Options paper trading

The options paper trading desk is the options half of the Simulator: the same fake-money account, pointed at the options chain instead of the stock ticket. You pick a contract from the live chain, buy or sell it with practice cash, watch the position mark against real quotes, and close it or hold it to expiration. Every fill is booked at the real market price, never a flattering one — that's the whole point of practicing options somewhere it can't cost you a dollar.

How fills work (honestly)

• Buys fill at the ask, sells fill at the bid. Market orders cross the spread and pay it; that spread is real tuition. A fill never happens at the mid or the mark — those are display numbers.
• Limit orders fill only when the book reaches them. A buy limit fills when the ask is at or below your price; a sell limit fills when the bid is at or above it. A limit that isn't marketable yet simply rests — it does not fill instantly.
• Wide-spread warnings. When the bid/ask spread is wider than 10% of the mid, the fill carries a warning. Thin options print wide spreads routinely; the warning is your cue to check what you just paid.
• No quote, no fill. If the chain has no bid or ask for a contract, the order rejects with a plain reason. The sim never invents a price.

Margin and buying power

• Long options cost exactly the premium — that's the maximum you can lose.
• Covered calls require 100 shares of the stock per contract you already hold in the same simulator account.
• Cash-secured puts set aside the full buy price (strike × 100 × contracts).
• Naked calls and puts are behind the "More strategies" control and a risk disclosure for a reason: a naked short's loss is not capped by the premium you collect.
• Vertical spreads are booked as one atomic position with netted margin — the spread's width minus the credit, never the two legs added together.

Expiration: cash, not shares

Everything settles in cash at expiration, the way index options do:

• Long in the money → exercised: the intrinsic value is credited to your cash.
• Short in the money → assigned: the intrinsic value is debited (your margin was held for exactly this).
• Out of the money → expired worthless; the premium spent or kept is the whole story.
• No early assignment. The sim never assigns a short before expiration — one less thing to model while you're learning.

Positions settle after the market close on expiration day (or the next day), and each settles exactly once even though the settlement engine runs many times.

The fine print

• Options trade in contracts of 100 shares. A "$2.10" option costs $210 per contract.
• There are no per-contract commissions in the sim. Real options trading has them, and they matter on small trades.
• One-time migration: if you practiced options while signed out, signing in moves those positions to your account once — they then sync across devices.
• The simulator is practice, not advice. Prices and mechanics are real; nothing here is a recommendation, and the honest fills are exactly so you learn what options actually cost before you ever trade one for real.