Trade Disc: Automation

Everything else in Trade Disc happens when you press a button. Automation is the tab where you write down what you WOULD press, and when, and the app presses it for you while you watch something else.

A rule is one sentence, filled in from left to right: When something happens in the market → take these legs → do this → once or every time. Each step appears once the one before it is answered, and the finished sentence reads back in plain words above Save rule, so you can check it says what you meant.

Rules live in the book you made them in: a Forward Testing rule only touches Forward Testing legs, a Live rule only Live legs. They are kept on this computer and survive a restart — but a rule only watches while Trade Disc is open. Close it and nothing is watched until you open it again.

Pick one. Each one watches a different thing, always on the live price.

• Market reaches a level — NIFTY (or SENSEX, BANKNIFTY, CRUDEOIL, CRUDEOILMINI or NATURALGAS) is at or above or at or below a price you type. The moment a live price is on the far side of your number, it counts.
• Market moves by points — the index moves X points up, down or either way from a reference price you type. Use current puts the live price in the box.
• My legs reach a P&L — the profit or the loss of the legs you choose, in rupees, booked plus open. Fill in one box or both.
• Premium difference increases to — the gap between two legs' premiums grows past X points. This needs exactly two legs.
• One premium changes — one leg's premium moves X points or X% from its entry price, up, down or either way. This watches exactly one leg.

The legs step lists what is open right now in this book. Tick the ones the rule should act on. If nothing is open, it says Open a position first — a rule watches legs you already hold.

The count is checked against the condition and the action: Premium difference increases to takes exactly two legs, One premium changes exactly one, and Match premiums needs one CE and one PE. If the legs you ticked do not fit, the page says so in those words and Save rule stays greyed out.

Your saved rules are listed under the form, under Your rules, with the book they belong to. There is no edit: delete a rule and add it again.

If a chosen leg is shifted to another strike — by another rule, or by the shift buttons — the rule follows it onto the new strike. If a chosen leg is closed when the rule fires — by hand, a stop loss, a global exit or the Kill Switch — the whole rule is cancelled, and the message names the leg.

Every shift is the same exit-then-re-enter the Adjustments buttons do: the exit is placed, the app waits for it to FILL, then re-enters the same side and quantity at the new strike. BUY legs go before SELL legs. Beside each leg the page shows Would land on — where it would move if the rule fired now; a shift from ATM reads ATM +100 when it fires, because the ATM it uses is the one at that moment.

A leg that would land on the strike it is already at is left where it is, and the rule says so.

• Match premiums — for one CE and one PE. When it fires, the app looks at the two live premiums and moves one leg to the strike whose premium matches the other's: either the lower-premium leg moves up to match the higher one, or the higher-premium leg moves out to match the lower one.
• Exit Positions — closes the chosen legs at market, the same way Exit All does.
• Shift to closest premium — a premium for each leg. The leg moves to the strike on its own side whose live premium is closest to your number.
• Shift by strike — a number for each leg in strike points: +100, −200, or 0. You choose one base for the whole rule. Current strike means +100 is 100 points higher than the leg is now, and 0 leaves that leg alone. ATM means +100 is 100 points above the at-the-money strike at the moment the rule fires, and 0 moves the leg to the ATM. Either way the number is snapped to a strike that is really listed.

Most rules fire once and are done. Three conditions can sensibly come true more than once, and only when the action is a shift: Market moves by points, Premium difference increases to and One premium changes. For those, choose Every time instead of Once, and type the most times it may fire — 3 unless you change it.

Every condition and every action below has a small example you can picture. They all use the same position so the differences are easy to see: you have sold a NIFTY straddle at 24,250 — one 24250 CE at Rs 100 and one 24250 PE at Rs 100 — with NIFTY sitting at 24,250.

A rule is always one condition plus one action, so any example from the first list joins any example from the second. Pick the one that watches the thing you care about, then the one that does what you would have done by hand.

You are comfortable while NIFTY stays where it is, but if it runs to 24,500 your sold CE starts to hurt and you want out of the whole thing.

The rule: When NIFTY is at or above 24,500 → 24250 CE, 24250 PE → Exit Positions.

The first live tick at 24,500 or above closes both legs. A spike that comes straight back still counts, because for that one tick your number really was reached.

This one fires once and is done. A level, once reached, does not un-reach itself.

You do not care which way NIFTY goes, only that it has travelled far enough that your straddle is no longer centred on the market.

The rule: When NIFTY moves up or down 100 points from 24,250 → 24250 CE, 24250 PE → Shift by strike, 0 from ATM · up to 3 times.

NIFTY reaches 24,350. Both legs are closed and re-sold at 24350, the new at-the-money. The rule now counts its next 100 points from 24,350, and it is watching the two new legs. If NIFTY comes back to 24,250 it fires again and the legs move back. A third fire finishes it.

Press Use current to drop the live price into the reference box rather than typing it.

You want the straddle taken off the table at a profit you would be happy with, or before a bad day gets worse.

The rule: When the P&L of these legs reaches profit Rs 5,000 or loss Rs 8,000 → 24250 CE, 24250 PE → Exit Positions.

The figure is booked plus open, in rupees, across the legs you picked — not per leg. So if the CE is Rs 3,000 down and the PE is Rs 8,000 up, the rule sees Rs 5,000 and fires.

Fill in one box or both. Leaving the loss box empty is a perfectly good rule that only takes profit.

Both legs went on at Rs 100, so the gap between them was zero. As NIFTY rallies the CE becomes Rs 160 and the PE falls to Rs 50 — the gap is Rs 110, and the position is lopsided.

The rule: When the premium difference is more than 100 → 24250 CE, 24250 PE → Match premiums, move the lower-premium leg · up to 5 times.

At a gap of Rs 110 it fires and the PE moves to a nearer strike priced around Rs 160, so the two sides are level again.

This condition needs exactly two legs, but they do not have to be a CE and a PE — the gap between two CEs at different strikes is just as real a thing to watch. Only the Match premiums action needs one of each.

Set to Every time, it re-arms once the gap has come back under your number and then opens past it again — so one wide gap is one fire, not fifty.

You are watching a single leg against what you paid for it, not against the other side.

The rule: When the premium changes up 30 pts from entry → 24250 CE → Shift by strike, +200 from current strike.

The CE went on at Rs 100. When it reaches Rs 130 the rule fires and that leg moves 200 points further out, to 24450, where the premium is smaller again.

Choose points or % — 30% of a Rs 100 entry is the same Rs 30 here, but on a Rs 15 leg the two are very different. Direction can be up, down or either way.

This one watches exactly one leg. Set to Every time, the next change is counted from the premium where it last fired, not from the original entry.

The simplest action: close the legs you picked, at market, exactly as the Exit All button does.

The rule: When the P&L of these legs reaches profit Rs 5,000 → 24250 CE, 24250 PE → Exit Positions.

Both legs are closed. BUY legs are sent before SELL legs, so a hedge is never lifted before the position it protects.

Exit never repeats — there is nothing left to act on afterwards — so the repeat choice is not offered with it.

You want the legs moved by a number of strike points. You choose ONE base for the whole rule.

From current strike: +100 means 100 points higher than the leg is now, and 0 leaves that leg where it is. A rule of +200 on the CE and 0 on the PE moves only the CE.

From ATM: 0 means move to whatever the at-the-money strike is at the moment the rule fires, and +100 means 100 points above that. This is how a straddle is rebuilt around the market: 0 from ATM on both legs.

The rule: When NIFTY moves up or down 100 points from 24,250 → 24250 CE, 24250 PE → Shift by strike, 0 from ATM.

Every number is snapped to a strike that is really listed, and a leg that would land on the strike it is already at is left alone, with the rule saying so.

Rather than counting strikes, you say what premium you want each leg to be worth, and the app finds the strike on that leg’s own side whose live premium is nearest.

The rule: When the premium changes down 40 pts from entry → 24250 CE → Shift to closest premium, 100.

The sold CE has decayed from Rs 100 to Rs 60. It is closed and re-sold at whichever CE strike is trading closest to Rs 100 — nearer the money, where the premium is back to what you wanted to be collecting.

A CE only ever moves to another CE, and a PE to another PE. The side never changes.

This is the one people mix up with Premium difference, so it is worth being plain: Premium difference is the If, Match premiums is the Then. One notices the gap, the other closes it. They are normally used together.

NIFTY has rallied. The CE is Rs 160, the PE is Rs 50.

The rule: When the premium difference is more than 100 → 24250 CE, 24250 PE → Match premiums, move the lower-premium leg.

The PE is the lower one at Rs 50, so it is closed and re-sold at a strike nearer the money priced around Rs 160 — say 25200 PE. Both sides are worth about the same again and the position is centred on where the market actually is.

Choose the other way round — move the higher-premium leg — and the CE at Rs 160 moves further out to a strike worth about Rs 50 instead. Which leg is higher is decided from the live premiums at the moment it fires, not when you saved the rule.

It needs exactly two legs, one CE and one PE: it re-centres a two-sided position, which means nothing on a single side. Pick two of the same side and the page says Match premiums needs one CE and one PE.

If you type NIFTY at or above 24,000 while NIFTY is at 24,250, the rule is not saved: the page says That is already true right now and asks for a level the market has not reached yet. The same check runs for every condition — a premium gap already wider than your number, a P&L already past your figure, a move already bigger than X. You are looking at the price when you save, so a number the market has already passed is a slip, not an instruction.

Every time a rule fires, finishes, is cancelled or fails, a message pops up on the Trade Disc window, stays on the rule's row under Your rules, and is written to the Logs tab with the time.

The status on each row reads Waiting, Firing…, Done, Cancelled or Failed. A rule set to Every time also shows how many times it has fired out of its limit.

Plainly, so there are no surprises later.

• It cannot watch while Trade Disc is closed. The rule is kept, but nothing fires until you open the tool again.
• A rule cannot be edited. Delete it and add a new one.
• A rule cannot open a position from nothing. It only acts on legs that are already open.
• A rule is not retried. If a shift's exit fills and the re-entry is refused, that leg is FLAT with a visible rejected row, the rule stops with a Failed message, and it does not try again — exactly as the Adjustments buttons behave.
• Two rules on the same leg do not coordinate. When one shifts the leg, the other follows it onto the new strike; when one exits the leg, the other cancels itself with a message.

The things people actually run into, in the order worth checking.

• The legs step says Open a position first. Nothing is open in this book. Check the Forward Testing / Live switch at the top.
• Save rule is greyed out. The sentence is not finished, or the legs you ticked do not fit the condition or the action — the line above the button says which.
• Every time is not offered. Only the three conditions in Once, or every time can fire more than once, and never with Exit.
• The rule was cancelled and I did not touch it. Read the message: it names the leg that was closed. A stop loss, a global exit, the Kill Switch, an expiry or another rule exited it. A leg that was only shifted does not cancel the rule — it follows.
• The rule fired but a leg says it is already there. Its target was the strike it was already on, or its number was 0 from the current strike.
• Nothing fired overnight. Trade Disc was closed, or the computer was asleep. A rule only watches while the tool is open.