Upcoming Changes

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I’m planning some major changes in the upcoming releases in the near future.

New Option Academy Content

The content will be updated with more useful trading information to help users learn.

Quiz & Practices

To help users learn to trade options, I plan to add quizzes and practices so that user can practice what they learnt. I still need to sort out what kind of practices is best. I personally prefer simulation that mimics real trading as close as possible. So that might be the direction I will take.

Trader’s Insights

Last year I’ve been busy trading options and applies some of the option strategies in Optactic. What surprise me is there are real difference between academic theory or backtesting and real trading. So I plan to share these differences via a new section called “Trader’s Insights”. I also plan to test all the strategies in the Optactic and find out if they are really useful or not, or if there are any special cases we can exploit. I will test these strategies using latest computer simulation and real trading. Real trading takes time. So these insights will be rolled out gradually.

New UI and Features

With the blessing of AI, I can now develop faster than before. It’s time to upgrade the UI. I have lots of cool ideas with new UI controls.

Also some advanced Option features are planned but don’t have a timetable yet. For example, Volatility Smile, Delta Neutral Strategy, and more.

Subscription Model

To support continuous development and testing, I will change one time purchase model to subscription model. The pricing will be affordable like before considering this is an app for retail traders and option strategy learners. Anyone who has purchased premium content will still have access to these content, but for accessing any new features planned for the future you have to upgrade to subscription model.

Feedbacks Welcomed

If you have any ideas about any cool features please let me know. Let’s make this app better.

Changing Pricing Model

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After experiment with various pricing models. I have decided to go back to the old freemium + one-time purchase upgrade. The reason is that the market for Options trader is small. And the app is reaching its maturity, which means development will be slowed down. So subscription model cannot justify this. This will be implemented in the coming weeks or month. I don’t have a exact date. I believe Apple or Google will let you use the app until the end of subscription if you already have one. If not, please email me with any problems.

Optactic 2.5.4 is released.

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In this release we made a few small but important changes.

First change, we added the cost of the strategy on the top of the chart. We found sometimes when you scroll the bottom controls, the cost of the strategy will be scrolled out of the window. The cost is actually important, and people need to watch the cost while adjusting the strategy. So we move it to the top, always visible.

Second, we added the profit for each position to the position table in the follow-up screen. (This screen appears when you click a created strategy in the strategy list). This will better help trader make decisions on the follow-up strategy, such as deciding which position to liquidate, which one to cut loss, etc.

Optactic 2.4.4 is released

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In this release we improved the custom strategy creation. We also fixed a bug related to custom strategy name not editable. The bug is reported by one of our users through the in-app suggestion box feature. I’d like to thank this user for reporting the issue. I’d encourage users to send us feedbacks and suggestions, including reporting issues through the suggestion box. Suggestions such as feature wish list, ways to improve the app are always welcomed. We will always treat user feedbacks as the highest priority in our feature releases.

Optactic 2.4.3 is released

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In 2.4.3 we fixed some critical errors associated with profit calculation. We also improved put price estimate and fixed some bugs related to exit plans. We added hundreds of unit tests to make sure margin of error is within 1/10th of a cent.

2.4.3 also introduced new feature for Exit plans. When designing an exit action such as adding, closing or rolling an option, user can also adjust action date and the stock price, volatility on that date. This allows user to experiment and find the best scenario for his desired exit plan.

We constantly improve this app and release new versions. App update is automatically enabled by default on iOS, so you don’t need to worry about it. Otherwise please don’t forget to turn on automatic update. The size of the app is small, just around 20 MB.

An issue related to Exit Plan is found in 2.4.2

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This issue only affects overwritten costs. If you overwrite the cost of your strategy, when you close a position or roll an option in the follow-ups, the profit calculation (including the chart) is not correct. An emergency fix is applied. You will see the fix in the next version 2.4.3 in the coming week. Sorry for the inconvenience.

If you found any issues, please don’t hesitate to report to me through support@optactic.com or the in app suggestion box. We’ll post any serious issues that might impact your trading and profit in this forum. Other minor issues will be prioritized according to severity.

Optactic 2.4.1 is released

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In Optactic 2.4.1 user can overwrite the computed cost of the strategy. To find this feature, in the strategy creation screen or strategy details screen, click the “More” text button next to the strategy info panel (where it shows Cost) so that the strategy info will be expanded. At the bottom of the table of information, you will find the “Overwrite Cost” button, right next to the “Reset Cost” button. Click on the “Overwrite Cost” button will show the overwrite dialog box, where you can enter a cost value to overwrite the computed strategy cost. The “Reset Cost” button will reset it back to computed cost.

In most cases you don’t have to overwrite the cost, and I’ll explain why in a moment. There is one case this feature is useful. Sometimes you want to add an existing position, but the only information you have are the options and the price you paid for that strategy. In this situation, there is no way to accurately compute the cost since it requires information about the underlying stock price and volatility at the date of purchasing the options. With the overwrite cost feature, now you can add any strategies you already own from your brokers to Optactic.

You might be tempted to overwrite all strategy cost with the actual purchased cost, but I’d strongly suggest no. The reason is that this will skew the accuracy of calculation. Optactic uses Black-Scholes model to compute the value of options in all its simulation. The Black-Scholes model uses volatility of the underlying stock as one of its input. In order to get consistent result, you should use the same volatility model for all the inputs. For example, using either 90-days standard deviation or a weighted composite implied volatility. The cost you overwrote reflects an implied volatility that includes information of specific supplies and demand of that specific call or put, and it has nothing to do with the overall stock volatility over periods of time.

Hope you will enjoy this feature.