Options screener

Options Trading has its advantages. Experienced investors who trade options can see amplified gains and potentially control their losses compared to investors who trade stocks.

But even though a lot of us get the basics of how options work, we usually run into a bunch of issues when it's time to actually trade, such as not knowing how to find options strategies that suit what we want.

Don't worry, we can solve this problem with Options screener.

If you own the stock and want to safeguard against losses, increase your profits, or if you simply aim to earn money by trading options, there are options available for you.

You can rock the Options Screener tool in the Tiger Trade app to get investment plans custom-made for you. So, how do you use this Options Screener?

First, open up the market page for the stock itself, then tap "Options". Pick an expiration date, and under that date, you'll peep the prices for call and put options at different strike prices.

If you've already picked an expiration date and strike price, and know whether you want to buy a call or put, you can just filter and trade the options you want straight up.

If you aren't sure which strategy to go with or which option to buy, you can also let the screener automatically match options strategies for you.

Here's how it goes down: Tap the "Screener" tab. On the page, first, choose your current position. There are three main options there:

1. You own the stock.

2. You're shorting the stock.

3. You don't own the stock (no position).

For these three scenarios, you should also think about where you expect the stock price to go. There are three ways it can play out: up, down, or sideways. Say you own AAPL stock and based on how you think Apple's going to do, you believe the stock price will jump on May 26. Picking "go up" and the right date, the Options Screener in Tiger Trade will filter strategies for you based on your call. In this case, it suggests a "long call".

Now how do you pick Delta? Delta, aka hedge ratio, shows how much an option price changes compared to a change in the stock price. Basically, it tells you how much the option price goes up if the stock price goes up to $1.

For example, if Delta is 0.7, and AAPL stock goes up $1, the AAPL option price goes up $1 * 0.7 = $0.7. If Delta is 0.2, and AAPL stock goes up to $1, the AAPL option price goes up $1 * 0.2 = $0.2. So the closer Delta is to 1, the more the option price tracks the stock price.

For call option buyers, a higher Delta means less leverage and risk, but maybe lower gains. But when Delta gets too close to 1 (over 0.8), the option is deep in the money, needs a fat premium, and leverage is not much, the cost might not be worth it. On the other hand, when Delta gets too close to 0 (under 0.2), the premium's cheap, but the odds of the option going with the money are tiny, so it'll probably end up without any intrinsic value. Hence, for starters, Delta from 0.2 to 0.5 or 0.5 to 0.8 is good.

For Deltas, a call option's Delta is 0 to 1. A put option's Delta is -1 to 0.

After hitting "Next", the Options Screener will filter out four strategies with different Deltas and show the stock prices and option prices.

For example, if you want to buy a call option with a strike price of $157.50, you can click on the "Simulated Trading" button under the first option to try simulated trading for options.

Please note that this is done on a Demo account. If you wish to engage in actual trading, you should select "Place order."

If you are using the Pro version of the screener, you have the additional capability to customise indicators and use them to filter options strategies.

When you launch the Options Screener, you'll first peep at the hot strategies it automatically shows in Tiger Trade. These might be stuff for newbies like weird short-term trades or earnings guess strategies.

If you got your own needs and preferences, tap "My Strategy" to set your own filter options. Say you're an investor who likes trading options that expire real soon, and you want to pick a call option that expires within 10 days. You can check "Days Since Orders Filled" under market statistics and set it to 10 days.

This will show you a bunch of results that match what you filtered for.