Making a trade - Paper Trading and Broker Trading

In the last section, we used our Option Strategy Builder to create and modify an option strategy. In this section, we’ll see how to finally trade it.

Paper Trading vs Trading into your Broker Account

Paper trading involves using a virtual trading account to simulate real trades without risking actual money. All that happens is that the trade you make will get tracked according to the live market. No money exchanges hands.

Trading into your broker account, on the other hand, involves trading the strategy with actual money involved.

Here’s a detailed article on the pros and cons of each, and how to select what is better for you in which situation.

How to Make a Trade

Step 1

After creating your strategy in the Option Strategy Builder and modifying it with the Option Chain, decide whether you want to make a Paper Trade or place a Real Trade directly with your linked broker account (How do I link my broker account?) and click on that option.

Trade Button

Here, I’ve made a real trade with my linked broker account.

Step 2

In the window that that pop up, you can see all relevant details about your order for confirmation. You can toggle between Market and Limit, depending on whether you want your positions to be executed at the market rate or only once the limit you set is reached.

Order Execution Window

Step 3

You can choose to execute each position individually, or trade all at once with the Execute All button at the bottom. Once you click here, your trades get executed and you will be prompted to view them in Orders and Positions, which is our novelty Strategy tracking tool. It auto tracks the PnL of your entire strategy, for both, real orders and paper trades.