Team: Before I build an options spread I like to see how it looks in an options profit calculator like this one: www.optionsprofitcalculator.com This particular calculator does an ok job of estimating your risk and P/L but I was wondering if anyone was using something a little more sophisticated. Thanks for the help
To be 100% honest, for spreads that are not complex, you should be able to visualize that without help, or you are not ready to trade option spreads. As part of your learning process, i'd say it is fine. We have it built into Lightspeed Trader.
It's kinda a cool tool to visualize possible scenarios. But I'm with Bob here. It doesn't take long trading one type of option strategy to get to where you can do these in your head and on the fly. To that end, I might suggest taking a more manual approach to it (to the point of even breaking out the ol' pencil and paper). It makes a world of difference when I can scan through the chains vs. analyzing every trade. Over the course of trading credit spreads, I started taking about 4-6 hours to get a week's positions in place--now it takes me about 40 mins. Furthermore, this will give you more face time with the chains where you'll start to see patterns and imbalances that give you a strong indication of market sentiment on the underlying symbol. Just two days ago, the market tipped its hand to me in the chains and I dumped my bull positions in a hurry--to good effect, it turns out.
As some have suggested, spread performance is easy to visualize on an expiration basis. But if you want to see time slices, you need something more sophisticated, especially something that allows you to vary the IV and see potential performance across time and price. I have some old software that does it but it's not available. My guess is that if it crapped out, IBKR or TOS has something similar. I think that the Hoadley software might be what you are looking for if your broker doesn't provide adequate tools.