FNOTrader Terminal — Trader's Guide

terminal.fnotrader.com is a clean, execution-only desk. It runs the same order engine as the full Options Analytics app, but strips away the research and analytics screens so you are left with just one thing: trading. If your day is "place, manage, adjust, exit" and you don't want a wall of charts in the way, this is your screen.

One login works across every *.fnotrader.com app — sign in once and you're in the Terminal, Options, Stocks, Trade and FP without logging in again.

How traders use it

Keep the full Options app open on one monitor for analytics, and the Terminal on the other as your pure execution desk. Everything you place or adjust here shows up in the full app's book too — it's the same account, the same engine, just a lighter cockpit.

F&O only

This is an F&O-only desk. Equity/cash positions are hidden throughout — a small "F&O only" note flags this on the book. If you trade cash equities, manage those elsewhere; the Terminal shows you futures and options only.

Market hours (always reasoned and shown in IST): NSE/BSE F&O 09:15–15:30 IST; MCX 09:00–23:30 IST. Orders placed outside these windows sit as rejected/queued per your broker's rules.

Layout & accounts basics

The Terminal has three zones: an Accounts sidebar on the left, a tabbed workspace in the middle, and a top bar across the top.

The three zones: accounts (left), tabbed workspace (middle), top bar (top).

Accounts sidebar

Lists every connected broker account plus the built-in Demo paper account.
Click an account to make it active. The book, orders and funds shown always belong to the selected account — switch accounts and the whole workspace reflows to that account.
The sidebar is collapsible to reclaim screen width once you've picked your account.
Buy / upgrade CTAs live at its foot (add broker slots, upgrade plan).

Tabbed workspace

The main area is a set of tabs, each with a live count badge:

PositionsYour live book — open legs grouped into strategies. BasketStage a multi-leg structure and fire it as one. CustomFree-form multi-leg builder for bespoke structures. RulesEvery automated adjustment rule across all groups. MonitoringEvery armed SL / target / trail / lock in one view. OrdersToday's working + completed orders; modify / cancel. TradesToday's fills. FundsAvailable margin / SPAN on the selected account. CopierCopy-trade dashboard across follower accounts. StatsRealised P&L, win-rate, profit factor. LogsThe trade journal — every action, timestamped.

Top bar

Carries the active-account picker (with a DEMO badge whenever a paper account is selected — your at-a-glance "is this real money?" check), the theme toggle, and the settings gear (⚙) where the server-side monitor and Advanced charts live.

Demo vs real money read this first

Every account has a built-in Demo (paper) account. Paper orders fill instantly with no broker involved — perfect for learning the desk, rehearsing an adjustment, or testing a rule before you risk a rupee. Real (non-Demo) accounts place LIVE orders with your broker, routed via Open XTS / direct broker APIs.

Real money

When a real (non-Demo) account is selected, Execute places a live order with your broker. Always glance at the top bar before you fire: a green DEMO badge means paper; no badge means real. Everything in this guide marked Real money can move real cash when a real account is active.

Order ticket basics Real money

The order ticket is your single/multi-leg order pad. Build one leg or stack several, then Execute.

Building a leg

Instrument — type to search, e.g. NIFTY 24200 CE. Pick the exact contract.
Side — BUY or SELL.
Qty in Lots — a −/+ stepper in lots. It shows the live = N qty (lots × lot size) so you always know the real quantity going to the exchange.
Product — NRML (carry / overnight) or MIS (intraday, auto-squared by your broker near close).

Order types

Type	What it does	Reach for it when…
Mkt protect	An aggressive protected limit placed at LTP ± a Buffer % — behaves like a market order but can't fill far from the screen.	You want a fast fill but refuse to be filled 3% away on a thin option. The default safe way to "just get me in/out".
Market	Fills at whatever the book offers, no price cap.	Deep-liquid legs where slippage is negligible and speed is everything.
Limit	Fills only at your price or better.	You're patient and want a specific premium.
SL-L	Stop-loss limit — arms at a Trigger, then works a Limit.	Entry/exit on breakout with a price cap.
SL-M	Stop-loss market — arms at a Trigger, then fills at market.	You want the stop to definitely fill once triggered.

Price and Trigger fields enable only for the types that need them — no dead inputs to fumble.

How traders use it

Mkt protect is the everyday default for options. A plain Market order on an illiquid far-OTM strike can fill wildly off-screen; Mkt protect caps that with the Buffer % while still behaving like "get me in now".

Executing

Colour-coded buttons: Execute BUY (green) / Execute SELL (red).
Stack multiple legs in the Order Legs list, or Add to Basket, to fire a combo.
The result panel reports honestly, per leg: e.g. 3 placed · 1 failed across 4 leg(s). You always know exactly what landed and what didn't.

Leg sequencing intermediate

In Order Defaults you choose the order in which a multi-leg combo goes to market:

buyFirstDefault, margin-safe. Hedges/buys go on before shorts — so the long leg lowers the margin the short leg needs. sellFirstShorts go first (raises premium/margin first). simultaneousAll legs fire together.

An optional Leg pace waits for fills between phases, so the buy is confirmed on before the sell is sent.

Why buyFirst matters

If you sell a naked short first, your broker charges full margin for that instant; the hedge that would reduce it hasn't landed yet. buyFirst puts the protective long on first so the combo's margin stays low the whole way in. Leave it on default unless you have a specific reason not to.

Basket & Custom builder intermediate Real money

Basket

Stage several legs, name the structure, and preview the true hedged margin before you commit:

Margin is priced live, showing per-leg and a combined Total — so you see the real hedged requirement (a hedged strangle needs far less than the legs summed).
Execute all legs in one shot, respecting your leg-sequencing choice.
They land in the book as one named group you can guard, adjust and exit together.
A global × multiplier scales every leg at once — double a whole structure with one field.

How traders use it

Build your Iron Condor / short strangle in the Basket, read the combined margin, tweak the × multiplier to fit your capital, and fire it as one named group. From then on you manage the whole structure — SL, target, rules — as a single unit.

Custom

A free-form multi-leg builder for bespoke structures that don't fit a template. You can build a structure without a broker connected — you only need to connect one when you actually Execute. Handy for pricing and rehearsing a structure before you commit capital.

Positions tab — the live book core Real money

Your live book. A real-time table with per-leg P&L, where legs are grouped into strategies ("groups") so you manage a short strangle as one thing, not four disconnected rows.

A group in the book: header shows combined premium + group P&L + actions; each leg has its own Manage menu; book-wide controls sit below.

Group header

Shows the combined average premium, the current combined premium, the group P&L, an optional Manual ₹ P&L adjustment (park a number when you carried something in from outside), and actions:

⊕ Add ▾Add a leg to the group. SL / TGTOpen the group stop/target guard (see below). Exit CEClose only the call legs. Exit PEClose only the put legs. Exit AllFlatten the whole group in one click. collapseFold the group to a one-line summary.

Per-leg Manage ▾

AddAdd quantity to this leg. ExitClose this leg only. ReverseFlip the position (long ↔ short). RollRoll this leg to another strike.

Book-wide controls

Exit book buttons: CE / PE / All — flatten across every group at once.
Book P&L stop: a ₹ SL / TGT on your total P&L, with an Ignore hedges option so protective longs don't distort the trigger.

Fuzzy search bar

At the top of Positions, sitting on one row with the defaults bar. Type e.g. 24000 PE to filter to every leg, entry and exit matching — it searches across the whole book, so on a busy day you jump straight to the strike you care about.

Closed positions (today)

A section showing everything you've squared off today, so you can see realised results without losing your live rows.

Quick straddle / strangle build

Right-click a chain B/S (or use the quick-actions) to build an ATM straddle or OTM strangle group in one move — the whole structure lands as a managed group, ready to guard.

Groups & group SL / TGT intermediate Real money

A group is a multi-leg strategy tracked as one unit — a short strangle, an Iron Condor, a straddle. Managing it as one is the whole point: one target, one stop, one exit.

The Group SL / Target modal sets a single guard for the whole structure on a basis you pick:

Basis	Guard fires on…	Good for
`Prem`	The combined premium of the group.	Sellers: "exit if the combined premium halves" (target) or "doubles" (stop).
`P&L`	Group rupees, including any Manual ₹.	Straightforward "book +₹X / stop −₹Y on this structure".
`Und`	An absolute underlying level — Spot / Futures / Synthetic-future.	"Flatten if NIFTY futures trades through 24,600" — a level-based bail.

A breach exits every leg together. It also supports a combined trailing SL that ratchets as the group moves in your favour.

Adjustment Rules advanced Real money

This is the centrepiece of the Terminal. Rules actively adjust a running options strategy tick-by-tick — they roll, re-center, rebalance, scalp or exit legs for you, so a short strangle or straddle can be managed hands-off while you're away from the screen.

Each rule is attached to a specific group. The Rules tab lists all rules across every group with a plain-English summary, and flags "N/A to this strategy" when a rule doesn't fit the current shape (e.g. a divergence rule on a single-leg position).

Rules are BETA

Adjustment Rules are a BETA feature. Rehearse each rule on Demo first, and keep Alert only ON until you trust its behaviour on your exact structure.

Real money

With Alert only OFF, a triggered rule places REAL orders automatically — it rolls, exits or re-enters legs with your broker, unattended. This is powerful and irreversible. Understand each rule fully, and cap it with the Auto-action limit, before you switch a real account to auto.

The six rule types

1 · Roll / exit a leg at a price level (legPx)

Set a per-side level — CE at X, PE at Y — expressed in % of entry, Pts from entry, or Abs ₹. When a leg's LTP reaches its level, the rule acts:

Roll away (further OTM), Roll in (closer), or Square off leg — by N strikes.
Each CE / PE strike arms independently off its own entry. Leave a side blank to skip it.

How traders use it

A short leg getting tested — say its premium has doubled (level = +100%) — rolls away further OTM automatically, buying you back safety without you watching the screen.

2 · Price-diff band — entry vs LTP, both ways (legDiff)

A band around each leg's entry — CE ± X, PE ± Y (Pts or %). It's two-sided:

LTP ≥ entry + band fires the UP action.
LTP ≤ entry − band fires the DOWN action.
Each direction independently rolls away / rolls in / squares off (or off) by N strikes.

How traders use it

True two-sided management on one rule: defend a tested leg (premium up → roll away) and take profit on the decayed leg (premium down → square off and bank it).

3 · Roll on leg divergence (|CE−PE| gap) (diverge)

Watches the gap between the CE and PE premium. If both started at 50/50 and the market trends to 40/70, the gap is 30. When that gap reaches a threshold (% of total premium or ₹ abs), it acts on the winner and the loser independently:

Winner (the decayed leg): roll IN matching a % of the loser / roll IN by strikes / exit / off.
Loser (the tested leg): roll AWAY by strikes / exit / off.

How traders use it

Keep a delta-neutral strangle balanced as the market trends — the engine trims the winning side back toward the money and pushes the losing side out, holding your structure roughly neutral.

4 · Rebalance when one leg ≥ N× the other (rebal · alert-only)

When one leg's premium is ≥ N× the other, the rule alerts to move the winner to X% of the loser's premium. This one is alert-only — it signals a lopsided strangle so you decide whether to rebalance, rather than acting on its own.

5 · Re-center / exit on a spot move (spot)

Choose the ATM basis — Spot, Futures, or Synthetic-future (both the ATM strike and the move % are measured on this basis). When the underlying moves ≥ X% from entry, the rule closes both legs and re-opens at ATM ± offset strikes.

How traders use it

Keep a straddle/strangle centred on the money as the index drifts. Pick Futures as the basis for cleaner intraday tracking, set ≥1.5% move, and the structure re-centres itself instead of going one-sided.

6 · Re-enter a leg / premium — scalp out & back in (reentry · needs Auto)

Basis = CE leg / PE leg / Combined. Exit when price ≤ / ≥ a level, then re-enter when price ≤ / ≥ another level, up to N times.

How traders use it

Scalp a premium band intraday: bank the leg when it decays to a level, re-sell it when it pops back up, repeat up to your cap. Requires Auto (Alert only OFF) to place the orders.

Guards — common to every rule on the strategy

Inversion guardMin CE−PE strike gap. Never let rolls cross the legs — keeps the CE strike above the PE strike by at least this gap, so an over-eager roll can't invert your strangle. Auto-action limitCap at max N actions per day, each ≥ S seconds apart. A whipsawing market can't make the engine over-trade.

Only sold (SHORT) legs — checked by default

A checkbox that is CHECKED by default. When checked, the leg-price and price-diff-band rules act ONLY on your sold (short) legs — the ones with real assignment risk.

Leave it checked if you're a seller defending premium you sold. That's most people, which is why it's the safe default.
Uncheck it to also apply those rules to your bought (long) legs — e.g. when you run a long straddle/strangle and want the engine to manage the legs you bought.

How traders use it

Think of it as "who am I protecting?" A seller protects the premium they sold, so short-only is safe. A buyer of a straddle wants the engine watching their long legs (take profit, roll on a big move) — so a buyer unchecks it.

Alert only — the real-money switch

Real money

Alert only ON → a triggered rule only alerts + journals the exact action it WOULD take. No order is placed. Alert only OFF → the rule places REAL orders automatically when triggered, on a real account, unattended. Treat OFF with the same respect as handing your book to an autopilot — because that's what it is.

When a rule is N/A

Leg-price / price-diff need a sold leg — unless you unchecked "Only sold legs".
Divergence / rebalance / spot / re-entry need a 1×CE + 1×PE straddle/strangle shape.

If your group doesn't fit, the Rules tab shows "N/A to this strategy" rather than silently doing nothing.

Monitoring & risk guards advanced Real money

Protection works at three nested scopes, and each scope carries the same five tools. Inner guards keep working inside outer ones — a leg stop still fires even under a book-level stop. All ₹ amounts show in Indian notation (e.g. 10,00,000).

Three nested scopes — Leg inside Strategy inside Account — each with the same five protection tools.

The five tools (at every scope)

Tool	What it does
Stop-loss	Exit when the loss level is hit.
Target	Exit when the profit level is hit.
Trailing SL	"Every X in my favour, move the stop by Y." Ratchets off the peak, never gives back a step. Points/% on a leg, ₹ on the book.
Profit Lock	When the profit peak reaches ₹X, arm a floor at a minimum ₹Y. Profit falling back to the floor exits — you keep the locked amount.
Profit Trail	Every further +₹A of peak lifts the floor +₹B. The floor only ever moves up.

Per-scope specifics

Leg SL / Target — set in ₹ Price, Points, %, ₹ P&L, or an underlying Spot / Futures level. The dialog validates the side (a stop must sit on the correct side of LTP) and shows the ₹ P&L each level implies, live.
Group guard — basis Prem / P&L / Und (as in Groups above).
Book P&L guard — an absolute ₹ stop/target on live total P&L (unrealised + realised + manual). It must stay crossed for two consecutive checks so a single bad tick can't flatten your whole book.

How traders use it

Set a leg stop where your thesis is wrong, a group target where the structure has paid, and a book stop as your absolute daily floor. Profit Lock is the trader favourite: at +₹25k peak, lock +₹10k — now the worst case on that structure is a +₹10k day, and the upside stays open.

The Monitoring tab

Every armed trigger, guard, floor and trail across the book, in one live view. Full ₹ amounts are shown (not truncated) so you always see the real numbers you've committed to.

Server-side monitor — set and walk away

Opt-in from ⚙ Settings. The backend re-checks your levels every second and enforces them even with the browser closed. In-terminal monitoring (this tab open) always runs too, but stops when you close the tab — so for hands-off protection, turn the server-side monitor on.

Real money

A breached guard places live square-off orders automatically on real accounts — whether the breach is caught by the in-terminal monitor or the server-side one. That's the point of a stop, but make sure your levels are where you intend before you walk away.

Alerts — watch, notify & auto-trade basics intermediate Real money

An alert is a watch-and-notify rule: set a condition once and the engine pings you — and can even place the order for you — the moment it fires. Open the Create alert dialog from the Alerts tab (or the 🔔 on a chart / chain cell). Conditions are evaluated at every 1-minute bar close (HH:MM:02 IST) during F&O market hours — not tick-by-tick. Alerts run server-side: they persist across refresh and keep working with this browser (and your PC) closed.

1 · Scope — what the engine watches

Scope	Watches
Spot	The underlying index/stock cash price (e.g. NIFTY 23,982).
Future	The expiry's futures LTP + computed `basis` vs spot.
Option (single strike)	One CE or PE at one strike — has IV + full Greeks. Pick symbol, expiry, strike (or ATM) and CE/PE.
Straddle (fixed)	CE+PE combined premium at one fixed strike (a real position you hold).
Strangle (fixed)	OTM Put + OTM Call combined premium at two fixed strikes.
ATM Straddle (rolling)	The current-ATM combined premium — the strike auto-rolls every bar as spot moves, so it never goes stale. For vol/regime watching, not a specific contract.
Custom	Multi-leg structures — you define N legs with signed ratios; the engine sums net premium per bar.

2 · Conditions — parameter + operator + value

Each condition reads one parameter and tests it with one operator. Add several and combine them with AND (all) — every condition true on the same bar — or OR (any) — whichever hits first (e.g. LTP ≤ 70 OR LTP ≥ 180 = stop-or-target).

Parameters: LTP, LTP Chg / %, OI / OI Chg / %, Volume, IV (option scope), Delta / Gamma / Theta / Vega (and Net Greeks for combined scopes), Buildup, CDV, Basis / %, and engine-tracked Day High / Day Low (running extremes since the alert was created).
Level operators (fire every matching bar): ≥ >, ≤ <, = ≠.
Edge operators (fire only on the bar that transitions): Crossing Up / Down / Either, New Day High / Low, Moving Up / Down (Δ over N bars), Entering / Exiting Channel [lo, hi]. Use these for clean one-shot entries.

3 · Trigger & expiry

Only once — fires once then auto-disables (stop/target hits, one-shot entries).
Per minute — re-arms every bar; fires as long as conditions hold (a heartbeat / monitoring ping).
Expiration — the engine auto-disables the alert at this time. End of day (23:59 IST) is the default; pick End of week / month / Custom for positional or event timing.
Message — optional text shown when it fires (auto-filled with a summary if left blank).

4 · Notifications — every way to be told

Channel	What it does
Toast	Top-right popup in any open tab (auto-fades ~7s). The fire is always written to the Logs tab regardless of this toggle.
Sound	Audible chime — pick normal / loud and Once / Loop (a repeating alarm for can't-miss fires) when you're near the screen but not staring.
Telegram	Message to your Telegram. One-time setup via @BotFather (bot token + chat ID); credentials persist across all your alerts.
WhatsApp	Message to your registered WhatsApp number via the platform channel (subject to the 24-hour messaging window).
Webhook	HTTP `POST` to your own URL for machine consumers (auto-trader, logger, Discord/Slack). Optional JSON body with `{symbol} {strike} {ltp} {message} {fired_at}` substituted. 5 s timeout, no retry.

5 · Place an Order — let the alert pull the trigger

Tick Place an Order and the alert auto-places the order server-side the instant it fires — even with the app closed. Build one or more legs, each with SIDE (BUY/SELL), TYPE (CE/PE/FUT), EXPIRY, STRIKE and QTY (lots), and choose the broker / account it hits. Strike can be relative — ATM, OTM n, ITM n — and re-resolves to the live ATM at fire time, so a rolling-ATM alert always trades the right strike. For a straddle/strangle alert it fires both legs (CE + PE) together. Symbol & expiry default to the alert's scope; edit per leg.

Real money

A Demo account paper-trades the fired order; a real broker account places it LIVE, automatically, server-side. Confirm the account, side, strike and lots before you save — once armed it fires on its own. Real-account trading needs the QuikTrade execution entitlement; copying a fired order to multiple real accounts needs the Copy Trading add-on.

Test Now

Test Now dry-runs the conditions against live data and shows whether they'd fire right now — use it to sanity-check a new alert before you rely on it. It does not place any order.

Orders basics Real money

Today's working + completed orders, with status tabs and a fuzzy search on one row. Modify / cancel working orders inline. Crucially, rejected / failed attempts are also surfaced — brokers don't record these, so the Terminal keeps them visible so every attempt is accounted for (no silent "why didn't that go through?").

Trades basics

Today's fills, with fuzzy search. What actually executed, at what price.

Funds basics

Available margin / SPAN on the selected account — your live buying power for the account you're trading.

Stats intermediate

Today vs all-time realised P&L, win-rate, and profit factor. Works on Demo too — so you can measure a paper strategy's edge before you go live.

Logs — the trade journal intermediate

Every order, every SL/TGT you set, and every guard hit — timestamped and kept across refresh. When you want to know "what did the engine do, and when?", the Logs tab is the record.

Copier — copy trading advanced Real money

Mirror a single order from a leader account across several follower accounts at once. The Copier tab is a live per-account P&L dashboard — see every follower's book side by side.

A per-account breakdown reports which account placed, which failed, and why — no guessing whether all followers got in.

Exit guard — a leader exit never reverses a follower

A leader EXIT never opens a fresh reverse position on a follower — it only reduces / closes. So if a leader flattens and re-shorts, followers close; they don't get flipped into an unintended new trade.

Terminal charts intermediate

Trade straight off the chart: symbol search, timeframes, candle / line, and an optional Advanced (TradingView) engine toggled in ⚙ Settings that brings full drawing tools + indicators. Charts update live, tick by tick.

Quick playbook ⚡

1 · Non-directional seller, hands-off day

Sell an ATM straddle → attach a Spot re-center rule (basis Futures, ≥1.5% move) + a Leg price trigger (roll a short leg away at +100% of entry) + Guards (auto-limit 3/day) + a group Prem target and a Book −₹10,000 stop + Profit Lock (at +₹25k keep +₹10k) → turn the Server-side monitor ON → walk away. The desk re-centres, rolls a tested leg, caps its own activity, banks the target, and defends your daily floor without you at the screen.

2 · Long straddle buyer before an event

Buy the straddle → open Rules → uncheck "Only sold legs" so a Leg price trigger manages the BOUGHT legs (e.g. take profit / roll on a +X move). The engine now watches the legs you're long, instead of assuming you're a seller.

3 · Copy trading

Fire the order from the leader account; followers mirror it. Read the per-account breakdown to confirm every follower placed. When you exit the leader, followers only reduce / close — the exit guard means no follower gets flipped into a fresh reverse position.

Good habits

Practise on Demo first — instant fills, no broker, zero risk. Rehearse every new rule and structure there.
Confirm the account in the top bar before Execute — green DEMO badge = paper; no badge = real money.
Pair every live position with an SL / target guard — and for hands-off protection, turn on the server-side monitor.
Estimates are model numbers — margin and POP are calculated estimates, not guarantees. Your broker's actual margin and fills are final.

Real money

Anything you do on a non-Demo account places live orders with your broker. Rules with Alert only OFF, breached guards, and Copier all fire real orders automatically. Start on Demo, keep Alert only ON until you trust a rule, and always know which account is selected.