What is OTA

What Is OTA — and Why It Exists

Options Trader’s Assistant (OTA) is a web-based platform designed to automate the routine work of planning, executing, and managing options trades. It connects directly to your brokerage account, calculates strike prices and expiration dates from your trading plan templates, tracks true P&L across every leg and adjustment, and keeps your plans documented and actionable — all in one place.

Options Trader’s Assistant grew out of a straightforward frustration: too much time spent on the mechanics of trading, and not enough on the decisions that matter.

The tool was built by a professional software developer who was learning to trade options under a mentor with a clear methodology — trade the same vehicle, the same strategy, week after week, until you genuinely understand how the strategy behaves and how the underlying moves. That mentor also taught a structured four-step risk management plan, and stressed the importance of documenting and following your plan with discipline.

At the time, the only tool available was a self-built spreadsheet. It worked, but it was slow — each trade required 30 to 45 minutes of manual data entry: calculating strike prices, transferring them to the broker’s order ticket, recording fill prices, calculating profit targets and stops, and keeping everything in sync. For a process meant to be repeated week after week, that overhead added up fast.

The solution was to build something better. OTA was developed to replace that spreadsheet — pulling live data directly from brokers, automating the calculations, and handling the record-keeping so the trader could stay focused on the trade itself. Along the way, experienced traders and mentors contributed their perspective on what the tool needed to do.

It quickly became clear that other traders faced the same problem. OTA is the result.

Who it’s built for

Who OTA Is Built For

OTA is designed for options traders who follow a structured, repeatable process — trading the same strategy, on the same underlying, week after week. Traders who already have a methodology and want better tooling to execute and manage it consistently will get the most from it.

The platform is available to any options trader and is actively promoted by a growing number of options education organizations. Features are continuously developed based on feedback from those partners, so the platform reflects real-world trading needs. If your organization works with active options traders and you’d like to explore a partnership, contact us.

While newer traders can use OTA effectively, it is not designed as a beginner’s introduction to options trading. It assumes a working knowledge of options mechanics and is best suited to traders who are ready to execute and track a strategy with more precision and less overhead.

Our philosophy

The Philosophy Behind the Tool

OTA is built on a simple principle: the trader makes the decisions, the tool handles the overhead.

There is no shortage of automated trading platforms that promise to remove the human element from the process. OTA takes the opposite view. Options trading — done well — requires judgment, discipline, and a consistent process that the trader owns and understands. OTA is designed to support that process, not replace it.

In practice, that means OTA automates the calculations, the record-keeping, and the monitoring — the necessary but time-consuming work that surrounds a trade. The trader still analyzes the position, decides when and how to act, and submits every order manually. The tool ensures that when it is time to make a decision, the information needed to make it is accurate, current, and already organized.

OTA’s workflow is loosely structured around the four-step risk management plan taught by a number of our education partners. Traders already familiar with that framework will find that OTA maps naturally onto the way they think about a trade.

The same philosophy extends to plan documentation. A trading plan only has value if it is followed — and it can only be followed if it is written down and accessible at the moment it matters. OTA keeps your plan alongside your position data, so the discipline of following a structured process is built into the workflow rather than left to memory or a separate document.

Who is behind OTA

Who Is Behind OTA

Options Trader’s Assistant was designed and built by Charles Karow, a professional software developer with decades of experience building systems for organizations including UPS, T. Rowe Price, and Ryland Homes. Charles trades options himself, which means the problems OTA solves are ones he encountered firsthand — and the features it offers are ones he uses.

OTA was developed in close consultation with experienced traders and mentors, and continues to evolve based on feedback from a network of options education partners and their students. The result is a platform shaped by people who trade, not just people who build software.