Multi-leg option strategies

A vertical spread imports as two trades and an iron condor as four. Why VEXA tracks each leg separately, and what that means for your numbers.

Same on every platform Updated 26 July 2026

What this does

VEXA tracks each option contract as its own position. A vertical spread arrives as two trades. A straddle arrives as two. An iron condor arrives as four. Your broker showed you one order, and your journal shows you the legs that order was made of.

Your trade count will be higher than your broker’s order count as a result.

Why it works this way

VEXA rebuilds trades from fills. It follows each instrument’s net position and creates a closed trade whenever that position returns to zero.

Each option contract is a distinct instrument. The 180 call and the 185 call expiring on the same day are as different from each other as two different stocks, so they get their own position, their own fills and their own result. There is no separate concept of a combination order anywhere in the import.

The alternative would mean guessing which fills belonged to which order, which brokers do not all record and which would be wrong in exactly the cases that matter, such as legging out of one side early.

What this means for your numbers

Your total P&L is right. Each leg carries its own real result, and the sum across the legs is the strategy’s result. Nothing is double counted and nothing is dropped.

Your trade count is higher than your broker’s order count. Ten iron condors is 40 trades in VEXA. Allow for that before you compare counts.

Leg-level win rate is not strategy-level win rate. A credit spread that made money almost always contains one leg that lost. Counting legs, that strategy looks like a coin flip. Counting strategies, it looks like what it was. Read your options statistics with that in mind.

Commission is per leg, which is how your broker charged it, so the totals reconcile.

Legging in and out

Closing one side of a spread and leaving the other open does exactly what it looks like: the closed leg becomes a closed trade at that moment, and the remaining leg stays open until its own fills close it.

Rolling behaves the same way. The old contract closes and the new contract opens as a separate position, because it is a separate instrument.

Expiry on a spread

Legs that expire worthless never produce a closing fill, so they do not close themselves. This is most visible on a spread where one leg was closed and the other expired: one leg shows a result and the other sits open. How options trades are imported covers what to do about expired legs.

Steps

To review a strategy as a whole rather than as legs:

Same on every platform

Open Journal and filter to the date the strategy was opened.
Identify the legs by their shared underlying and expiry. The strike and right in each symbol tell you which leg is which.
Add the same tag to every leg so you can pull the group back up later. Tagging is the practical way to keep a strategy together, since the legs are separate trades.
Read the group’s result as the sum of the legs.

If you are typing trades into the manual CSV template, the Strategy column is a label you can carry through for your own reference. It does not merge legs into a single trade, and nothing in the import reads it as an instruction to group.

What you should see

One trade per contract, each with its own executions, its own quantity in contracts and its own P&L. Legs opened together share an entry timestamp, which is the fastest way to spot them in the journal.

An open position list showing separate rows for each leg you still hold is correct, not a duplicate.

If it doesn’t work

A leg is missing entirely. Your export probably did not include it. Spreads placed as one order still fill as separate executions, and some exports drop legs with no fill price. See Some of my trades are missing.
A leg shows the wrong strike or expiry. The symbol format did not carry full contract detail. See Symbol formats for the CSV template, and check the long-symbol export setting if you use DAS Trader.
P&L on a leg is out by 100. The contract size was read as 1. See How options trades are imported.

How options trades are imported Contract size, the three symbol formats VEXA reads, what happens when an option expires worthless, and the export settings that keep contract detail intact. Your P&L does not match your broker How VEXA calculates trade P&L, the three bases it uses in priority order, and the six reasons your number and your broker's number can legitimately differ. Positions show as open that I already closed VEXA closes a position when the closing fills reach it. An export that starts or ends mid-position leaves the fills open. How to close them properly.

Still stuck? Email support@vexatrade.ai.