The best practice is to first select Update TOS Transactions (daily before market open) from the Import/Export menu. This updates all reconciled transactions from the prior day to include settle date, transaction ID, commissions and fees and also imports any other non-trade information such as cash in or out of your account, interest, dividends, and futures money in or out of your account.

Next, select Update TOS Positions (as needed in real time) from the Import/Export menu. This updates all of your open positions with the correct balances.

Finally, export your watchlist from TOS and import it into PosiTrac by selecting Import TOS Watchlist (.csv in Downloads Folder) from the Import/Export menu. This updates the official closes of all equities and brings in 52 week highs and lows, the average true range of the underlying and other pertinent information.

If for some reason you forget to do any or all of these before market open, that’s OK. Just do these tasks when you remember. Updating your positions throughout the day is important if you are actively trading to save you entry time later.

The best practice is to wait until 4:15pm Eastern time or 5pm if you have any SPX trades open.

First, export your watchlist from TOS and import it into PosiTrac by selecting Import TOS Watchlist (.csv in Downloads Folder) from the Import/Export menu. This updates the official closes of all equities and brings in 52 week highs and lows, the average true range of the underlying and other pertinent information.

Next, select Update TOS Positions (as needed in real time) from the Import/Export menu. This updates all of your open positions with the correct daily closing balances.

If for some reason you forget to do any or all of these after market close, that’s OK. Just do these tasks when you remember. If you don’t do these steps until the next day, your daily P/L for each position might be off a little. PosiTrac will reconcile itself automatically by placing the difference in the new day.

Pro Tip: If you have any expiring options on Friday, you can select Update TOS Transactions (daily before market open) from the Import/Export menu after 4:15pm Eastern time. This will force PosiTrac to automatically zero out expiring options to provide you with your true daily P&L on Friday. Sometimes, without doing this, your expiring options will still have some marking extrinsic value that will give you an incorrect daily balance since these should actually be showing zero. Again, if you forget to do this, your Friday P/L for each expiring position might be off a little. It’ll reconcile itself by placing the difference in the new day.

Once downloaded, go to PosiTrac and choose the Import ShadowTrader Earnings Spreadsheet… menu item from the Import/Export menu. Navigate to your downloads folder and select the spreadsheet for import. It will be named something similar to this: Earnings_Dates_Qtrly_2022.01.xlsx

If you don’t see a file like this listed, check to make sure the dialog is set to show .xlsx files.

Although PosiTrac comes with quite a few built-in strategies you can choose as the primary strategy for the selected position, you might want to change or expand the list. For instance, one of the choices is Long Call Butterfly but you might want to differentiate this further by adding a Long Call BWB or a Long Call Unbalanced Fly to the list.

You can do this by clicking on the gear icon to the right of the Primary Strategy header. This will open a dialog that allows you to add, change or delete strategies to the list.

If you change or delete a strategy from this list it won’t replace any existing strategy you’ve already selected for a position, it will only change the drop-down list of available strategies to select.

Whenever a trade is filled in thinkorswim, the trade becomes available to PosiTrac by clicking on the Update TOS Positions button in the Position Detail view. A dialog will appear with the transaction details along with a proposed spread description and comments. You can edit the spread details if necessary.

This new spread must either be associated with an existing position or a new position. To associate it with an existing position, select the position from the Position Selector pane and click on the Add to Selected Position button. If you’d like to create a new position for this spread, click on the Create New Position button instead.

Note: Trades that are partially filled and still working in TOS will not be available to PosiTrac until one of the following conditions are met.

• • The trade is fully filled
  • The remaining working order is canceled by you in thinkorswim
  • The remaining working order expires at the end of the session

If you accidentally associated a new trade with an incorrect position, it’s easy to fix. In the Position Detail view, select the position with the incorrect trade (spread in PosiTrac lingo) and select Go to Spread Editor under the Position Detail Options menu.

On the left side of the editor, you see a pane with all of the spreads attached to this position. Find the spread to move and put a checkmark in its Flag column (you can flag multiple spreads to move if desired).

Click on the Move Flagged Spreads to New Position button. You’ll have the option to either select an existing position for the move, or create a new position for the spread(s) you’re moving.

If you’ve been assigned stock from either a short call or put, these will show up on thinkorswim’s Account Statement in the Monitor tab the day after the assignment. This is usually Saturday morning. You can select your assignment lines in the Cash & Sweep Vehicle section and copy these to your clipboard using <ctrl-c> on your keyboard. Once copied, go into PosiTrac’s Position Detail view and select the position with the option that was assigned. Select Paste New Assignment Trades in Current Position… from the Position Detail Options menu and then paste the assignment (using <ctrl-v>) into the dialog. Click the Import Assignments button and your assignment will be recorded.

This is most likely due to either a lost Internet connection or to PosiTrac losing permission to connect to your TD Ameritrade account.

First, make sure you are connected to the Internet by opening a browser window to a site you frequent. If that works, then you’ll need to re-permission PosiTrac with your TD Ameritrade account. This can happen if you’ve changed your name or password in TD Ameritrade.

To re-permission, select Application Settings under the File menu and then perform the Initial Account Authorization steps shown on the right of the screen. Once complete, go to the Position Detail view and click on the Update TOS Positions button. You should now see your positions updated.

The keyboard shortcuts vary somewhat between different views. See below for details. Substitute the <command> key for the <ctrl> key on a Macintosh.

All Views
<ctrl-q> Quit PosiTrac
<ctrl-u> Update TOS Positions
<ctrl-1> Go to Account Overview view
<ctrl-2> Go to Profit/Loss Stats view
<ctrl-3> Go to Watchlist view
<ctrl-4> Go to Position List view
<ctrl-5> Go to Position Detail view
<ctrl-6> Go to Transactions view
<ctrl-7> Go to Market Diary view
<ctrl-8> Go to Options Stalker view
<ctrl-[> Go to Daily Balance Summary view
<ctrl-]> Go to P/L Summary by Day/Week/Month view
<ctrl-\> Go to P/L Summary by Security view
<ctrl-0> Go to Symbol and Pairs List view

Watchlist View
<ctrl-j> Show all Watchlist Entries
<ctrl-t> Omit Selected Watchlist Entry
<ctrl-b> Browse Mode (to exit Find Mode)
<ctrl-f> Find Mode
<ctrl-r> Modify Last Find
<ctrl-s> Sort Watchlist

Position List and Detail Views
<ctrl-j> Show all Positions
<ctrl-t> Omit Selected Position
<ctrl-b> Browse Mode (to exit Find Mode)
<ctrl-f> Find Position Mode
<ctrl-r> Modify Last Find
<ctrl-s> Sort Positions

Position Detail View (in addition to the above)
<ctrl-e> Spread Editor
<ctrl-shift-h> Spreads and Transactions for Position

Transaction View
<ctrl-g> Go to Position for Selected Transaction
<ctrl-e> Edit Transactions
<ctrl-j> Show all Transactions
<ctrl-t> Omit Selected Transaction
<ctrl-b> Browse Mode (to exit Find Mode)
<ctrl-f> Find Transaction Mode
<ctrl-r> Modify Last Find
<ctrl-s> Sort Transactions

Market Diary View
<ctrl-j> Show all Entries
<ctrl-t> Omit Selected Diary Entry
<ctrl-b> Browse Mode (to exit Find Mode)
<ctrl-f> Find Diary Entry Mode
<ctrl-r> Modify Last Find
<ctrl-s> Sort Diary

Options Stalker View
<ctrl-r> Refresh Option Chain