Which prices are used for performance tracking?

Which price does Jim Fink use to calculate returns of a trade?

For the opening trade in a new position, Jim will use his recommended limit order price as stated in the Alert.

However, he only includes that trade in his portfolio if at least one member posts to Stock Talk that they were able to enter the position at that recommended price. Once someone posts, Jim then peruses the time and sales data of the trading prices of each option leg on that day to confirm that the trade likely occurred.

If nobody claims to have filled the trade at the limit order price or better, then Jim does not include the trade in his portfolio and provides no further advice on that recommendation. This happens maybe 1 out of every 20 trades; not often.

For rolls of existing positions, Jim uses member posts in Stock Talk as a guide, especially when members are kind enough to provide per-leg fill prices.

However, the vast majority of fills by members are not reported on Stock Talk, so to base performance tracking solely on the small sample size of fills reported on the site would be inaccurate.

Therefore, Jim uses the one-minute bar charts on the ThinkOrSwim trading platform and weights most heavily the fill prices that occurred at high volume levels. Those are the prices at which several members were most likely to get filled and should serve as the official pricing for performance tracking.