Tortuga Trades
Trading Journal
Tortuga Trades

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Practical guides on investing and trading: how to connect your broker, how to keep a record of your trades and how to understand what your stocks, ETFs, options and dividends are doing. No hype and no promises of returns.

19 published guides

1

Start here

What is an option: the contract and its two sides

A derivative whose value comes from something else, and a contract signed by two people with opposite interests. The four numbers that define it completely.

· 7 min

Start from scratch4

The beginner series: options explained from the very first trade, number by number.

1

What is an option: the contract and its two sides

A derivative whose value comes from something else, and a contract signed by two people with opposite interests. The four numbers that define it completely.

· 7 min
2

What happens when an option expires

Three outcomes, not two. Exercise, assignment and expiration, with the buyer’s and the seller’s numbers side by side.

· 9 min
3

Calls and puts: the only four scenarios there are

Buy or sell, call or put: four positions and nothing else. Who pays, who is obligated, and the two you will actually use.

· 7 min
4

The premium: what you really collect or pay

Quoted at 2.00, but you collect 198.70. The ×100 multiplier, commissions and the three levers that make a premium large or small.

· 7 min

Options3

How to record and measure what you do: premiums, assignments, cost basis and cycles.

Selling puts: what it means, what you risk and how to record it

What selling a put means, how much you can lose, what Interactive Brokers requires, and why an assignment leaves you with two purchase prices: the economic one (strike − premium) and the Spanish tax one.

· 10 min

How to calculate your cost basis after a put is assigned

You were assigned and your shares are worth less than you paid. The real number subtracts the premium you collected, and almost nobody gets it right.

· 6 min

How to track the wheel strategy: premiums, assignments and cost basis

The wheel takes five minutes to explain and three months to get out of hand. What to record on each turn to know whether you are really making money.

· 8 min

Dividends6

When you get paid, how much actually reaches you and how to track it: dates, calendar, withholding and scrip dividends.

Yield on cost vs dividend yield: which one to watch in your portfolio

Yield on cost measures the dividend against what you paid; dividend yield, against what it is worth today. What each one answers, why the first flatters old positions and how to work it out from your own data.

· 7 min

Tracking your Interactive Brokers dividends: received and projected

Your broker statement tells you what you have been paid. It doesn’t tell you what you will be paid, or how much already comes in without selling anything once you add interest and premiums.

· 7 min

Ex-dividend date: the last day you can buy and still get the dividend

The payment date doesn’t tell you whether you get paid; the ex-dividend date does. In New York it matches the record date, in Madrid it falls one business day earlier, and on the ex-date your portfolio drops without that money being lost.

· 7 min

Dividend calendar: how to build your portfolio’s and get paid every month

The market calendar tells you who pays this week; your portfolio’s tells you whether you will get anything in March. How to build it separating announced from estimated, and how to fill the empty months.

· 6 min

Foreign dividend withholding tax for Spanish residents: how much each country keeps and what you get back

Out of a $100 dividend, $100 never reaches you. How much each country keeps, what you can deduct on your Spanish tax return, what you can only reclaim abroad, and where you see it on your Interactive Brokers statement.

· 8 min

Iberdrola’s scrip dividend: what to do with your rights and what happens to your cost basis

Twice a year Iberdrola asks what you want to do with your dividend, and if you don’t answer, it chooses for you. The three options, which number changes in your portfolio with each one, and how each is taxed.

· 6 min

ETFs2

What actually changes between one ETF and another once it is in your portfolio: taxes, payouts and where the yield comes from.

Accumulating or distributing ETF: what changes in your taxes and records

Accumulating defers tax, but by how much? Spanish rules, a 20-year example, the Irish withholding you never see, and what each share class leaves in your records and in Tortuga.

· 11 min

Covered call ETFs (JEPI, JEPQ and UCITS): where the payout comes from

Close to five out of every six euros of the income JEPI generates are option premium, not dividends. The UCITS versions with their ISINs, the upside you give up, how it is taxed in Spain and how it compares with selling the calls yourself.

· 9 min

Interactive Brokers1

Connect your account and get your data out without exporting CSV files by hand.

How to create an Interactive Brokers Flex Query, step by step

Create the query in Client Portal, enable the Flex Web Service token and connect your account without sharing your broker password.

· 5 min

Tools3

Templates, downloads and comparisons to choose what you work with.

A TradeZella alternative for options traders

I was subscribed until April 2026 and left for five specific reasons. What a journal needs when you sell puts and covered calls, checked against their public sources.

· 8 min

TradeZella in Spanish: what exists and what your alternatives are

TradeZella is not available in Spanish. What that means in practice, what “free TradeZella” really means, and how to choose a trading journal if you trade with IBKR.

· 9 min

Options trading journal template (Excel, free)

Free download: record premiums, assignments and wheel cycles, and calculate the real cost basis your broker doesn’t show you.

· 5 min

Tortuga brings your stocks, ETFs, options and dividends together in one place, with the trading journal and the results calendar included.

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