Opening & Closing Positions

Most of your positions arrive on their own — a template you run, or a strategy that fires (see Placing a trade and Running a strategy). But you'll also want to do things by hand: record a trade you opened somewhere else, close one early, split it, settle it at expiration, or clear out several at once. All of that lives on your Dashboard.

Record a position you opened elsewhere

The Add Manual button, at the top of the Active Positions table, opens the Add Manual Position sheet. Use it to log a position you opened outside VolNinja — by hand at your broker, say — so VolNinja can track and manage it alongside everything else.

In the sheet you set:

• Use Template — turn this on and choose a template, and the position inherits that template's rules and management. Leave it off and you'll see a reminder that the position is unmanaged — you'll have to close it yourself.
• Underlying and Root (e.g. SPX / SPXW), the Expiry Date, and Quantity (number of spreads/contracts). Entry Underlying Price is optional.
• Legs — for each leg, its type (Put/Call), action (Sell/Buy), strike, quantity, entry price, and commission. Use Add Leg for more (a template fills its own legs for you).
• Notes — optional.

Click Create Position and it joins your Dashboard.

Close a position

Open the ⋯ menu on any open position's row. There are two ways out:

• Close at Market — sends a market order; it fills right away at whatever the market is.
• Close with Peg — works the order pegged to the mid to try for a better price. It can take a little longer and isn't guaranteed to fill as fast.

Either choice opens a Close Position confirmation that shows the position, its legs, current P&L, and the execution style you picked — nothing happens until you press Confirm Close. While a pegged close is working, a progress view shows how it's going.

Close a single leg

Sometimes you want to take off just one side — buy back a tested short put, say — and leave the rest of the position running. You do that from the position's details, not the Dashboard row. Open the position to bring up its Details sheet (see Position details) and go to the Overview tab. There are two ways to close a single leg:

• From the leg's ⋯ menu — each leg row in the Legs card has a ⋯ menu with Close at Market and Close with Peg.
• From the expanded leg — click a leg row to expand it, and the same Close at Market and Close with Peg buttons sit at the bottom of its details, next to Edit.

Either way you get the same two execution styles as closing a whole position — Market or Peg — scoped to that one leg. The choice opens a Close Leg confirmation showing the leg, its current bid / ask / mid and estimated P&L; nothing happens until you press Confirm Close, and a pegged leg close shows its own progress view while it works. The rest of the position carries on unchanged.

To move a leg to a different strike instead of closing it outright, use Roll Leg… from the same menu — see Rolling a leg.

Split a position

Split Position… (same ⋯ menu) spins part of a position off into a new child position, leaving the original — with its rules, orders, and history — untouched. In the dialog you set, per leg, how many contracts to spin off; it shows how many move to the child and how many stay on the parent. It's handy for taking partial profit on some contracts while letting the rest run. Confirm with Split Position.

Expire a position

At expiration you can settle a position instead of trading out of it. Expire Position… (⋯ menu) opens a dialog where you enter the underlying closing price; VolNinja expires the open legs and works out the settlement from that price. Use it to book the expiration outcome for cash-settled index options rather than sending closing orders.

Close several at once

The Close All (N) button above the table closes every open position that matches your current filter. That last part is the key: if you've filtered the table to Credit, Close All touches only those. Pick Close at Market or Close with Peg, and a dialog lists exactly what will be closed — each position, the credit/debit mix, and the total premium and P&L — before you confirm.

Closing is best-effort per position: if one fails, the rest still go through.