Directional Long Penalty

Setting key
directional_long_penalty
Default
0.8

What it does

Score multiplier applied to outright long options (long call, long put) in the directional engine. Outright longs pay full premium with no credit offset and have a lower probability of profit than spreads. The penalty multiplier discourages the bot from selecting them when a spread or funded pair is available. A value below 1.0 means longs are deprioritized.

When to change it

Lower toward 0.5 to strongly prefer spreads over outright longs. Raise toward 1.0 to treat longs and spreads equally. Only relevant when long_call_enabled or long_put_enabled is ON.

Safe range

0.5 (strong penalty, longs rarely selected) to 1.0 (no penalty). Default 0.8.

Example

Long call scores 0.50. Bull call spread scores 0.48. After applying the 0.8 long penalty: long call = 0.40, spread = 0.48. The spread wins even though the raw long call score was higher.

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