Simulation limitations
Options Wheelhouse currently executes only in Alpaca Paper. Simulated results do not represent actual trading. Paper fills may be faster or more favorable; quoted prices may be stale, delayed, or unavailable; spreads and liquidity may differ; commissions and fees may be absent; market impact may be ignored; assignment and exercise may be simplified; and simulated buying power may not match a live account. Paper trading also cannot reproduce the pressure of risking real money.
Strategy risks
- Covered calls: limit upside, do not protect most downside in the shares, and may be assigned early.
- Cash-secured puts: can require buying shares well above market value and can lose most of the reserved cash if the underlying collapses.
- Credit spreads and iron condors: have defined but potentially substantial maximum loss; near expiration, small price moves and assignment can create unexpected stock exposure.
- Calendar spreads: depend on time decay and volatility relationships and can lose the entire debit; the short leg carries assignment and pin risk.
- Protective collars: cost money or cap upside and may not protect outside the chosen strikes and dates.
- Poor Man’s Covered Calls: use a long option instead of shares and introduce leverage, expiration mismatch, volatility, extrinsic-value, and assignment risk.
- Broken-wing butterflies: have asymmetric expiration risk, pin risk, and potentially complex assignment outcomes.
- Short strangles: have undefined risk. A sharp move can cause very large losses, margin calls, liquidation, and short-stock exposure after assignment.
Automation and technology risks
Schedules can repeat an error. Incorrect symbols, settings, credentials, clocks, market data, broker responses, software defects, network failures, or stale state may produce missed, duplicate, rejected, or unintended simulated orders. Multi-leg orders can behave differently from their theoretical payoff. Approval controls reduce but do not eliminate risk. Monitor the software, broker portal, positions, and open orders independently.
No performance promise
Examples, rankings, premium totals, win rates, backtests, paper results, and educational settings are hypothetical and are not promises or forecasts. Net premium alone is not profit. It can exclude unrealized loss, assignment exposure, closing cost, fees, taxes, opportunity cost, or later losses. Past or simulated performance does not predict future results.
Your responsibility
You alone decide whether and how to use the software. Before any live options trading outside Options Wheelhouse, read the current standardized options disclosure document from the Options Clearing Corporation, obtain required broker approval, and consult appropriately licensed financial, legal, and tax professionals. Never trade money you cannot afford to lose.