How to use AltSal,
step by step.

Quick Start

Basic Mode

New accounts open in Basic mode — a guided four-screen view designed to get you oriented before using the full research tools.

1. 1
   Read the Framework. Open the Framework page to understand the five-layer allocation model and the options strategies the tool is built on. This is the conceptual foundation for everything else.
2. 2
   Set up your profile. Click Profile in the navigation bar. Set your portfolio goal, country context, investing experience, and risk comfort. These drive the allocation targets and simulation defaults.
3. 3
   Review your Basic Portfolio. Click Portfolio in the nav. See your five allocation layers with target amounts, purposes, and example holdings. This is a planning view — understand what each layer is for before researching instruments.
4. 4
   Run a paper simulation. Click Simulate. Enter capital, holding days, market view, and risk comfort. Save the result to the Journal. Do this a few times with different inputs to build intuition.
5. 5
   Write a journal note. Click Journal. Log what you're watching, what the simulation suggested, and why it looked reasonable or risky. Review past entries to track your paper thinking over time.

Pro Mode

Once in Pro, here's a first-session orientation path.

1. 1
   Read the framework first. Open the Framework page to understand the allocation model, rebalancing logic, and options strategies the tool is built on. The outputs only make sense if you understand the model's assumptions.
2. 2
   Set up your profile. Click the 👤 button (top right of the dashboard). Set your investing style, portfolio goal, and holding period. Everything else in the app adapts to these three settings.
3. 3
   Enter your portfolio in the Portfolio tab. Put in your current holdings per tier. The app computes where you are vs. target and what to rebalance.
4. 4
   Run Backtest Lab. Open the Research tab → Backtest Lab. Run it for 5 years. The output tells you which strategy mode and preset has historically worked best for your holding period — use that in the Strategy tab.
5. 5
   Track a paper campaign. Open Strategy → Trade, pick your mode, and click Track Paper Campaign. Run it for 2–4 weeks before committing real capital.

The Framework

AltSal is built on a layered portfolio philosophy. Every feature in the app maps to one layer of this framework. Understanding the structure helps you use each feature with the right intent.

The Pyramid Portfolio

Every dollar you invest is organised into five risk tiers. The base is large, stable, and liquid. The apex is a small, high-risk, high-reward sleeve. The shape ensures you're never "all-in" on any single strategy.

Why rebalance?

Over time, winning positions grow larger than their target weight and losing positions shrink. Rebalancing trims winners and adds to underweights — mechanically buying relatively cheap and selling relatively expensive, without any market prediction. The Portfolio tab calculates exactly how much to move in each tier. See the Framework page for the full methodology.

Where options income fits

Tier 1 (the apex, ~4% of portfolio) is where the options strategies live. The three strategies in AltSal — Iron Condor, Iron Butterfly, and Double Calendar — are all defined-risk, premium-collection structures. Max loss is known before entry. Time decay (theta) works in your favour. They are not speculative bets; they are systematic premium-collection structures with bounded downside. Historical modelled outcomes vary — actual results depend on market conditions, execution, and timing.

Profile Setup

Every calculation in AltSal adapts to your profile settings. Set these correctly before using any other feature. In Pro, access the profile via the 👤 button (top right). In Basic mode, use the Profile link in the navigation bar.

Basic Home

The Home screen in Basic mode is a live market snapshot — it gives you context before you open any positions. It shows the current SPX price, VIX level, and a plain-English regime label (e.g. "Risk Off — elevated volatility") so you always know the broad market state when you arrive.

Allocation layers at a glance

Below the market data, Home displays your five pyramid layers with their target weights and suggested allocation amounts based on your profile's portfolio goal. This is a read-only reference view — you set actual amounts in the Portfolio screen. Use it to orient yourself: "Is my Tier 9 base funded? Is my Tier 1 options sleeve sized correctly relative to my total goal?"

Market context cards

The market context cards show the weekly SPX return, drawdown from all-time high, and a VIX summary. These are reference data points — context for your journal and simulation decisions, not signals to act on directly.

Basic Portfolio

The Portfolio screen in Basic mode is a planning view — it shows what each tier is for and how much you should target, given your goal and investing style. There is no broker connection and no live data in this screen. It is designed for thinking, not for executing.

Layer-by-layer breakdown

Each of the five tiers shows its name, default weight, target dollar amount, and a short description of its purpose and example instruments. Tier 9 (base) anchors the pyramid with capital preservation vehicles. Tier 1 (apex) is the options income sleeve — kept intentionally small to bound max risk.

Customising weights

Your profile's Investing Style setting (Conservative, Balanced, or Aggressive) shifts the tier weights. Conservative puts more capital in the base tiers; Aggressive allocates slightly more toward growth tiers. Change this in your profile if the default distribution doesn't fit your situation.

Basic Simulate

The Simulate screen lets you run a paper options scenario without connecting to a broker. Enter your assumptions and get a modelled outcome — useful for building intuition about how different inputs affect expected credit and risk.

Inputs

The simulation takes four inputs: the capital you're considering deploying (in your currency), the holding period in days, your broad market view (neutral / slightly bullish / slightly bearish), and your risk comfort level (conservative through aggressive). These map to modelled strike widths and expected premium ranges.

Reading the output

The output shows a modelled credit range (low, mid, high estimate), a max-loss figure, and a rough breakeven range for the underlying. These are theoretical estimates — not quotes, not fills, not guaranteed returns. Actual results depend on market conditions, volatility, and execution.

Save to Journal

After reviewing the output, click Save to Journal to log the scenario. The simulation inputs and results are saved as a journal entry so you can review later whether your original reasoning held up.

Basic Journal

The Journal is a research notebook — a place to record what you're watching, what you're thinking, and what happened after the fact. There is no automation here by design: no broker connection, no order actions, no live data feeds. The discipline of writing things down before acting is the point.

Creating an entry

Each entry has a title, a type (Observation, Simulation, Portfolio, or Strategy), an optional underlying symbol, entry and review dates, and a free-text thesis field. Use the thesis to explain what you're watching and why — the specific condition you expect to happen and what would change your view.

Reviewing entries

When a review date arrives, open the entry and update the Outcome Notes field with what actually happened. Then change the status from Watching to Reviewed or Closed. Over time, a set of reviewed entries is the closest thing to a paper track record you can build without placing real trades.

Upgrading to Pro

Pro mode is the full research workspace. You can switch from the navigation bar at any time — your profile settings, journal entries, and simulation history stay intact.

To switch: click Try Pro in the navigation bar, or go to your Profile page and change the experience mode setting. You can switch back to Basic at any time.

Portfolio Tab

The Portfolio tab is your home screen. It answers: "Where is my money, and is it in the right place?" Open this tab at the start of every weekly review.

Drawdown card

Shows the current SPX drawdown from all-time high — updated live from market data. Drag the slider to simulate any drawdown level (e.g. −30%) and see how your pyramid tier values and rebalance actions would respond under that scenario.

Pyramid allocation

The interactive pyramid displays your target dollar amount and percentage in each layer. Enter your actual holdings in the Allocated rows beneath each layer breakdown — the dashboard immediately shows per-layer drift (over/under) and the topbar updates a running total of everything you have entered.

Customisable ETFs (Layers 2–5): Each ETF ticker is editable. Click any ticker label, type the replacement symbol, and press Tab or Enter. The ticker is saved locally in your browser and the Performance chart refreshes automatically to backtest your custom selection. Layer 1 (SPX Options) is fixed.

Rebalance calculator

After entering your holdings, the rebalance section computes which layers are overweight (trim) and which are underweight (add to), and shows the exact dollar amounts. A threshold slider lets you set the minimum drift (e.g. 5%) before a rebalance trade is flagged.

Performance chart — SPX vs Model vs Actual

The chart plots three lines over your chosen period (3M through MAX):

• SPX (blue dotted) — the benchmark index return.
• Model (green) — the target-weighted backtest using the model's default allocation percentages. This is what you would have earned if you held every layer at exactly its target weight since the start of the period.
• Actual (amber) — appears only when you have entered holdings in the pyramid rows. Weighted by your real dollar amounts, so under- or over-weight positions relative to the model are reflected in this line.

The three summary rows (Return, CAGR, Final Value) beneath the chart follow the same SPX / Model / Actual order. Use the gap between Model and Actual to understand how your real allocation is tracking against the strategy's intent.

Market regime panel

Shows the current VIX tier, trend direction, and a plain-English regime label (e.g. "Risk Off — elevated volatility"). This same regime signal drives the stand-aside banner in the Strategy tab when the Respect Stand-Aside profile flag is enabled.

Strategy Tab

The Strategy tab is a single unified workflow for building, analysing, and tracking defined-risk spread positions across three preset structures: Iron Butterfly (IBF), Double Calendar (DC), and Iron Condor (IC).

Market Data bar

The bar at the top of the tab shows live price, Bollinger Bands (20d, 2σ), RSI (14d), VIX level, and SMA trend signals for the selected underlying (SPX or NIFTY50). These are reference data points for contextualising current conditions — not signals to act on directly.

Regime Context

The collapsible Regime Context card translates the current market signals into a suggested bias (point shift) and put-wing width. The built-in Bias Guide walks through each step — trend score, VIX tier, regime lookup, and mode normalisation — so the output is fully auditable. The result is a research starting point, not a directional call. You can override the bias manually.

Trade Setup

Configure multi-leg combos across multiple timeframes. This is where you build a position before tracking it as a paper campaign (or, in local mode, placing it via IBKR).

Mode selector: Choose the holding period for your position.

Preset toggles: Enable one or more strategy structures simultaneously.

Each preset shows its own strike inputs, computed strikes, and per-preset credit/debit. The aggregate metrics bar below the presets combines all active legs into a single net credit, max profit, max loss, and breakeven pair. The strike visualiser displays all legs on a price axis so you can see the full structure at a glance.

Adjust strike widths, put wing, and bias inline for each preset — all strikes update live. A bias of +10 shifts all strikes 10 points higher (use when you expect an upward move). The bias guide (collapsible) maps VIX levels and trend signals to suggested bias values.

Research Tab

The Research tab contains two tools for evaluating strategies against historical data. The Strategy Matrix requires a Pro or Trial plan — free users see an upgrade prompt.

ETF Screener

Available for US accounts. Ranks ETFs by annualised return (CAGR) since launch relative to SPX and NDX benchmarks. Results are sortable by ticker, name, total return, CAGR, and category, and can be filtered by tier fit — making it easier to cross-reference ETF candidates against each allocation layer of the framework. Star any ETF to flag it for your own research. Data is sourced from Yahoo Finance and cached for six hours.

Backtest Lab (Strategy Matrix)

Runs strategy combinations in one pass — all modes × all preset combinations × all flag combinations — and ranks them by annualised return. This is the fastest way to find which structure and mode has historically worked best for your specific holding period and risk preference.

1. 1
   Set your parameters — period (1–10 years), trade mode, FO style, FO frequency, contracts, adjust strikes, and stand-aside. Then click Run Matrix.
2. 2
   The results table ranks all combinations. The top row is the highest-ranked historical result — highlighted in green.
3. 3
   The summary card shows the optimal mode, preset flags (Adjust / Stand-Aside), required capital, and suggested deployment frequency.
4. 4
   Filter by mode, type, adjust, stand-aside, or P&L outcome using the filter row. Sort any column by clicking its header.
5. 5
   Click Save as Default to persist the top-ranked result — it pre-fills the Trade Setup on your next session.

Tracking Positions

AltSal tracks open positions in two modes depending on how you're running the app: Paper campaigns (cloud and local) and IBKR campaigns (local/desktop only, when connected to TWS or IB Gateway).

Paper campaigns

After building your legs in the Trade section, click Track Paper Campaign to save a simulated position. Paper campaigns are stored in the database — not in a broker — and appear in the Positions section of the Strategy tab.

IBKR campaigns (local/desktop only)

When running AltSal locally with TWS or IB Gateway open, additional panels appear. These are hidden in cloud mode — IBKR routes return 404 in production by design.

After placing an IBKR order, the campaign appears in Positions with status Staged. Refresh positions after your order fills — the app reads your live IBKR portfolio, matches legs, and promotes the campaign to Open. Use Clear to archive closed campaigns.

Research Routines

Consistent routines are more valuable than complex analysis. These two rhythms cover the core of what AltSal is designed to support.

Weekly routine (5–10 minutes)

1. 1
   Portfolio tab → regime panel. Check the VIX tier and regime label. If "Stand Aside" appears — the model flags elevated risk; factor this into your own decision-making.
2. 2
   Check pyramid allocation. Any tier more than 5% off target? Note it for the next quarterly rebalance.
3. 3
   Strategy tab → Trade. Review the modelled strikes and regime context for your mode. Adjust bias as your own research supports.
4. 4
   Positions → check expiring campaigns. Paper campaigns expiring this week — note the outcome and clear them after expiry.

Monthly routine (30–60 minutes)

1. 1
   Run Backtest Lab for the current period. Confirm your mode is still the top performer. Switch if a meaningfully better one has emerged.
2. 2
   Rebalance if any tier has drifted >5% from target. Use the rebalance calculator output as your starting point — adjust for tax and costs.
3. 3
   Review paper campaign P&L. Calculate actual vs. expected credit collected for the month. Note any patterns (e.g. stand-aside weeks saved losses).
4. 4
   Update profile if needed. Has your holding period or risk tolerance changed? Update investing style and re-run Backtest Lab.
5. 5
   Export Backtest Lab to Excel. Archive the monthly snapshot for your own records.

FAQ

Short answers to the questions users usually ask first. The dashboard assistant uses the same grounded help material.