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New to options?
Start in paper mode with sensible defaults. Every proposed trade arrives as an approval card that explains the setup, the credit, and the exact maximum loss before you tap approve. Nothing is ever placed without your say-so. You learn the discipline by watching it work.
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Seasoned executor?
Every parameter is a dial you own: delta band, credit and width floors, daily risk budget, earnings blackouts, and how much, if anything, the agent may submit without asking. Hands-off execution requires a typed authorization, and a full decision journal records why every entry and exit happened.
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Either way, the balancer keeps you honest
Whatever you choose, it watches the whole book, not just the trade in front of you: beta-weighted delta against SPY, directional risk capped against theta income, and bias pairing that pulls a tilted book back toward neutral. Individual trades can be opinions. The portfolio stays disciplined.
FAQ
How it thinks, in plain English.
The short version: deterministic rules decide, AI explains.
Is my brokerage account data stored on your servers?
Some of it, and the Privacy Policy lists exactly what. We store the access token your brokerage issues, encrypted, so the app can read your account; revoke it at any time from the app or at your broker and we delete the stored token. We keep the records the app creates for you: your paper-trading journal, real trades you place through the app or import into the journal, watchlists, the rule sets and settings you adopt, and the agent's decision log. Positions and balances are read live from your broker and shown, and activity logs expire after 90 days. We never receive or store your brokerage login, Social Security number, banking details, or card number. Ask us to delete your account and we remove your records.
What does Optionscanner actually do?
It is a full options desk in one dashboard. A morning scanner ranks your universe by signal strength and IV rank. A conviction engine scores every ticker with the drivers shown. A trade plan builder turns any signal into strikes, expiry, probability of profit, and a breakeven cone. A live monitor checks every open position against exit rules you adopt and names the rule that fired. A journal auto-classifies every trade and tracks what actually works for you. And an AI assistant sits on top of all of it to explain anything on screen in plain English.
Which brokers do you support?
Schwab, Tradier, and Alpaca today, with additional brokers planned. All three supply real-time market data for your own account; Tradier and Alpaca also take orders through their APIs, and Schwab is data only. Alpaca is the simplest start because one account covers both data and execution, connected by signing in at Alpaca. You can start with any one of them; connecting more unlocks the full experience.
Will the agent trade without me?
Not with real money, ever. The default mode proposes trades and waits for your approval. Fully automatic modes run only in paper and sandbox accounts; there, entries under a dollar limit you set can submit without a click once you type an authorization, and the balancer's caps and your daily risk budget still apply. With a live account, every order waits for your approval on every broker, plus a production confirmation. A kill switch stops all new agent orders at once.
I don't have a brokerage account. Can I still join?
Yes. A free Alpaca account is enough to start: paper trading works from day one, you connect it by signing in at Alpaca, and every tool runs on paper exactly as it does live. Live trading needs a funded brokerage account with options approval. Skill level is not a requirement: the tool is built to assist you whether you are placing your first spread or your thousandth.
Who makes the trading decisions, the AI or the rules?
The rules. Every signal, entry filter, and risk cap comes from a deterministic rules engine built on long-standing options industry practice: defined-risk structures only, 30 to 45 days to expiry, short strikes inside a disciplined delta band, IV rank floors so premium is only sold when it is rich, liquidity minimums on open interest and bid-ask width, credit-to-width floors, and position sizing computed from worst-case loss. The same inputs always produce the same outputs. The AI cannot override, loosen, or talk its way past a single one of them.
So where does the AI come in?
In two places, both deliberately bounded. Inside the engine it is secondary guidance: an AI perspective that reviews what the rules already scored, adds market context, and never changes the math. Where it truly shines is the Help & AI section: a research assistant with more than twenty live tools that reads your actual positions, explains every measure and factor in the app, and answers account-specific questions like "what is my riskiest position this week" or "why was that spread rejected."
Can it manage the whole portfolio, not just single trades?
The auto trading agent now manages the book, not just the trade. Every position is beta-weighted against SPY, and three deterministic gates keep the portfolio balanced: directional exposure must stay proportional to daily theta income, is hard-capped as a fraction of capital, and when the book tilts too far, the agent will only accept trades that pull it back toward equilibrium. Every rejected candidate is logged with its exact reason, and a built-in AI analyst explains the aggregate picture in plain English.
Do I need my own AI API keys?
No. The AI features, the coach, second opinions, and catalyst research, run on keys the platform manages and are included in the subscription. The one exception is the optional voice avatar, which renders through Anam, a third-party service, using your own Anam API key; Anam's most basic plan, currently $12.99 a month, is enough. If you prefer to run the other AI features on your own Gemini or Anthropic keys you still can, from Settings, and then that spend is yours.
How do I know an AI answer is real and not made up?
Grounding is enforced, not promised. Every number the assistant states must come from a live tool call against your account or market data inside that same conversation, and it cites the tool it used inline. The server independently checks each reply against the tools that actually ran. If the assistant cannot ground an answer, it says "I need to run the tools for that" instead of guessing.
What does explainability mean in practice?
Ask why your conviction score is an 87 and you get the real subscores that built it. Ask why the engine rejected a trade idea and you get the exact filter that failed and the number it failed by, read from the record the engine wrote at decision time. Nothing is reconstructed after the fact and no rationale is invented to sound plausible. Every measure, factor, and account-specific decision in the app can be traced to its logged reasons.
Can it place trades for me?
Not with real money without you. A research agent can paper-trade the rules discipline in a sandbox so you can watch the process work risk-free. Anything touching a real account requires your explicit review and approval on every single order. The AI can analyze, propose, and queue an idea for your review. Only you can execute.
Whose market data is this?
Yours, for quotes, chains, and Greeks. You connect Schwab or Tradier with a one-time sign-in at the broker, or Alpaca by signing in at Alpaca or with API keys you create there, and the platform reads your broker's real-time feed. Your brokerage password never touches our servers, stored tokens and keys are encrypted and can be revoked at your broker at any time, nothing is resold, and you never pay twice for data you already have. A small set of reference series comes from public sources instead: official index closes from the Federal Reserve's data service, earnings dates from SEC filings, and values we compute ourselves, all listed on the Data Sources page.
What happens if my broker feed or OAuth token breaks?
Brokers expire access on their own schedules, and the app is built to make that painless. Schwab requires a re-authentication every 7 days; the in-app flow takes about 30 seconds, and the app notifies you as the token approaches expiration. Alpaca sign-in tokens are refreshed for you. Tradier keys and pasted Alpaca keys are long-lived, so there is nothing to renew unless you rotate or revoke them from your broker's dashboard.
What does Optionscanner cost?
One plan: $99 a month after a 60-day free trial, billed monthly starting the day after the trial ends. Everything is included, the scanner, conviction scoring, trade plans, live monitoring, the auto trading agent, the journal, and the AI features, with no separate tiers or AI add-on charges. Cancel any time from Settings, then Billing, or by email; fees are non-refundable and cancelling stops the next charge. Monitoring and exits on your open positions are never locked, even if your subscription lapses. Live trading uses your own brokerage account, and real-time options data may require a market-data subscription with your brokerage, billed by them, not us.
Can I backtest strategies like on other options platforms?
No, by design. Backtests validate a recipe against history, and history is where overfitting hides. Optionscanner measures forward instead: the desk runs the full discipline on paper with live quotes and realistic fill modeling, and the platform publishes its own honest bookkeeping, calibration of its scores against actual outcomes, slippage between modeled and real fills, and exit-reason attribution. You judge the desk by watching it work under today's market, not a curve fit to yesterday's. Educational tool; not investment advice; past or simulated performance does not predict future results.
Is this financial advice?
No. Optionscanner is an analysis tool operated by Avenix Solutions LLC, not a registered investment adviser and not a broker-dealer. Signals and scores come from rule-based and statistical analysis of market data and your own account information. The rules that judge your positions are ones you adopt and can edit, the agent's settings are adopted the same way, and the app runs them and shows the arithmetic. No order reaches a live account without your click. Every trade is your decision and your responsibility.
