We all love to turn a profit, but when something is not going your way, that’s good to know too! No matter your analysis needs, reading the P/L figure on your desktop platform is useful, and hopefully, this short guide will make it easy too!
However, if you're looking to determine your realized P/L of your portfolio from a prior year or specific time period instead, then please refer to the Year-to-Date Export file locate in our Tax Center. To learn more, please here.
Where is my P/L?
Head to the History tab > Year-to-date section in the desktop platform
Desktop Platform
Overall P/L’s (profit and loss figures) per underlying can be found by navigating to the History tab on the desktop platform. After you reach the History tab, click the year to date button located to the right of transactions. At this point, you should see your aggregate P/L per underlying, total commissions, and fees per underlying as well.
Web Browser Platform
coming soon
Mobile Platform
To view your P/L per position, navigate to History. Once the History tab is open, tap Year-to-Date to see your P/L per position. Your portfolio P/L YTD will list at the top along the TOTAL line. You can also view your total commissions and fees by swiping left.
How do I read my P/L?
There are three P/L figures
P/L Realized: This figure displays realized profit/loss. In other words, this is the resulting profit/loss from positions that have been CLOSED. This is a relatively static figure and should only change when positions are closed.
P/L Open: This figure displays the current profit/loss of any open positions in an underlying. This is a dynamic metric and is marked to mid-price.
P/L YTD: This figure, as its name indicates, displays profit/loss for the year-to-date. Its value is arrived at by way of the following simple formula: P/L Realized + P/L Open = P/L YTD. P/L YTD is a relative number that measures your P/L from the beginning of the year. Additionally, P/L YTD bases on the closing mark of any position held from one year to another. So, if you held position(s) into a new year then P/L YTD will base on the closing mark of the previous year. Remember, P/L YTD is a gross figure and does not factor in commissions and fees.
How do I determine the P/L of a trade?
Again, start by heading to the History tab to isolate the symbol
Just to solidify things, let’s go through an example of how a specific trade might affect P/L in a portfolio. Stay with us; we’re almost done!
For the sake of this example, consider a 5-lot IWM Iron Condor. First, we need to head to the ‘History’ tab. For convenience, let’s sort our transactions by underlying and by date. Once your filter ranges get pretty narrow, you might get down to just one underlying. At this stage, you might notice something. Assuming that you do not have any open positions in your portfolio, the ‘Amount’ figure near the top right-hand corner of the tab will match the P/L YTD of the selected underlying (see screenshot above). If those numbers do not match, the chances are that you still have an OPEN position in your portfolio or you are not viewing the entire year. Any positions that are still OPEN in your portfolio will read as profit or loss in the amount of the credit received/debit paid for the opening trade (i.e., will reflect an initial, unrealized value). The ‘Amount’ figure is the sum of each selected transaction.
Now, let’s see how much credit we received from the Iron Condor we sold on March 27, 2017. To see how much total credit was received, click to select each transaction line that constitutes a leg of the strategy. You’ll see the ‘Amount’ number change as you select each transaction. The figure will reflect the addition of each new transaction in its sum total.
For this 5-lot Iron Condor, we collected a total of $600, but since this was a 5-lot, we have to divide that number by 5 to see how much we collected per Iron Condor. It looks like we collected $1.20 per Iron Condor for a total of $600 (5QTY x $1.20 x 100).
Lastly, let’s figure out how much money we made from that short IWM Iron Condor at the end (distinct from the original credit received). Proceed to select each leg of the closing trade in the underlying and you will see the total amount made from the buy-back. In this case, it appears we made $310 total by buying the position back for $290 ($600-290 = $310), or $.0.58 per Iron Condor ($1.20 - $0.58 x 5QTY x 100).
The ‘Amounts’ figure in the ‘History’ tab and this process of transaction highlighting is also a great tool to keep track of your cost basis as you perform rolls!