How to Read the Trade Log: Opens, Closes, and Blocks — What Each Line Tells You

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The positions table tells you what you hold right now; the trade log tells you what you did today: every open, every close, and every blocked attempt leaves one line under “Today’s Trade Log & Discipline Count”. Read these three kinds of lines and you can reconcile the account: where the money went, why you were stopped, and whether today made or lost money. All the numbers below are “suppose the premium is” examples, verified against the engine — not live quotes.

Three kinds of lines, and what each looks like

An open line says where the money went: Open: Buy Call 7600 x1 @2.00, premium $200, fee $0.65 (2026-11-12 10:00) — direction, buy or sell, strike, quantity, fill price, premium, and fee, all in one line; a short open adds “margin locked” at the end.
A close line adds net P&L: Close: Long Call 7600 x1 @2.50, fee $0.65, net P&L $48.70 (2026-11-12 10:20) — closing a short open adds “margin released” at the end; a positive net is a win, a negative net is a loss.
A block line is red and only gives the reason: Blocked: Discipline block: no new opens after 15:30 ET (2026-11-12 15:31) — no position is opened, no cash moves, no fee is charged; it just records why this attempt was stopped.
Newest on top, older below; the time in brackets is the ET date and ET time; a quiet day shows a single line, “No records”; the log lives in the browser’s local storage, so yesterday’s lines stay below when the day rolls over — nothing is cleared.

The open line: how the money goes out

Buys fill at the ask, sells fill at the bid: buy 1 7600 call at an ask of $2.00 and the premium is 2.00 × 100 × 1 = $200; cash after opening is 10000 − 200 − 0.65 = $9,799.35.
The fee is $0.65 per contract per side: opening 1 contract costs $0.65, 2 contracts cost $1.30; combos charge $2.50 per leg per contract, so opening 1 vertical spread (2 legs) costs $5.00 and 1 iron condor (4 legs) costs $10.00.
A short open locks margin first: a bull put spread that sells the 7600 put and buys the 7585 put collects $6.20 a contract in net premium, locks $880 in margin, and leaves cash at 10000 + 620 − 5 = $10,615; a single-leg short locks 20% of the strike × 100 × quantity, which a $10,000 account can barely open.
Open and close lines can end with a cost breakdown: Cost breakdown: premium $200, spread cost about $10.00 (5.0% of premium), fee $0.65 — the spread cost is (ask − bid) × 100 × quantity, so a bid of 1.90 and an ask of 2.00 make $10.00; on a close line the percentage is measured against the closing premium instead.

The close line: how net P&L is worked out

For a long, it is (close price − open price) × 100 × quantity − both fees: buy 1 7600 call at $2.00 and close at $2.50, and the net P&L is (2.50 − 2.00) × 100 − 0.65 − 0.65 = $48.70.
For a short it runs the other way: (open price − close price) × 100 × quantity − both fees; if the price comes back up, you lose, and the line states the net loss outright — no need to work it out yourself.
A combo is scored as one trade: (close net price − open net price) × 100 × quantity − both fees: for the bull put spread above, suppose the close net price is −$3.00, then the net P&L is (−3.00 − (−6.20)) × 100 − 5 − 5 = $310, and $880 in margin is released at the same time.
Net P&L already has both fees taken out, so do not subtract them again: $48.70 is the net amount that lands in the account; the $200 premium on the open line is money paid out, not P&L.

Three easy mistakes

An open line carries no P&L number: nothing is realized until you close, so to see what an open position is worth now, look at the mid-price valuation cell in the positions table.
A block line does not use up an open: get blocked 4 times and open 3 trades in a day, and the day’s allowance is still 3 opens used — a block costs no allowance, no cash, and no fee.
A close line’s net P&L only feeds “realized today”: the close nets from the same day add up to realized P&L for the day; the floating P&L of positions still open sits under “unrealized” — do not mix the two.
Dates run on the ET day: the date in brackets is the ET date; in the small hours in Beijing the lines still sit under the previous ET day, so reconcile against the date in brackets.

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.