Options Bot ⏱️🦙💸

A simple bot for automated options trading on IBKR Alpaca.

What it does

The bot monitors a single ticker and executes a wheel-style options strategy:

• If you hold shares: sells covered calls at a strike price above current price
• If you have cash: sells cash-secured puts at a strike price below current price

Using the example settings (AAPL with 5% OTM margins):

• If AAPL is at $200 and you own 1,000 shares → sells 10 calls at $210 strike price
• If AAPL is at $200 and you have $200,000 in cash → sells 10 puts at $190 strike price
• Options expiration is always set to be the closest Friday

The bot runs on a cron schedule, checks positions hourly, and sends Telegram notifications.

Setup

1. Create .env from template

cp .env.example .env

Edit .env with your credentials:

# Alpaca API credentials (from https://alpaca.markets)
ALPACA_API_KEY=...
ALPACA_API_SECRET=...

# Telegram bot for notifications (from @BotFather)
TELEGRAM_BOT_TOKEN=...
TELEGRAM_CHAT_ID=...

# Deployment settings
SERVER_USER=YOUR_USERNAME_HERE
SERVER_HOST=YOUR_HOSTNAME_HERE
SERVER_PATH=YOUR_PATH_HERE  # bot deployed to `SERVER_PATH/bot_name`
REPO_URL=https://github.com/your-username/options-bot.git

2. Create settings.yaml from template

cp settings.example.yaml settings.yaml

Edit settings.yaml:

bot_name: options-bot                     # Docker image name and deploy path
paper_trading: true                       # true for paper, false for live trading

ticker: AAPL                              # stock to trade options on
call_option_margin: 0.05                  # 5% above current price for calls
put_option_margin: 0.05                   # 5% below current price for puts

timezone: America/New_York                # schedule timezone
trade_options_schedule: "59 9 * * 0-4"    # 09:59 AM weekdays
check_value_schedule: "0 10-16 * * 0-4"   # hourly 10:00-16:00 weekdays

Deployment

Deploy to server with:

./deploy.sh

This will:

1. Pull latest code to ~/SERVER_PATH/bot_name on the server
2. Copy .env and settings.yaml to the server
3. Build and run the Docker container

Docker commands

# View logs
docker logs -f options-bot

# Stop/start
docker stop options-bot
docker start options-bot

# Rebuild manually
docker build -t options-bot:latest .
docker run -d --name options-bot \
  --restart unless-stopped \
  --env-file .env \
  -v "$(pwd)/logs:/app/logs" \
  options-bot:latest

Local development

# Run directly
python app.py

# Run pre-commit checks
pre-commit run --all-files