Frequently asked questions
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Optionality allows instant deposits of up to $200 per deposit.
Optionality needs to run our users SSN to perform a background check, as per the FINRA requirements for each broker/dealer. Optionality does not store SSN’s or other sensitive PII.
Broker-Dealers are, by law, required to collect some pieces of personal information to verify identity, and satisfy industry anti-money laundering, suitability, and record-keeping requirements.
Please refer to our Disclosures section for more in depth information on data security and privacy.
There are currently no deposit limits on Optionality.
Optionality Securities LLC is a wholly owned subsidiary of Optionality Inc. Trading is offered through Optionality Securities LLC, member of FINRA and SIPC.
Optionality offers securities through Optionality Securities LLC., member Securities Investor Protection Corporation (SIPC). Funds are available to meet customer claims up $500,000, including a maximum of $250,000 for cash claims. For additional information regarding SIPC coverage, including a brochure, please contact SIPC at (202) 371-8300 or visit www.sipc.org.
Options involve a high degree of risk and are not suitable for all investors as the risks inherent in options trading may expose investors to potentially significant losses. Please read Characteristics and Risks of Standardized Options before deciding to invest in options.
Third-party information posted to the Optionality platform arising from the social community is not endorsed by Optionality and should not be construed as investment advice, an offer or solicitation to purchase or sell any financial instrument. Information provided by third parties is not warranted as to its completeness, timeliness or accuracy and is subject to change at any time, without notice. It is expected that users will vet third-party information themselves as to its accuracy and completeness. Optionality reserves the right, at its sole discretion, to delete or edit any third-party content posted within the platform. Any third-party content posted on the platform does not reflect the views of Optionality or any of their subsidiaries or affiliates. For additional questions, please contact our customer service department at support@optionalitytrading.com or call 877-952-4667.
Optionality pays for SEC and regulatory fees on your behalf. Please refer to our fee schedule for a complete listing of relevant charges.
Optionality is committed to making our platform accessible for everyone and meeting appropriate accessibility guidelines and standards. If you use assistive technology, such as a screen reader, eye-tracking device, voice recognition software, etc., and have difficulty accessing information on the Optionality platform, please contact us directly at support@optionalitytrading.com or 877-952-4667 so that we may assist you.
All investments involve risk and past performance of a security does not guarantee future results or returns. While diversification may help spread risk, it does not guarantee a profit or protect you against loss in a down market. There is always a potential to lose money when investing in securities, and investors need to fully consider their investment objectives prior to investing.
Securities are offered through Optionality Securities, LLC., a registered broker-dealer and member of FINRA and the Securities Investor Protection Corporation (SIPC). Funds are available to meet customer claims up to a ceiling of $500,000, including a maximum of $250,000 for cash claims. For additional information regarding SIPC coverage, including a brochure, please contact SIPC at +1 202 371-8300 or visit www.sipc.org. Our clearing firm, Apex, has purchased an additional insurance policy through a group of London Underwriters (with Lloyd’s of London Syndicates as the Lead Underwriter) to supplement SIPC protection. This additional insurance policy becomes available to customers in the event that SIPC limits are exhausted and provides protection for securities and cash up to an aggregate of $600 million. This is provided to pay amounts in addition to those returned in an SIPC liquidation. This additional insurance policy is limited to a combined return of $150 million to any customer from a Trustee, SIPC and London Underwriters, including cash of up to $2.15 million. Similar to SIPC protection, this additional insurance does not protect against a loss in the market value of securities.
System response, trade executions and account access may be affected by market conditions, system performance, quote delays and other factors. The risk of loss in electronic trading can be substantial. You should therefore consider whether such trading is suitable for you in light of your financial resources and circumstances.
Optionality Securities, LLC. is currently registered in the following jurisdictions. This is not an offer or solicitation in any jurisdiction where we are not authorized to do business. Optionality makes no guarantee as to the currency, accuracy, or quality of information published and/or archived on this website, nor will Optionality accept any responsibility for other organizations, businesses, and private persons that provide information on this website. All information on this website regarding products and services provided by Optionality is subject to change without notice. Reasonable efforts are taken to ensure the accuracy and integrity of all information provided here, but Optionality is not responsible for misprints, out-of-date information, or errors. Optionality does not provide any financial or investment advice. Optionality does not recommend or endorse any investment instruments or trading strategy. The material on this website is provided for informational and educational purposes only and shall not in any manner be considered a recommendation or endorsement of any strategy or investment. Any investment decision and/or strategy that you make or utilize, whether or not such a decision or strategy derives from or relies upon material accessed or provided through this website, is done at your sole discretion and your own risk. Before making any investment decisions, please consult additional sources of information and/or your legal or tax advisor.
You can contact our team by emailing support@optionalitytrading.com, calling us at 877-952-4667.
If you have any questions regarding whether or not you qualify for an Optionality account, please reach out to support@optionalitytrading.com and we’ll be happy to assist.
Once your brokerage application has been accepted, it’s time to fund your account – the easiest way to do so is through the ‘Transfer Funds’ link on the user dashboard.
There are no deposit minimums, so once you connect a bank account and transfer money into your Optionality wallet, you can start trading! Please note that it may take up to 3 business days for your funds to clear.
A day trade is constituted by opening and closing the same position on the same trading day. The industry-wide ruling on day trading, which applies to all traders, are as follows:
If a trader exceeds 3 day-trades in a rolling 5-business-day period, the account will be labeled as a ‘Pattern Day Trader’ account. An account that has been designated as such will need to maintain a $25,000 balance in the account to continue day trading. If another day trade occurs with the account value at less than $25,000, there will be a 90-day trading restriction placed on the account.
Optionality offers a limited margin account due to the nature of options spread trading. However, we do not currently extend margin to customers. This means that the buying power in the account should not exceed the total cash value of the account.
Currently, Optionality restricts the number of contracts that can be traded in a option spread to (2) total contracts on each leg. We plan on increasing this limit incrementally over time.
Account value is determined by the total cash balance plus the total market value of securities held, which are priced at the midpoint of the bid/ask spread.
- Bid price = the highest price that a buyer is willing to pay for a security.
- Ask price = the lowest price that a seller is willing to accept for a security.
- Midpoint price = the middle of the bid and ask prices.
Settlement is the process of exchanging cash for securities. Options trades settle the business day after the trade date – so if a trade is placed on a Thursday, it will settle on a Friday (barring any holiday).
Optionality charges a $0.50 contract fee, so on a single trade there will be a total contract fee of $1.00. That’s it – Optionality takes care of all regulatory and trading fees on the users behalf.
Please refer to our fee schedule for a comprehensive view of all charges and fees.
Optionality offers two types of orders:
- Market Order – when a market order is entered, the trade will execute at the current market price.
- Market orders are best when speedy execution is a priority, although execution prices may be worse than a limit order.
- Limit Order – a limit order specifies the exact price of the order. The order may fill better than this price, but it won’t fill worse than this price.
- Although you can control the execution price with a limit order, it may take longer to execute.
An option is a contract that gives the buyer the right to buy or sell an underlying security, at an agreed upon price, within a specified date. There are two types of options featured on Optionality:
Call Option – a call option gives the buyer the right to buy the underlying security at a specified price within a specific time period. A call option increases in value when the underlying security increases in price.
Put Option – a put option gives the buyer the right to sell the underlying security at a specified price within a specific time period. A put option increases in value when the underlying security decreases in price.
A strike price is the specified price at which the underlying security can be bought or sold upon exercise or assignment.
Currently, all trades on Optionality are option spreads. An option spread is a type of option trading strategy entered by buying and selling options of the same class (call or put), on the same underlying security, with the same expiration, but different strike prices.
Optionality exclusively offers debit spreads – meaning that for call spreads, the value will increase if the underlying stock price increases, and for put spreads, the value will increase if the underlying stock price decreases.
- Expiration – the last date on which the options contract will trade. On this date, Optionality sells all expiring trades starting at 3:50 ET – if there are adverse market movements after-hours, we try to prevent unwanted results on the users behalf. *Auto-close is not guaranteed
- Exercise – If an option is “In-the-Money” (the strike is below the current stock price for a call, or above the current stock price for a put), the holder can elect to exercise the call and will receive shares of stock. Optionality customers are not able to exercise options.
- Assignment – assignment occurs if the seller of the options contract is obligated to deliver the stock and as a result becomes short stock of the underlying equity.
- Optionality’s auto-close feature automatically closes out all expiring positions. However, we cannot guarantee that a user won’t be assigned early during the course of trading. Although this is very rare, and usually beneficial, Optionality will close the assigned shares immediately so the user should not have to take any action.
Go to pending trades on the user dashboard-> tap the “edit” button -> edit or cancel the trade accordingly
- Optionality makes money in three ways:
- Options contract fees of $0.50 per leg
- Interest on uninvested cash balances
- Payment for Order Flow (PFOF)
- The options contract fee help us continue to provide users with an innovative, up-to-date, streamlined and intuitive options trading experience. We aim to continue focusing on optimizing the customer experience and platform.
- Optionality makes money in three ways:
Optionality enables customers to trade pre-packaged options spreads. Through our proprietary algorithms, we thoughtfully package our spreads based on where the stock is trading and when the contracts expire.
Liquidity is a measure of the frequency of trading (higher liquidity indicates more frequent trading). Options liquidity is generally measured in two ways:
- Daily Volume – the number of times a particular options contract is traded on any given day
- Open Interest – number of open (outstanding) contracts that have not been exercised or closed out
Optionality carefully checks both liquidity measures to support sufficient liquidity before displaying each trade.
We are very excited to feature our partnership with Stocksnips. The Stocksnips Daily Sentiment score is an AI based estimation system that aggregates positive and negative “snippets” from various market and news sources to come up with a sentimental signal for a particular stock.
Trading on Optionality is open during normal market hours, which are 9:30 a.m. to 4:00 p.m. ET. Optionality does not currently support after-hours trading.
To help ensure all options positions are closed out by expiration, Optionality employs a proprietary auto closing feature that begins 10 minutes before market close on expiration days (typically, this will be Fridays at 3:50 p.m., unless of a holiday or potential market disruption). Our auto-close feature employs various order types at various times, to work towards best execution prices as well as timely fills. By closing all positions before expiration, chances of after-hours assignment and risks of short option legs decrease.
Options trades are typically taxed at the short-term tax rate, which is higher than the tax rate on longer-term investments.
Customers can see trade history in our ‘Recent’ section. In addition to viewing past trading activity, metrics such as biggest profit and average profit/ loss are available.
- Statements, documents, and confirmations are available in the ‘Account’ tab, under the My Account section.
Navigate to ‘Account’, click ‘Account’, then choose the ‘Change Password’ section and create your new password.
If you’re locked out of the App, you can open Optionality and click ‘Sign In’. From there, click Forgot Password, and you’ll be prompted to reset the password details.
Upon successful completion of the account sign-up process, you will be prompted to fund your account through Plaid, our payment integrations partner. Simply follow the prompts once connected to Plaid by choosing your bank account, logging in, and completing the funding process.*Due to limitations within the Plaid payment integrations, a small portion of user accounts that have MFA enabled may experience difficulty in connecting
There are two ways to do this. On the home screen, you can select ‘Transfer Funds’ in the top left corner and then connect to your new bank account through the Plaid interface. Additionally, you can navigate to the Account tab and scroll down to the Banking section and select ‘Connected Banks’. From there, you can follow the same prompts from Plaid to get your new account set up.
Similar to linking a new bank account, there are multiple ways to do this. On the home screen, you can select ‘Transfer Funds’ in the top left corner and then choose the account where you’d like to transfer your funds. Additionally, you can navigate to the Account tab and scroll down to the Banking section and click ‘Connected Banks’. From there, you can follow the same prompts from Plaid to select the destination bank account and amount of transfer.
Withdraws may take 3-5 days to post.
You can deactivate your Optionality account by navigating to the Account tab, selecting Account Information under the My Account section, and tapping ‘Deactivate Account’.