Options Trading Grade: D
Overview:
Just2Trade offers a below average options trading experience. Initiating new positions from the trade ticket menu works fine but closing out existing positions could be handled better. Open orders can be canceled without issue but they cannot be modified. There are no detailed options pricing pages, a fairly standard feature found at most brokers. Trade confirmations include execution time down to the second. In June 2011, advanced multi-leg option orders were implemented but we have issues using the new interface. Hopefully Just2Trade can fix this soon. For now, we do not recommend Just2Trade as an options trading platform.
Order Types:
- Basic (one option leg) - Buy or sell a single put or call
- Covered Call (one option leg + stock) - Buy / sell stock and sell a corresponding put / call. This is not a true covered call order in that the underlying stock position must already be held before this order can be submitted
- Spread (two option legs) - An order to simultaneously purchase and sell options at different strike prices, where both have the same underlying, right (call or put) and expiration date.
- Straddle (two option legs) - Buy/sell a put and call with matching strikes and expiration
- Calendar (two option legs) - Buy / sell a pair of puts or a pair of calls with varying expirations
- Diagonal (two option legs) - Buy / sell a pair of puts or a pair of calls with varying strikes and expirations
Details:
To trade options at Just2Trade, select Trading and then Options Order from the top menu. From there, click on the options chain link, which will load in a new window. We entered an underlying stock symbol and month of expiration to load the desired chain. Notably missing from this menu are links to detailed contract pricing pages, a feature that is offered by many other brokers. Nevertheless, when we found the contract that we wanted to trade we clicked on the symbol, which brought us back to the trade ticket with the contract name populated:
From here we selected to buy 1 contract of Conoco Philips (COP) May $77.50 Calls with a limit price of $2.60 and a time in force of good until canceled (GTC). GTC orders remain active for 90 days until they execute or are automatically canceled. When everything was set we clicked on the Buy button:
This loaded the trade preview page, which included a summary of the order, the commission, the total estimated cost and updated pricing information. We clicked the Accept Trade button:
Our order was submitted successfully and we received a transaction number and a link to the Active Orders page:
We navigated to the Active Orders page, which can also be accessed by selecting Trading and then Active Orders from the top menu. From this page, open orders can be canceled but they cannot be modified. Our only issue with canceling open orders is that they simply disappear from the page, and can only be confirmed as being canceled by navigating to the Stock/Option Order History page and performing a query.
Once our order executed we viewed our position by accessing the Account Position menu. We decided to close out our holding so we clicked on the Trade button next to our position:
This loaded the trade ticket with the option contract and number of contracts automatically populated. We had to change the details to select to close out our position and not open a new position, an oversight on Just2Trade's part. Some brokers will default to a limit order with the last trade price as the limit price, which we prefer.
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