How to Write an Exit Plan: Decide When to Leave Before You Enter

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An exit plan is the exit condition written before you open a position: how much profit to leave at, how much loss to leave at, and by what time to leave. Write it before you open, not after the position is already losing — after that, it is easy to let emotions decide, or to keep holding until the close. In the simulator, the exit plan only alerts and never auto-trades: when a condition is hit, an alert appears next to the position, and you still close it yourself.

Three Conditions, Each Doing One Job

Take-profit: alerts when floating profit reaches a percentage of this trade's capital at risk. Capital at risk is measured per trade: for a long single leg, premium plus open fee; for shorts and spreads, locked margin (for a debit spread, net debit plus open fee).
Stop-loss: alerts when floating loss reaches a percentage of the same capital at risk, measured the same way as take-profit.
Time exit: alerts when the ET time you set arrives. 0DTE contracts expire the same day and are never carried overnight, so a time exit is simply your own latest time to leave. The simulator's discipline has two more time lines: no new opens after 15:30 ET, and a prompt to close before 15:55.

Before Writing Conditions, Know Two Execution Risks

A market order only guarantees a fill, not a price; in a fast market the actual fill can be worse than the quote you saw.
A stop is only a trigger price, not a guaranteed fill price; after it triggers, the fill can be worse, so leave room for the worst case when you write your exit conditions.

What these two sentences mean: an exit plan decides when to act, not the price you will certainly get. When you write a stop-loss percentage, leave room for the worst case instead of using a just-enough number.

What Happens If You Write No Exit Conditions

If all three conditions are empty when you open, the simulator first asks: "You have not written any exit condition. Open anyway?" You can still open, but it means entering with no exit plan. Writing conditions does not mean they will trigger — if the price never gets there, or the time never comes, there is no alert.

Practice in the Simulator First

This simulator uses real CBOE option chains delayed about 15 minutes, starts with $10,000 in virtual funds, charges $0.65 per contract per side in fees, and shows P&L net of fees; short-sale margin is a simplified simulated rule at 20% of the strike, not a real broker margin. The simulator is for practicing orders, discipline, and review. It is not investment advice and promises no returns.