Creating a Strategy

This page walks you through creating a new strategy step by step.

Opening the Strategy Builder

1. Scroll down to the Trading Strategies section of the dashboard
2. Click the “New Strategy” button in the top-right corner
3. The Strategy Factory panel will open

The Strategy Builder has three tabs along the top:

• Quick Build — The recommended way to create strategies. Guided form with all the essential settings.
• Advanced Builder — More options for experienced users (trailing stops, MA filters, liquidity gates, etc.)
• Load Preset — One-click templates for common strategies

The Fastest Way: Load a Preset

If you want to get started quickly:

1. Click the “Load Preset” tab
2. Choose from options like:
   • 0DTE Iron Condor (SPX) — Daily expiration iron condors on the S&P 500 index
   • Higher-Conviction 0DTE IC (SPX) — Tighter filters for quality over quantity
   • Weekly Iron Condor (SPY) — Weekly expiration iron condors on SPY
   • 30 DTE Credit Put (SPY) — Monthly bullish credit put spreads
   • Butterfly (SPX) — Debit call butterfly on SPX
   • Iron Fly (SPX) — At-the-money iron butterfly
3. The preset fills in all the settings for you
4. Review the settings, adjust if needed, and click Save

💡 Tip: Start with a preset and tweak it. It’s much easier than building from scratch.

Building from Quick Build

Step 1: Choose Strategy Structure

• Strategy Type — Select from the dropdown: Iron Condor, Credit Put Spread, Credit Call Spread, Wheel, Butterfly, Iron Fly, etc.
  • Straddle and Strangle are disabled because they have unlimited loss potential — Claxton only allows defined-risk strategies.
• Underlying Symbol — Choose what to trade: SPX, NDX, SPY, QQQ, IWM, or individual stocks like AAPL, TSLA, NVDA
• Strategy Name — Give it a descriptive name (e.g., “Daily SPX Condor”). If you leave it blank, one will be generated automatically.
• Max Positions — How many positions this strategy can have open at the same time (1-10)

Position Sizing

Toggle between two modes:

• Fixed — Always trade a set number of contracts (e.g., always 1 contract)
• Risk-based — The bot calculates how many contracts to trade based on a dollar risk amount per trade and a max contract cap

💡 Tip: Start with Fixed mode at 1 contract. Increase only after you’re comfortable with how the strategy performs.

Step 2: Entry Conditions

These settings control when the bot opens a trade:

Timing

• 0DTE Trade toggle — Turn this on to only trade options expiring today
• Min DTE / Max DTE — If not 0DTE, the range of expirations to consider (e.g., 7-14 means weeklies)

Strike Selection (Delta)

• Short Strike Delta — How far out-of-the-money to place your sold options. Slider from 0.05 to 0.50.
  • Lower (0.05-0.10) = further away = safer but less premium
  • Higher (0.20-0.50) = closer to current price = more premium but higher risk
  • Common range: 0.08-0.16
• Long Strike Delta — For strategies with protective legs (iron condors, spreads), how far out to place the bought options. Auto-set to half of your short delta by default.
• Wing Width — Fallback distance in points between your short and long strikes

IV & Premium

• Filter by IV Rank — Only trade when implied volatility is within a range. Useful for selling premium in high-IV environments.
• Min Premium — Minimum credit required to enter a trade. Prevents the bot from opening trades with tiny premiums that aren’t worth the risk.

⚠️ The minimum premium filter is important! Without it, the bot might open positions with $0.10 credit that trigger random exits. The presets already have sensible minimums set.

Step 3: Exit Conditions

These settings control when the bot closes a trade:

• Profit Target — Close when the position has captured this percentage of max profit (e.g., 50% means close at half the credit received)
• Stop Loss — Close when the loss reaches this percentage of the credit received (e.g., 100% means close when you’ve lost as much as you collected)
• Time Stop DTE — Close all positions when they reach this many days to expiration
• Time Stop Time — For 0DTE, close at this time of day (e.g., 15:45 = 3:45 PM ET)

Save Your Strategy

Once you’re happy with the settings, click Save. The strategy will appear in your strategy list, enabled by default, and the bot will start looking for trades on its next scan cycle.

💡 Tip: After saving, watch the strategy’s decision badges. You’ll see “PASS” (looked but didn’t trade), “SKIP” (filtered out), or “OPEN” (trade entered) as the bot evaluates opportunities.