Grouping Information in Strategies

Option Books mirror the one-to-many relationships in options trading. At the beginning of this section, we noted that these one-to-many relationships are a kind of hierarchy. Grouping enables you to add another tier to this hierarchy. Let’s look at this additional tier more closely.

In a strategy that contains options on several underlying instruments, sorting enables you to organize your menus so that options with a common underlying instrument appear together. In addition to sorting the information, you can also group the information. The effect of grouping is to view the positional aspects of the strategy. For example, you might want to view the performance of the options at the 118 strike, or focus on the performance of transactions involving calls. Grouping enables you to consolidate the information in menus so that such analysis is possible. The following table summarizes the available grouping effects.

Criterion	Grouping Characteristics
Underlying Root	Instruments with a common underlying instrument appear together.
Expiration Date	Instrument with a common expiration appear together.
Strike Price	Instruments with the same strike appear together.
Instrument Type	Instruments of the same classification (call, put, underlying) appear together.
Transaction Time	Instruments with the same transaction date and time appear together.

By default, all menus are grouped by underlying root and expiration. You can change the grouping effect by moving the Group Boundary line in the Sort dialog box. For example, in the following figure, we move the Group Boundary between the first and second sort criteria.

As a result, the group is now formed using only the underlying root. The criteria above the Group Boundary line defines the group, and the criteria below the line are used only for instrument sorting. The effect of grouping is particularly useful in the Strategy menu’s Group mode view.

As a practical exercise, display the Strategy menu in Group mode beside the Sort dialog box. Then, move the Group Boundary line, click on Draw, and study the changes in the Strategy menu.