Today, we are doing a Wingman Tracker review.
Up until recently, there weren’t many good options for recording and tracking options trades.
Most people use a spreadsheet which can be cumbersome and time consuming.
So, when I got the chance to take Wingman Tracker for a test drive, I was very excited.
If you want to try it for yourself, you can use the code optionstradingiq to get 50% off.
Contents
- Introduction
- Why Do We Need Something Better
- Setting Profit Targets
- Importing New Data
- Analysis Tab
- Account Balances Tab
- FAQs
- Conclusion
Introduction
A student of mine showed me how he tracks his trades using a spreadsheet:
(reprinted with permission)
I already noticed that it was missing date stamps and other details. The conversation typically would go like this:
Me: Which strategy is most profitable?
Student: Not sure. I haven’t figured out how in Excel to split out the P&L numbers based on the strategy column and sum them.
Me: Are you profitable so far?
Student: I don’t know off the top of my head. But I can get it quickly by summing the P&L column. Except there might have been a few trades I forgot to put in the spreadsheet.
Me: How do you track P&L after you make rolls and adjustments?
Student: See how I marked in the spreadsheet “rolling one leg.” Like this:
Me: Was that a winning trade?
Student: No, it looks like it lost –$968.
Me: Then what is the –$806 number?
Student: Oh, that’s just the cost of the calendar adjustment. But wait, how come this calendar is missing the closing prices? I know this trade has been completed already. Hmmm, maybe that P&L is not correct.
Why Do We Need Something Better
Okay, now you see the problem with tracking trades with a spreadsheet.
This is the problem that Wingman Tracker is trying to solve.
Actually, I shouldn’t be too hard on this student.
At least he was attempting to track his trades.
Some are not even tracking at all. It is just too much work and error-prone.
I told the student to give Wingman Tracker a try.
He had two active trades in a typical brokerage account that looked like this:
(reprinted with permission)
Note that one of the rows is missing some numbers.
That happens.
He must have just placed the trade today.
The numbers will show up tomorrow.
He exported it into a CVS file by following the nice pictorials provided by the Wingman app.
source: Wingman Tracker .com
Currently, Wingman can import from Charles Schwab, Fidelity, TastyWorks, eTrade, Interactive Brokers, TD Ameritrade, and Infinity Futures (beta).
After the import, we get the following:
source: Wingman Tracker .com
In this case, because he had lots of legs under one ticker symbol, Wingman is not able to figure out that all those legs are from two different butterflies.
If it was only one strategy under an individual ticker symbol, then Wingman probably can figure out that it is an iron condor under XYZ stock, or a butterfly under ABC stock, etc.
Not a problem, all we had to do was to first rename the strategy names to what we know them to be: “Butterfly (Long Put)” and “Broken Wing Butterfly (Long Call).
And then, move the correct legs into that renamed strategy by selecting the following action menu:
source: Wingman Tracker .com
Now they are grouped properly.
Don’t worry.
There’s a video in the Wingman app that explains how to do all this.
Note that in the above screenshot, we had switched to P&L mode instead of the Cost Basis mode.
What that provides is a 15-minute delayed quote updated every 2 minutes.
So now we can see that his Long Put Butterfly is profitable by $16.
If you have a custom name for your particular strategy that you want to use instead of “Long Put Butterfly,” you can add a custom tag name to each strategy.
We’ll explain why you might want to do this later.
Setting Profit Targets
For each strategy, you can set profit targets and loss targets.
By doing so, it shows a progress bar under the P&L, indicating how close you are to hitting the target.
Importing New Data
As new trades occur in the brokerage platform, he would need to export the CVS file again and go to the import tab and import it.
It doesn’t matter if there are records that have been imported previously.
Wingman will handle duplicates correctly and figure out what are the new changes.
In particular, because the Long Call Broken Wing Butterfly was missing data, it will get filled in during the next import when the data becomes available.
Because we had already performed the leg groupings in the initial account creation import, we will not need to re-group the legs into butterflies again.
The new numbers will know to match up with the existing data.
Analysis Tab
Once you build up enough trade history, you will be able to use the Analysis page to get summary stats such as:
- Total P/L
- Average P/L
- Total Commissions and Fees
- Win Rate
- Average Winner
- Average Loser
and so on, as well as tracking monthly P/L.
The updated stats are filtered by date, strategy, tags, etc.
source: Wingman Tracker .com
Remember how we can add custom tags to our trades.
It is so that you can track performance by those tags as well as by strategy.
You could have a tag called “0-DTE Condor” and another called “45-DTE Condor”.
Now you can see which performs better.
Not only will the report give you stats such as average winner, average loser, and win rate; in this case, the stats that is of interest is the “average P/L per day.”
It will even report fees and fees as a percentage of P/L.
While there are more fees involved with 0-DTE condor, what is more, relevant is fees as a percentage of P/L.
Account Balances Tab
The neat thing about the Wingman app is that there are keyboard shortcuts to jump from tab to tab. Pressing the letter “b” on the keyboard takes me immediately to the “Account Balances” page.
There you will see the equity curve of each of your accounts charted by percentages or by dollar amount.
FAQs
Can we import trade records from a long time ago?
No. You can only import trades from dates after the account creation and the initial import.
When we tried to import historical trades, this is the error message we got:
source: Wingman Tracker .com
Clicking the link for more explanation, they start by saying that:
You may want to upload a lot of history to get performance analysis right off the bat.
I totally get the value of that!
But here’s why we only import trades that occurred after you added your account to Wingman.
Then the explanation got complicated, so here is the link to their full response.
Why is it important to track our trades?
You need to know which is your best strategy and which is your worst strategy.
To improve as a trader, do more of what works.
And do less of what doesn’t work.
If you don’t track, then how will you know what works and what doesn’t?
What if I only use one strategy?
Suppose someone only does iron condors.
They still need to track the P&L of their trade, taking into account adjustments.
Can’t TastyWorks already track P&L across adjustments?
The answer is “yes, but…”
TastyWorks is a modern platform that was built for options trading, so it has a feature called the “Order Chain” that can track P&L across adjustments that other brokers may not be able to do.
Here is a student record from TastyWorks.
(reprinted with permission)
Reading from the bottom, it looks like he sold two iron condors in OXY.
Then on the following day, he closed one leg of one condor.
And then he closed one entire condor.
That leaves one credit spread remaining, which he eventually closed later.
What was the P&L on this whole trade?
At the time, the “Order Chain” would have reported to him the correct P&L.
But guess what?
If he wanted to find the P&L today, he wouldn’t have found it.
It was because the trade happened more than 180 days ago.
I guess because TastyWorks didn’t want to store all that information.
Had he imported all his records into Wingman Tracker, it would be more than happy to store them.
Then he would have known the P&L of any trades in the past.
Conclusion
What we have learned:
- To improve our trading, we need to track and note the stats of our trades.
- To track options in a spreadsheet is time-consuming and error-prone.
Wingman Tracker fills a niche that needs to make tracking easier and less error-prone so that more traders start tracking their trades.
We hope you enjoyed this Wingman Tracker review. If you have any questions, please leave a comment or send an email.
Trade safe!
Disclaimer: The information above is for educational purposes only and should not be treated as investment advice. The strategy presented would not be suitable for investors who are not familiar with exchange traded options. Any readers interested in this strategy should do their own research and seek advice from a licensed financial adviser.
