In Adding Positions in uVest, I posted how I was recreating how jVest, a trading system I created in 2016, presented ongoing positions including closed trades. An example is if you are rolling an option, where you want to see how you are doing overall in the underlying including the rolls. This is also useful for looking over your past trading to see how you did.
uVest is a web site with free tools for trading, including streaming real-time quotes, option chain searching and views on ongoing positions.
This feature is now available in uVest. Like jVest, it identifies when you are flat an underlying — no longer holding a stock or options position. That closes an ongoing position.
You can view any period in your past within 12 months, a limit of TDA when querying trade history. Interestingly, in the screenshot I included in the original post, where I query 6 months from Dec 17, 2015 to June 18, 2016, you see that jVest broke it into two ongoing positions. It turns out that uVest correctly identifies this included 3 ongoing positions.
One of the best things about this is I can see at a glass what the profit/loss (P/L) of each closed ongoing position was. Above the positions is a “Net” — the total of the net proceeds. For closed positions this is your P/L. But, if it was an open position, it would represent the net proceeds of the position.
Note the first ongoing position has EXPIRED items. TDA does not provide these transactions in query results. uVest creates them by identifying options that were not closed by you by expiration.
Future Improvements
What missing is proper calculations for open positions. It displays open positions before ongoing positions, but I need to add the logic to correctly identify an ongoing position by also identifying open positions in the trade history.
Like jVest, this needs a Mark Value Profit/Loss (MV P/L) for open positions. Where Net is the net proceeds, you need the Mark of your open position instruments to calculate the current value of the positions, and then determine your current P/L. This is one of the best features for managing open positions that uVest can use. I’ll likely work this in the same time I work in streaming updates for open positions, as that is how it can get the mark as well as give you real-time updates of your P/L.
It can incorrectly show positions if your start date is in the middle of an ongoing position. The best remedy to this would be to cache historical positions over a period larger than 12 months, ideally going back for the life of your account. One problem with this is that uVest can see closing trades but not have the offsetting opening trades.
It does know if a trade is OPENING or CLOSING, and currently is not using this to calculate when you are flat in an underlying. Including this logic could help it detect when there is a cutoff and handle it better without the prior history being available.
The priority in these improvements will be on open positions, as managing your positions is one of the purposes of the ongoing positions view. The easier they are to manage, the more positions you can carry. This view also helps you to be more successful in your planning and implementation of your trading strategies.
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