Overview
The PowerTrade exchange allows you to build structures of multi-legged orders using the various instruments available including but not limited to Spot, Options, and Futures (coming soon). This guide lays out how to do this using the PowerTrade web app user interface.
Build a Multi-legged Structure
Navigate to the Trading Screen
To start, navigate to the trading screen by clicking on the Trade button on the navigation bar at the top of the screen. This will bring you to the trading screen. Next, click on the Markets drop down menu to open the market selector.
Select Market(s)
You should now see the markets available to trade on the left side panel navigation panel. For the purposes of this guide, we will create a simple BTC Options structure by clicking on Options and the BTC ticker, but you can create your own customized structure by mixing and matching different types of instruments.
Select a Strategy
From this point, you can either add individual order legs manually by placing orders directly from the options chain, or you can use the strategy dropdown menu to choose from one of several common pre-defined strategies. For the purposes of this guide, we will be building a BTC Options Call Spread.
Once a strategy has been selected, the system will populate the appropriate order legs based on the strategy template. If prices are available for the selected contracts, the outright cost of the contracts as well as a payoff graph will be displayed on the left side navigation panel.
In this case, the two legs that have been selected are:
- 1x BTC-29Jul22-23000C
- -1x BTC-29Jul22-23500C
The contracts in the order list will be highlighted on the options chain in green for buy orders and red for sell orders. You can toggle individual line items between buy and sell by clicking on the "Buy" and "Sell" boxes in the order list.
The Expirations for the contracts in the order list are indicated by the green dots next to the expiration dates.
Adjust the Structure
At this point, all the parameters of the multi-leg order are set to template defaults, but these are easy to adjust using the black and green "Nudge Bar" at the bottom of the options chain panel. As you use the various buttons on the Nudge Bar to adjust the various parameters of the multi-leg order, the various parts of the trading UI will change accordingly, and this will let you visualize how the order will be affected by the adjustments.
Nudge Bar: Strikes
Use the up and down arrow buttons to move the strike prices of all legs at the same time.
Nudge Bar: Width
Use the narrow and wide buttons to move the buy and sell legs closer and farther apart respectively.
Nudge Bar: Expirations
Use the minus and plus buttons to change the expiration dates.
Order Quantity
The number of contracts in each leg can be adjusted manually by typing in numbers in the text entry fields to the left of each item in the order list.
Direction
You can also invert the entire structure by changing the direction from the default Long to Short using the Direction selector on the left side navigation panel. Long means that you are placing a long order for the entire set of legs, and Short means that you are shorting the entire set of legs (which can include Buys and Sells).
In this example, we have adjusted our Call Spread structure to:
- 4 BTC-26Aug22-24000C
- -2x BTC-26Aug22-27000C
Aside from the movement on the options chain panel, the prices of the individual legs, the total price of the structure, the payoff graph, and the Greeks have changed accordingly.
Optional: Add More Legs
At this point you may choose to add additional legs to your structure by clicking on a bid or ask price within the options chain panel. The additional legs will appear in the order list, and if you were previously using a strategy template, the strategy name will now read "Custom".
Enter the Order
Click on the green Continue button in the left side navigation panel to reveal the order entry screen. Here you can enter the number of Contracts of the structure you would like to order as well as specify a Limit Price. Note that not taking the suggested limit price may result in the entire order taking a long time to fill due to the many legs that comprise the structure.
Once you're ready, click on the Long / Short button to proceed to the order confirmation screen.
Confirm the Order
Click on the green Submit button to confirm and submit the order.
