Capitally provides full support for tracking stock options, including automated imports, Greeks, strategy grouping, and margin tracking. Whether you're buying puts, selling covered calls, or trading complex multi-leg strategies, you can monitor everything in one place.
How to get options into Capitally?
Importing from a broker
Option transactions are imported along with everything else when you import from a broker. Interactive Brokers, Schwab and Swissquote are natively supported today, including multi-leg trades, assignments, exercises and adjusted strikes.
With Interactive Brokers, option rows come through the Trades section of the same Activity Flex Query as your stock trades — there is no separate options export to set up.
Until then, map the export yourself with the file importer or enter the trades by hand — both work for any broker and any underlying.
Adding options manually
You can add option transactions for any underlying asset — stocks, ETFs, indices, or commodities.
- Click Add asset anywhere in the application
- Search for and select the underlying asset (e.g., Apple stock)
- Choose Stock option as the transaction type
- Fill in the option details:
- Account where the option is held
- Expiry date
- Option type (put or call)
- Strike price
- Quantity (number of contracts)
- Multiplier (typically 100 for standard options)
- Premium per share
This single Stock option transaction type is used for everything - buying, selling, expiring or exercising options. Simply use:
- Positive quantity when buying
- Negative quantity when selling
- Empty premium price upon expiry, along with a transaction date on or after expiry date and appropriate quantity (negative when expiring longs, and positive for shorts)
- Enable Option has been excercised for exercised options, along with a transaction date on or after expiry date and appropriate quantity (negative when expiring longs, and positive for shorts)
What happens at expiry
When a contract reaches its expiry date, Capitally closes the option lot for you. It prices the contract with the same models it uses everywhere else — Black-Scholes-Merton for European-style options, Barone-Adesi-Whaley for American-style — and generates an exercise transaction when the contract looks in the money, or an expiry transaction when it does not.
Either transaction closes the lot against your position and carries the resulting cash effect. The sign follows the position: a negative quantity closes a long, a positive quantity closes a short. The inputs behind the in-the-money decision are the ones described under How option prices are calculated.
Check them against your statement
Generated expiry and exercise transactions land in your transaction list around the expiry date, marked unconfirmed with an hourglass icon — the same treatment automatic dividends get. Compare them against your broker statement, then confirm or correct them.
The in-the-money decision comes from Capitally's modelled price, not from what your broker actually did. A contract that expires close to the strike can therefore be resolved one way here and the other way at your broker. Edit or delete the generated transaction so it matches the statement.
When your broker's export already has the expiry
Some exports carry their own expiry, exercise and assignment rows — an Interactive Brokers Flex Query does. Capitally matches the generated transaction against the imported one so the lot is not closed twice. It is worth verifying this after any import that covers an expiry date.
If the match fails, the lot closes twice and cash rises by an amount you cannot tie to any broker activity. To fix it, open the transaction list, filter by status Unconfirmed, find the generated exercise or expiry transaction dated on or around the expiry, and delete it. The imported broker transaction is the one to keep.
How to view options in your portfolio?
Once you have options entered, they appear as transaction lots under the underlying asset. For example, if you bought Apple options, navigate to your Apple position and you'll see both your regular stock lots and option lots together under the Lots tab.
Option lots displayed among regular stock lotsEnable the dedicated options tab
For a cleaner view when actively trading options, enable the dedicated options interface:
- Go to Settings
- Find the Advanced Tracking section
- Enable Options grouping
Dedicated options tabThis adds a new Options tab at every level of your portfolio. Whether you're looking at a specific asset, an account, or your entire wealth, this tab aggregates all relevant options in one place.
Grouping options into strategies
You can organize related trades into lot groups to analyze strategies rather than individual legs.
To create a group manually:
- Navigate to your Options or Lots tab
- Select the positions you want to group by checking their checkboxes
- Click Lot group from the panel at the bottom
- Choose an existing group or create a new one
Lot groups can be nested, allowing you to build complex structures. For example, you might have a "Wheel Strategy" group containing sub-groups for each expiration cycle.
You can group multiple option legs together (spreads, condors) or combine options with regular stock lots (covered calls with the underlying shares).
Automatic strategy grouping
Capitally can detect and group common option strategies automatically:
- Go to Settings → Advanced Tracking
- Enable Automatically group option strategies into lot groups
When enabled, Capitally recognizes strategies like covered calls, iron condors, strangles, and others. It groups all legs together with the strategy name as the top-level group and expiry dates as sub-groups.
You can expand any group to see individual legs and their performance, or view aggregated metrics for the entire strategy.
Options analytics
The options table includes columns for option Greeks. By default, only Delta is visible, but you can configure the table to show:
- Delta — sensitivity to underlying price changes
- Gamma — rate of change of delta
- Theta — time decay
- Vega — sensitivity to volatility changes
- Rho — sensitivity to interest rate changes
You can also display columns for strike price, option type, and position breakdown (puts vs. calls).
Individual option details
Click on any option to open its detail view. To the right of the standard asset price tab, you'll see the Option Price tab with:
- Historical option price chart
- Historical charts for all Greeks
- Comparison between strike price and the underlying asset's actual price
- Your position quantity over time
Tracking margin requirements
If you sell options or short stocks, monitoring margin is essential to avoid margin calls.
Open the Market Value metrics panel to see the Margin Requirement value. This shows the minimum asset value required in your portfolio to cover your obligations from sold options and shorted stocks.
The margin requirement is context-aware — when you filter your portfolio or open a specific account, it reflects the requirement for just that portion.
Only positions with a negative quantity count towards the margin requirement. A sold put, a sold call, or a shorted stock, ETF or crypto each add their share; anything you hold long adds nothing, so a bought call contributes zero no matter how far it moves.
The number is Capitally's own estimate — a flat percentage per position type. Brokers size margin from their own risk models, and a broker's figure is never imported into Capitally, so expect the two to differ. Capitally's number is for watching the trend; your broker's is the one that triggers a call.
Using the Owed chart
The Owed chart provides a visual overview of your margin situation with three lines:
- Red line — value of assets you own
- Orange line — value of what you owe (sold options, short positions)
- Gray dotted line — margin requirement
The key is to keep your owned assets (red) well above the margin requirement (gray dotted line). If they get too close, you risk a margin call.
Configuring margin settings
Margin percentages live in Settings → Advanced Tracking, one field per position type. The defaults are 25% on Sold Put options, 25% on Sold Call options, 50% on Shorted Stocks and 50% on Shorted Crypto. Shorted ETFs use the Shorted Stocks percentage.
What the percentage applies to depends on the position:
- Sold calls — the underlying asset's market value, times the contract multiplier and the number of contracts
- Sold puts — the strike price, times the contract multiplier and the number of contracts. The obligation is to buy at the strike, so the strike is what the requirement is sized against, not the underlying's current price
- Shorted stocks, ETFs and crypto — the position's market value
Set a field to zero and that position type drops out of the calculation entirely.
How option prices are calculated
Capitally calculates option fair values using established pricing models rather than pulling live market prices:
- Black-Scholes-Merton for European-style options
- Barone-Adesi-Whaley for American-style options
This approach lets you track options on any underlying asset, even if the options aren't traded on a public exchange.
Pricing inputs
The models use several variables:
- Volatility — calculated from one year of historical price data
- Dividend yield — average yield over the past five years
- Risk-free rate — current three-month US Treasury rate by default
Customizing the risk-free rate
If you need a different risk-free rate, you can enter a preferred constant value in Settings → Advanced Tracking.
Common questions
Can I track options on custom or illiquid assets?
Yes. Because Capitally models prices rather than pulling them from exchanges, you can create a custom asset, attach options to it, and have Capitally compute fair value and Greeks based on its price history. This works even for options not listed on any exchange.
Why doesn't my option price match my broker's price exactly?
Capitally uses theoretical models with historical volatility, long-term dividend yield averages, and a configurable risk-free rate. Market prices may differ due to intraday volatility changes, supply/demand imbalances, or bid-ask spreads. The goal is consistent portfolio-level analytics rather than tick-by-tick replication of broker quotes.