Strategy builder ♟️
Traders don’t think in strikes. They think in outcomes.
Most options builders make traders turn an idea into legs, strikes and forms. We designed a workbench that skips that step: state the goal, get the trade, then shape it by touch.
9:15 AM
The trade is already in their head
The market has just opened. A trader knows exactly what they want: an 80% chance of profit if NIFTY stays between 23,400 and 23,900. That one sentence is the whole trade.
Then the builder opens an option chain, and the work of turning that sentence into strikes, legs and lots begins. The Strategy Terminal is built to do that work for them.
MY ROLE
Setting the direction, then reviewing every flow
We were two designers on the Strategy Terminal, and I led the design. Most of my work sat around the screens: settling what V1 should be, designing the page every trader lands on, and giving the other designer a clear list of cases to design.
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01
Scope and research
Discussed and debated scope with the wider team, backed by research, until V1 was settled.
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02
Everyone aligned
Kept stakeholders aligned on what V1 would and wouldn’t do, from the first discussions to launch.
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03
The landing page
Designed the page every trader lands on: an empty builder with Genie, the option chain and Sketch as ways in.
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04
Cases, handed over
Listed every case and state for the other designer, then reviewed each flow with them until it shipped.
AT A GLANCE
One engine. Three moves.
The Strategy Terminal gives option sellers a goal-first workbench built around three accelerators — each one removes a step every competing builder still forces.
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MOVE 01 · GENIE
Creation by intent
Name the outcome — POP, range, profit — and a solver returns real strikes in one click. “Make a wish — granted.”
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MOVE 02 · SKETCH
Shaping by touch
The payoff chart is the build surface. Add legs, roll strikes, move whole sides — by dragging, not by forms.
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MOVE 03 · ADJUST
Adjustment without anxiety
On a live position: mark every change, compare before → after, execute once. Nothing fires until you say so.
THE PROBLEM
Every builder forces the same detour
Pick a view. Open the chain. Hunt strikes. Assemble legs. Check if it matches the idea. Repeat until it does.
In our analysis, the top competitors all took this path. Each one treats the option chain as the starting point, when the chain is actually the last thing a trader should need to touch.
That’s the insight the whole product is built on: the trader already knew the outcome before they opened the app. The sentence at 9:15 is a complete specification of a trade. Everything after it, the strikes, the legs, the widths, is translation work the software should do, not the trader.
Three specific pains, three specific answers
| PAIN TODAY | COST TO THE TRADER | OUR ANSWER |
|---|---|---|
| Strike-hunting | The idea → legs translation is manual, slow, and error-prone. Traders juggle a chain, a calculator, and a payoff preview across tabs. | Genie — solve for strikes from the stated goal. |
| Form-based editing | Reshaping a trade means editing rows and dialogs, then re-checking the payoff. The feedback loop is broken in half. | Sketch — the payoff chart is directly manipulable; metrics update as the hand moves. |
| Adjustment fear | Modifying a live position means firing orders one at a time, half-blind, with real money moving between each click. | Adjust — mark, compare, execute once. Zero orders until explicit commit. |
Creation by intent. Shaping by touch. Adjustment without anxiety.
THE DESIGN
A three-widget workbench
The Strategy view loads three widgets on the Web 2.0 modular canvas — drag, resize, tab, group. The builder spans the top; context sits beneath it. The principle: one widget, one job. Build in one place, read the market in another, never leave the view.
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WIDGET 1
Strategy Builder
The workbench. Build panel (left) with six tabs; payoff & analytics pane (right) that recalculates the instant anything changes. Sketch lives on this chart.
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WIDGET 2
Analysis Charts
Five read-only context tabs — ATM IV, PCR, Options chart, Index chart, ATM straddle. The volatility, sentiment, and price read a seller takes before committing strikes.
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WIDGET 3 · NEW
OI Change
A widget that didn’t exist before: Call/Put OI and change by strike around ATM, PCR + India VIX readout, strike-range and time-of-day controls, multi-expiry select.
The payoff & analytics pane
Everything a decision needs, in one glance: a metric strip (Max profit · Max loss · POP · Reward:Risk · Intrinsic · Time value), breakevens with a Target/Expiry toggle, six payoff views as tabs, On-Target and On-Expiry curves drawn over an OI backdrop, a NIFTY target slider, a target-date stepper, and Undo / Reset. This pane is not a preview — it’s the primary surface. Sketch gestures act directly on it.
MOVE 01 · GENIE
Make a wish. Get real strikes.
Genie inverts the builder: instead of assembling legs and checking the outcome, you state the outcome and the solver assembles the legs.
The wish has four inputs — each optional, each independently selectable. Set one, several, or all four; hit Generate; the solver returns the closest fit across every active wish and drops real, editable legs into the build panel.
| WISH | INPUT |
|---|---|
| Strategy shape | Pick a shape from the ready-made set — or leave it to the solver. |
| POP % | Chance of expiring in profit. Presets: 60 / 80 / 90. |
| Breakeven range | Range to hold below & above spot, in ₹ or %. |
| Max profit | Desired profit as % of margin. Presets: 2% / 3% / 4%. |
Watch it: a wish becomes a strategy
A rough prototype of Genie. Three optional wishes, one click, and real strikes, including what happens when the wishes can’t all be met.
Genie, from a wish to real strikes
Create a custom strategy with Genie
Apply one or multiple filters to generate strategy
20 ready made strategies
Neutral
Chances the strategy expires in profit
Desired profit as % of margin needed
- Premium
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- Max profit
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- Max loss
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- POP
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- Breakevens
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Rough prototype on the same toy model, with margin taken as ₹1,00,000. Wishes count as met within the PRD’s tolerances: POP ±3, profit ±15%.
A solver you can’t audit is a black box. A solver that admits its trade-offs is a colleague.
And critically: Genie’s output is just a strategy. Every leg is editable in the trade list and draggable on the payoff. Genie hands off — it doesn’t lock. That single decision is what keeps an “AI-ish” feature from feeling like a gimmick to professional traders.
MOVE 02 · SKETCH
The payoff chart is the build surface
Traders already stare at the payoff diagram — it’s the picture in their head. Sketch makes that picture directly manipulable. No option chain, no edit dialogs.
Start from an empty chart — just axes and strikes — or shape a strategy Genie generated or a position you loaded. Every gesture maps to a real trading operation:
| GESTURE | RESULT |
|---|---|
| Hover empty space | A + snaps to the nearest 50-pt strike → menu offers Call: Buy/Sell, Put: Buy/Sell → the leg lands. Available everywhere. |
| Drag a dot | That single leg rolls to the next real strike. |
| Drag a side | Both end legs move together — slopes and the flat top — with width held. |
| Delete a leg | Removes it from the structure via the leg control / trade list. |
Strikes, premiums, breakevens, POP — every metric updates live as the hand moves. The feedback loop that form-based builders break in half becomes a single continuous motion: think, drag, see.
Try it: shape an iron condor
- Premium
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- Max profit
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- Max loss
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- POP
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- Breakevens
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Drag a dot to roll a legDrag a slope to move both legsTap empty space to add a leg
Illustrative toy model: NIFTY 23,650, 1 lot = 75, 6 days to expiry, 13% IV. Not live prices.
Watch it: draw the legs, then set the levels
A rough prototype of the Sketch flow. A blank chart, four taps to draw an iron condor, then a drag to set where it sits.
Sketch, from a blank chart
- Premium
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- Max profit
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- Max loss
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- POP
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- Breakevens
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Rough prototype on the same toy model. Open interest bars are illustrative.
A decision about restraint
While creating, a payoff dot can only be dragged to roll. No exit toggle, no lot-change on hover — those live exclusively in Adjust mode. Why? Because a surface that does everything everywhere teaches nothing. Create-mode gestures answer one question — “what shape do I want?” — and adjustment gestures answer a different, riskier one — “what do I change on live money?” Splitting the gesture vocabulary by mode keeps each one learnable and makes the dangerous one deliberate.
MOVE 03 · ADJUST
Mark. Compare. Execute once.
Adjusting a live position is the highest-anxiety moment in options trading — real money moves with every click. Adjust’s core contract: nothing fires until you say so.
Go to Open Positions, click a group to load it, enter adjustment mode. Every change is a mark — an intention, not an order. And there are two ways to mark, writing to the same set:
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FROM THE TRADE LIST
Precision path
Each row gains a New-lot field (typeable, +/− nudge), a Mark-exit toggle, and an Adjustments column showing every mark as a pill — REDUCE LOT 12 → 01, ROLL 24120 → 24220, NO CHANGE.
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FROM THE PAYOFF CHART
Spatial path
Hover a dot → a popover for that exact leg with a New-lot stepper and Mark-exit toggle; drag the dotted curve to roll. Every chart mark writes back to the trade list as the matching pill.
The comparison is the product
Existing position: solid grey ghost. Adjusted: dotted green/red. Every metric reads before → after — max profit, max loss, POP, reward:risk, breakevens, intrinsic and time value. The trader sees the complete consequence of their marks as one picture, then chooses.
Execute adjustments fires all marked exits, reductions, rolls, and new legs together, as one batch. Cancel discards every mark. There is no third state — no half-applied position, no “oops, only the first two legs went through.”
Every other terminal makes you adjust with live rounds. We gave traders a dry-run.
FROM STRATEGY TO POSITION
Execute is a gate, not a button
Tapping Execute doesn’t place anything. It opens a review first, and orders go out only when the trader confirms.
The same window then follows every order through. Closing it drops the strategy back into the builder as a live position, ready for Adjust.
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01 · REVIEW
Every leg in one place
Lots, exit price, intraday or overnight, charges and margin. Then Cancel, or Execute all.
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02 · TRACK
Each order, followed through
The same window lists every order with its status, with Modify or Cancel for anything still open.
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03 · POSITION
Back in the builder
The strategy lands as a position, with booked and unbooked P&L, ready to adjust.
THE EDGES
Clear the moment something won’t work
A builder that moves money can’t fail quietly. Each of these was designed before launch, and each one says plainly what happened and what to do next.
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01
Price outside the circuit
“Limit price outside circuit limit (0.05 – 61.40).” The trade list shows the allowed range, and Review stays off until the price is fixed.
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02
Strikes missing in a new expiry
“Some strikes unavailable in the new expiry. Remap to the nearest.” Switching expiry never drops a leg silently.
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03
The same leg twice
“Duplicate leg. Please change the strike.” A repeated strike is caught the moment it’s added.
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04
Clearing on purpose
“Clear all legs?” asks first, and an expired basket is cleared with a note that says so.
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05
Unlimited means unlimited
A naked leg left after its hedge is exited reads “Unlimited”, never a made-up finite number.
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06
P&L that adds up
Exits, reductions and rolls book correctly, so total P&L is the same before and after an adjustment.
MEASURING SUCCESS
What happened
Within 45 days the Strategy Terminal was live. After launch, this is what moved.
To measure the impact of Strategy Builder, we focused on three things: retention, adoption of core features like Genie and Sketch, and depth of engagement, such as how many traders actively adjust their positions.
Retention tells us whether the product is becoming a habit, while feature usage shows whether the core value proposition is landing. Together, these metrics capture not just how many traders come back, but how meaningfully they engage with the product.
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Retention improvement
From 16% to 18%
As traders found a new way to build strategies, they told us it improved the experience and saved them time.
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Genie usage
35% of all web traders
Genie gives traders the flexibility to choose their return or POP, hit the desired ROC, and track it easily.
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Sketch usage
12% of all web traders
Drawing directly on the surface gives traders an easy way to build their own strategies, matched to their own risk appetite and reward expectations.
REFLECTION
What this project taught me
The best interface removes a translation, not a click. Cutting taps makes a product better; removing the step between an idea and a trade makes it different.
Trust is designed in the failure cases. A tool that is honest about its limits is the one professionals end up relying on.
Restraint is a feature. The hardest calls were about what to leave out. When a mis-click costs real money, what the interface refuses to do is part of what it offers.