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This demonstration shows how to execute some of our trades in Interactive Brokers. Download video: Executing Orders in Interactive Brokers.wmv

I was moment away from sending some funds to Tradier, but I'm now having cold feet. Here's why: I looked at my trading for the last year. My thought was to move all of my options trading to Tradier, and keep my big SPX and RUT trades at TOS/TDA. Looking at that, excluding RUT & SPX, I had 1100 multi-legged trades last year, totaling 2600 legs. As it's near tax-time again, I thought about tax accounting for all of the trades. I use TradeLog to import and match all of my TOS trades. I went to the TradeLog website to see if Tradier was supported. Tradier was not listed as a supported brokerage, but they did have CSV import supported from Apex Clearing, which is who Tradier clears trades through. Of course, if you're not using TradeLog, there's always TurboTax, etc., but using the brokerage supplied 1099-B alone is a recipe for failure. So, I contacted Tradier to confirm that customers would be able to download the CSV files from either them, or directly from Apex. They replied: I've followed up with some questions regarding downloading of trade data (for tax purposes) but they haven't responded yet. I can post an update as soon as I hear back. I did inform them that I am not manually typing 2600 trades into my tax tools, and considered this a no-go for me and that I'd close my account instead of funding it if they have no other methods of downloading the data. A couple other observations, without even doing any trading: I looked at their web interface. It is very clunky and minimalist. This is how they save money...they don't spend money on fancy coding development, but instead have many, many partners that can provide a front-end. In looking at how to enter an order through their web interface, I saw that it would take entering in 13 pieces of information in order to trade a two-legged trade (calendar, vertical, straddle, strangle, etc.) For a 4 legged trade, it would be 23 pieces of information that you'd need to enter manually. This is very laborious, and can be subject to errors. If you think you're going to trade through their free web-interface, this is something to consider. This wasn't going to be acceptable for me, so I was planning on using OptionNetExplorer, which I've used before and it great. There are several discounts available, such as the one from Tradier that is $55/month to have the ONE software. SteadyOptions also has a deal with ONE. One other observation that wasn't a deal-breaker, but was weird. Tradier limits ACH (bank cash transfers) to $25,000 maximum in or out in a day. If you want to fund your account with $100k, then you either need to spend the money on a wire transfer, or send four daily $25k transfers. Again, no biggie, but weird to have a limit.

@blackice- SO already has trades that do exactly what you outline. The VXX put diagonal trades are designed to take advantage of the VIX futures contango, which is it's norm. VXX is built using the front 2 months of VIX futures so its constantly selling futures about to expire (lower price) and buying futures up to 2 months out (higher price) thereby causing cause the VXX price to go down when the VIX futures are in their normal contango state. This is exactly what you refer to in your (2) trade. Your (3) trade is a hedge, which SO has with the VIX risk reversal and VIX strangle trades. Maybe building a better hedge is possible, but the basic premise of what you outline is already in play with SO trades.