Combine Multiple Decisions for Position Exit Triggers

The ability to make decisions inside of your bots on Option Alpha is truly one of the coolest thing you can do as an automated trader. In this video, I want to show you how to combine multiple decisions into one decision action.

So the bot has to ensure that all of those decisions are true or valid in order for the bot to continue down either the yes or no path. In this case, we have a very simple demo automation that we built out. The demo automation first repeats through any short put spread position that the bot is currently in. Then the bot starts making some decisions.

First, the bot makes one decision to see if the premium on the position decreased by 50% since it was opened. And since we're trading short premium strategies like a short put spread for this particular automation, that would mean that we essentially have our profit-taking decision.

If the premium are down by 50% since it was opened, we're going to have the bot go down the yes path and close the position by submitting an order to our broker and closing the position in our account. If the premium hasn't gone down by 50%, we're going to have the bot make another single decision,have the bot check and see if the position expires in less than ten market days.

If the answer to that question is yes, and the position that it's currently looking at expires in ten days, then we want the bot to make another decision.

In this case, we want the bot to check and see if the premium has increased by 100% since it was opened.

Now again, since we're trading short premium strategies, this would mean for this particular automation that we're building that, we are using this decision recipe as our stop loss decision. If the premium has gone up by 100% and the position expires in less than ten days because we had the bot make that decision first, then we want the bot to close the position.

Again, this very simple demo automation and shows you how you can use just very simple decisions inside of your automations.

Now, all of these decisions in this particular demo automations are single decisions. Meaning that each decision action only includes one specific decision recipe that we want the bot to go through. In this case, check and see if the premium has decreased by 50% since it was opened.

But notice that we can add multiple decisions to any decision block that we want, and we can group multiple decisions into a decision block. So the bot makes multiple decisions exactly the way that we want before continuing down the next path.

For example, inside of this decision block here, we have one decision. The position expires in less than ten days market days, but notice we can go to this plus icon here and add another decision to this exact decision block.

We can go down to the decision recipe we want. We can check and see if the position has been opened by more than a day. Not only do we want to check and see if the position expires in ten days, but we also want to ensure that we're not arbitrarily executing a stop loss order for position that has only been opened for one particular day.

So we can have the bot make another decision to check and see if whatever position it's looping through at the current time has been opened more than one market day.

Again, you can modify and make any other decisions you want. This is just example of how you can do it inside this automation. When I click "save," now this decision action block has two decisions that the bot will go through. And there's the verbiage that we use here.

You can see it says follow the "Yes" path if the position expires in less than ten days and the position has been opened for more than one market day.

This means that the bot will intelligently make both decisions inside of this particular action block. And only continue down the yes path if both of these statements are true. That the positions looking at expires in less than ten days, and the position has been opened for more than one market day.

Notice we can easily toggle between and and or statements and even make groups and sub-groups of decisions inside of our decision recipe block. It's all very easy to do here inside of the automation editor. Once you're good to go, you can simply hit "save" and then add this to your automation editor. Notice that the text has been added and updated to tell you exactly what it's doing inside of this decision block.

We can also do this for other particular blocks as well. We don't have to limit it to this one, but maybe down here, for example, we want to make another decision to check and see if the positions underlying price is below our short put strike. That will be an intelligent way to monitor positions and only close short premium positions with a stop loss if we're actually being challenged by the underlying security.

So we can add another decision here to check and see if the position's underlying price is currently below our short put strike of the position that we're looking at. We just simply make those modifications to the fields inside of our position recipe and then hit "save." This way, we're doing it a little bit smarter than before.

This time, instead of just closing anything where the premium increases by 100% since it was opened, we're also having the bot check and see if the position is actually being challenged. Is the stock actually trading under our short put strike? Because if it's not, maybe that increase in premium is just implied volatility, and we still have time decay on our side, and the position is still favorable and out of money compared to where the underlying stock is.

So now we can have the bot check for that right here inside of this particular decision action. Once we're good to go, we simply hit "save." Now add that to our decision block.

Again, that's already in here, and it's been added to our decision recipe for our automation editor, which means that it will make multiple decisions every time the automation runs. So again, grouping decisions is something you can do. You can split out your decisions into individual decision blocks, or as we showed you here in this video, you can decide to group like or similar decisions into one decision action.

This way, you can have the bot make exactly the right decisions, exactly how you want to automate your trades.