Tradier Sync vs Manual Portfolio Tracking

Sample is for learning the product. Manual is a book you type. Tradier live and paper sync marks and cash. When each source is the right one, and how they stay separate.

By CoveredLoop

CoveredLoop is not a broker. Tradier is. The product’s job is the book: structures, marks, P&L, journal, research into a sample trade. You can run that book three ways — Sample, Manual, and Tradier (live and/or paper) — and they are not interchangeable.

This comparison is operational. It is not advice to connect a broker or to type trades by hand.

Sample: evaluate the product on a real-looking book

Sample is free with no usage cap. You get dashboard, covered calls, credit spreads, research, journal and P&L, metrics, and reports on a book we maintain so the UI is not empty. Use it to see how a structure card is supposed to look. Do not treat Sample P&L as yours.

Manual: your lots, your keystrokes

Manual is for a book you type: two accounts and twenty-five trades on the free tier, more on a paid plan. The trade wizard knows equities, options, covered calls, wheels, and multi-leg credits. Cash is the ledger you enter. Marks are not a live broker stream.

Manual is the right source when you do not want OAuth yet, or when an account lives at a broker CoveredLoop does not sync. It is the wrong source if you expect ACH, dividends, and fees to appear without typing them.

Tradier live: the book follows the broker

Live linking uses official OAuth. Balances, day marks, holdings, and activity (ACH, dividends, interest, fees) sync so the rollforward is not a second typing job. Covered-call and spread structures still need to be grouped correctly — a broker activity feed is fills, not lots. CoveredLoop maps those fills into the same cards you would see on Manual.

If a close ticket does not pull a mark, that is a product bug, not a reason to keep a parallel spreadsheet. The display should use the easy-to-read option symbol, grouped by trade.

Paper is a different book on purpose

Tradier paper uses the sandbox token. An amber banner stays on. Orders go only to paper. Live cash is untouched. Combined P&L leaves paper out unless you include that book. Practice a wheel or a condor here; do not mix it with the IRA total.

You can connect live and paper at the same time and switch from the dashboard. That is the point of multi-account: one product, several books, one picker.

Which one should you open first?

If you have never used CoveredLoop, Sample. If you want your own lots without a broker link, Manual. If you want marks and cash without retyping, Tradier live. If you want to test tickets, paper. None of those choices is a trade recommendation. They are data-source choices.