Expiration

When trading options, you can easily control the expiration date of the option contract you want to trade. TradersPost requires that the expiration be specified as either a valid absolute date (in the format YYYY-MM-DD) or as a relative date expression (such as +1 month).

TradersPost will scan the option chain and filter out any expiration dates that are before the configured expiration and then it will select the 1st expiration date that is left in the list of expiration dates available. After selecting the expiration date, other filters are applied to select a contract that matches your criteria.

You have the ability to control the expiration from your webhook as well. In this example, you can specify the exact contract you want to trade:

{
    "ticker": "AAPL",
    "action": "buy",
    "expiration": "2023-01-20",
    "optionType": "call",
    "strikePrice": 325
}

You also have the ability to send the full option contract symbol in the ticker parameter. This example will override all the options settings in the strategy settings:

{
    "ticker": "AAPL 230120C325",
    "action": "buy"
}

Or if you want to use the option chain scanning feature instead of specifying the exact contract to trade, you can use the relative date expression and specify how many strikesAway from at the money you want to select. This example will select the expiration date that is 6 months from the current date and then select the call option that is in the money and 2 strikes away from the at the money.

{
    "ticker": "AAPL",
    "action": "buy",
    "expiration": "+6 months",
    "instrinsicValue": "itm",
    "optionType": "call",
    "strikesAway": 2
}