Optionshouse.com (an in depth look)
Monday, April 7th, 2008
I know I wrote a review earlier about my trading account with Optionshouse.com, but I thought that I would add some screen shots to go along with the review.
Many of these screen shots will be too large to fit into the blog properly, so if you click on them you will be able to see the full size version.
This first screen shows the options chain view. In this view you can see the bid, ask, change, volume and open interest. If you click on any of the call or put prices a black box such as this one will pull up and allow you to choose many different trade options depending on what you want to do. The screen is actually much larger, but I wanted to just show a snippet to give an idea of what the chain view looks like. One nice feature of this view is that it refreshes every five seconds and flashes a different color for each option that changed in price during the last five seconds.
The second screen showes the options ticket. This is where you can initiate your trades. It also gives you the choice of either doing one trade at a time, or you can add different legs to the trade as well. A nice feature that is shown on the bottom of this image is that the total cost of the trade automatically updates each time you alter your trade.
In the third screen, you can see the watchlist which is located on one of the sidebar tabs. The watchlist is nice because it allows you to be able to see all of the stocks you are most interested in. One downfall of the watchlist is that it has to be refreshed manually. While this may be a nuisance if you need to have the most up to date quote, I can see how it would put a strain on the site’s bandwidth if it were in real time. Either way, it is still a nice feature.
I will admit to being a terrible options trader, but I can see how this site would be a great trading platform for an experienced trader, especially with the fixed commission structure.