Entry Execution

When you run a template, VolNinja doesn't just fire a single order and hope — it works the combo into the market, re-pricing and retrying until it fills or gives up. The Entry Execution Settings section of the template editor controls exactly how. It's a collapsible section; expand it to configure. The defaults are a sensible middle ground, so you can leave this alone at first and tune it once you see how your fills behave.

There are two parts: where the order starts pricing, and how it's retried.

Pricing: where the order starts

Anchor Price sets the price the order is placed at:

• Mid — the midpoint of the bid/ask. A balanced starting point.
• Passive — sell at the ask, buy at the bid. The patient choice: you wait for the market to come to you, for a better price but a slower (or no) fill.
• Aggressive — sell at the bid, buy at the ask. Marketable: it crosses the spread to fill quickly, at a worse price.

Offset (cents) nudges that anchor: a positive offset shifts toward passive (better price, slower), a negative offset toward aggressive (worse price, faster). 0 means no offset.

The attempt loop

If the order doesn't fill immediately, VolNinja retries on a loop. Every Attempt time (in seconds) it re-evaluates: it refreshes the strikes (unless they're locked, below), re-anchors the order if the market has moved, and applies the timeout action. Attempt time sets the cadence for everything else.

Timeout Action decides what happens on each pass:

• Track anchor price — keep the order at the anchor price, re-anchoring only when the market drifts. Patient: it follows the market but never chases.
• Walk to marketable — in addition to re-anchoring, step the price toward a fill on each timeout. When this is chosen, a Price Step (cents) field sets how far to walk each time. Use it when getting filled matters more than getting the best price.

Quote Drift Threshold (cents) is how far the combo's bid/ask must move before the order is re-anchored — it stops the order from being re-priced on every tiny wiggle. The default is 5¢.

Lock strikes after first attempt controls whether the strikes can change between attempts. Off (the default), the strikes are re-selected each attempt using the leg selectors, so they track the market as it moves. On, the strikes chosen on the first attempt are kept and only the order price moves.

When it stops

The loop stops at whichever of these comes first:

• Max Tries — the number of attempts before giving up. Turn on Unlimited to remove this cap and let Max Duration be the only stop.
• Max Duration (seconds) — a hard ceiling on total time spent trying to fill.

If neither has fired and the order still hasn't filled, it keeps working until one does.