Settings

Settings is where you tune how VolNinja connects, how much market data it watches, how it handles a couple of execution edge cases, how hard it works on risk calculations, and how it shows you times. Open it from the avatar menu in the top right.

The page is organized into five sections — Connections, Market data, Trading, Simulation, and Preferences — and shows one at a time. Pick a section from the list on the left.

How saving works

Each section is edited and saved on its own. Change a field and the Save button becomes active, with Discard beside it to put everything back. Nothing takes effect until you save.

If you try to leave a section with unsaved edits, VolNinja stops you with an Unsaved changes prompt — Keep editing or Discard. Most changes apply live; only Connections interrupts anything, because new ports mean reconnecting to IBKR.

Connections

Connections is where VolNinja learns which IBKR Gateway or TWS to talk to.

• Live account port and Paper account port (optional) — the socket ports your IBKR connection app listens on. The standard values are printed under each field: IB Gateway 4001 live / 4002 paper, TWS 7496 live / 7497 paper. Setting both lets you keep a paper and a live connection side by side.
• Advanced — client IDs — folded away, and best left alone. IBKR requires a distinct identifier per connection, and VolNinja opens a few; the defaults work unless another program is already using them with your IBKR account.

Save & test saves your ports and then immediately tries the connection, answering with ✓ Connected and the mode it reached, or Couldn't connect — is IBKR Gateway running? That's the fastest way to confirm a fix without leaving the page.

The full walkthrough — installing Gateway or TWS, enabling its API, and choosing paper or live — is in Connecting IBKR.

Market data

Market data decides how much of the options chain VolNinja keeps live. Changes apply immediately — no restart.

• Subscription budget (lines) — your total IBKR market-data lines. Every IBKR account includes 100, and you can buy more in 100-line bundles from IBKR; set your real total here so VolNinja stays inside it.
• Snapshot strikes / side — how many strikes each side of at-the-money the periodic snapshot sweep covers. Snapshots feed the chain and analytics and don't consume live lines.
• Trade-range half-width (strikes) — how many strikes around a located strike are warmed with live quotes while an entry is being placed, so re-selection uses fresh prices. Bigger means more slack and more lines.
• OTM hot calls / OTM hot puts — how many out-of-the-money strikes stay live beyond the at-the-money band.
• Anchor target deltas (CSV) — specific deltas (for example 0.1, 0.16, 0.3) kept live on each wing, on top of everything above.

How the budget is spent, and what happens when you run past it, is covered in Market data & subscriptions.

Trading

Two account-wide execution settings that apply live.

Cross-position conflict policy only matters if you use standing orders. IBKR allows just one resting order on an option contract, so if a new position needs the contract an existing position's standing exit is already sitting on, something has to give:

• Block the new position (safest) — the existing exit order stays at the broker untouched, and the new position simply isn't opened.
• Let the new position in — the existing order is "soft-armed": VolNinja watches its trigger and fires the same exit itself instead of leaving it resting at the broker, which frees the contract. It goes back to the broker once the conflict clears — unless it's already close to firing, in which case the new position is blocked after all.

Daily reset sets the time your trading day rolls over, always in market time (ET) no matter what you choose as your display timezone. At that moment, daily strategy variables reset, per-day execution limits start again, and the day's P&L window and the "closed today" pool that strategy conditions read from begin afresh. Intraday charts and the analytics pages are unaffected — they keep using the 09:30 ET session.

Simulation

Simulation controls the background Monte Carlo run behind every probability VolNinja shows you: the Risk Profile figures, the P&L cone, the expiry distribution, and rule-trigger probabilities.

• Background simulation — Paper and — Live — run the loop for that mode, or switch it off. Off simply pauses that loop. Under each switch is that mode's current state: Running, Paused when you've switched it off, or Idle — no active viewers when it's on but nothing is open that shows risk figures.
• Only run while viewing — when on, the loop runs only while a page that shows cone data is open: the dashboard, the Risk Lab, the Performance positions list, or an open position. Close them all and it stops; open one and it starts again, so the first numbers take a few seconds to appear. Turn it off to keep the loop running continuously.
• Run outside market hours — when on, the cone keeps running around the clock on weekdays using a synthetic SPX price derived from ES futures. Turn it off to restrict it to regular trading hours.
• Target cadence (s) — the shortest gap between runs. It's a floor, not a promise: if a run takes longer than the value you set, the next one simply starts when the last finishes. Each run adapts how many paths it simulates to hold this cadence within its compute budget.
• Minimum paths, Target paths, Maximum paths — the floor, starting point, and ceiling for that adaptive path count. More paths means smoother, more precise numbers and more work per run.
• Paths on manual update — the path count for a one-shot Refresh you trigger yourself, independent of the band above.

Preferences

Preferences is purely cosmetic — nothing here affects trading.

Display timezone sets the zone timestamps render in across the app, with a Use browser timezone button to match your computer. Rule condition times, market hours, and expiries stay in market time (ET) regardless, because those are what the engine actually compares against.

Related

• Connecting IBKR — getting Gateway or TWS talking to VolNinja in the first place.
• Market data & subscriptions — how the line budget is spent.
• Standing orders — the exits the conflict policy applies to.
• Paper vs live — where the trading-mode switch actually lives.