OptionChain

Table of contents:  

You can open the option chain from the chart-toolbar with this symbol:

 

This symbol refers to a uppercase greek delta letter, which therefore associates to the greeks shown and calculated in the OptionChain. If you are connected to a datafeed which is able to receive option-data for the underlying you have opened in your chart, the OptionChain will load and data will appear in the table. 
 

 

The left side of the chain shows data for Calls, the right side shows Put-information. In the middle column, each available strike price is shown. If you open e.g. the AAPL stock in your chart and then load the OptionChain, automatically the available optionexpiries (tabs) and available strikes (rows) will be loaded. There is one row which has darker background than the others – this is the at-the-money (ATM) strike, which means it is the strike which is nearest to the current price of the underlying. The rows with lighter background are the in-the-money (ITM) options, while the darker background indicates out-of-the-money (OTM) options.

 

You also can open a standalone OptionChain with Main -> New -> OptionChain.

SETTINGS

​1. General Settings

1 Expirations

AgenaTrader is automatically detecting the available option-expiries for each individual instrument. Each expiry is a single Tab with following information:  

• Expiry-Date
• Regular expiry (R) or weekly expiry
• Days remaining until expiry

You can increase the shown expiries (tabs) by changing the number in the Expiration-field. The available expiries are limited regarding how far in the future they are provided.

1.1.1.2. 2 Strikes

Here you can select, how many strikes in total should be shown in the OptionChain. The ATM strike is not considered in this count. If you choose a strike count of 10, then 5 strikes above the ATM-strike and 5 strikes below the ATM-strike will be shown. If you increase the number of strikes, a new strike will be added one time above and one time below the ATM-strike alternately.  

1.1.1. OptionLines

 By activating „Show OptionLines“, each specific option which you click on in the OptionChain from now on will be graphically shown in the underlying chart. In that way, you can easily check visually, how far the strike price would be away from the current market price, as well as how far in the future the expiry will be.     If you activate „Temp. Lines“, only the lines for the latest clicked option are drawn in the chart. With the „Expiry“ and „Strikes“ you can change the color of each new shown option in the chart.  You can use this tool to quickly check, where you want to place your option-orders.  

1.1.2. StrikeRanges

 With this tool you can add far-away strikes to your strike-list. That is particularly useful if you for example want to write calls or puts e.g. 10% above/below the current market price. In that case you can set the lower range to 10-12%, thus all strikes which are 10-12% below from the current market price will be added to your OptionChain, vice versa for the upper range.  You can select if you put the values in „%“ (values between 0 and 100 allowed) or in absolute numbers „Abs“. With the „Abs“ setting, you e.g. can put the lower range to 110-130 for AAPL options, consequently all strikes with are between these pricec this range will be added to your OptionChain. Activating the „Fix“ checkbox means, the borders you are set for the ranges will not be included in the selection. If we take the example from above with lower absolute range 110-130, then strikes of 110 and 130 will not be included in the list. If you deactivate the „Fix“ checkbox, the OptionChain will add the border-values to the selection. If there are no strikes for the border-values, the next available strike will be added to the list, even if it is slightly out of the range. In that way, you can avoid that you slightly miss a strike if your selection is too strict.  

1.1.3. Choose Columns

 If you right-click in the header of the OptionChain columns, the right-click menu opens and you can select „Choose Columns“. In the following window you can select and deselect which columns you want to see in your option chain.  

1.1.4. Move Columns

 You can easily change the order of the columns in your OptionChain, by left-clicking the header of a row and drag&drop it to the position where you want it to be.  

1.1.5. Color Settings

By opening the Color-menu in the chart-toolbar, you will find a new button „Option Chain setting“ – click on it for the detailled configuration of the graphics of your OptionChain.  

 

The most important settings here are the colors for each column – e.g. the property „clmCallsAsk“ represents the ask-column on the call-side. You easily can change the background color of each single column here in the settings. If you want to set the coloring back to default values, just press the „Default“ button in the lower left corner of this window.

 

AVAILABLE COLUMNS

 

1. Bid/Ask
2. BidSize/AskSize
3. Last price
4. Option Volume
5. Option OpenInterest (OI)
6. ImpliedVolatility (IV%)
7. Greeks
   • Delta
   • Gamma
   • Theta
   • Vega

 (Information about the greeks can be found here: LINK) 

IMPORTANT:

InteractiveBrokers is calculating the greeks inside the TWS and sending the values directly to AgenaTrader. IQ-Feed does not provide greek-values directly, so we need to calculate the greeks based on the BlackScholes formula inside AgenaTrader. BlackScholes calculations are quite complex and dependent on many input factors. For that reason, there are new settings in the ConfigurationEscort, where you can set the basic input parameters which AgenaTrader should use for the greeks-calculations for IQ-Feed. If you do not have deep knowledge about the BlackScholes formula, we recommend that you do not change the values provided by default. The values calculated by BlackScholes formula also have some estimations in it, as BlackScholes is basically calculating greeks for european style options, while today most options are american style options. Greeks are a complex topic, and you most probably will get different results for greeks and implied volatility for each single source you check. Anyway, we try to calculate the greeks in the most efficient and best possible way.

 

SEND OPTION TO OPTION TRADING PAD

The OptionTradingPad stays always synchronized to the OptionChain. To send a selected option to the OptionTradingPad, you just need to left-click on the row of the option you would like to trade. If you click in any of the Call-columns, a call with the selected strike and expiry will be sent to the OptionTradingPad, vice versa if you click in any of the Put-columns. You will see the synchronization in the Instrument-field in the OptionTradingPad – it is constantly changing if you select different options in the OptionChain.