again from there rather than mutating one work-in-progress — the strategy list becomes a family tree of what you tried, each entry with results attached.
Next steps
Open the strategy's page to explore its results in depth — equity curve, calendar, per-session drill-downs. To run several entries a day side by side, combine strategies in a portfolio; to run one hands-free against the live session, hand it to a bot.