Every broker lets you export your trade history. None of them make it obvious, all of them use a different format, and every one of them omits the same critical piece of information.

This is the pillar page for the Brokers track, because getting your own data out is the step that everything else in the Operate section depends on.

Where it hides

The export is almost never on the positions screen where you would look for it. Across platforms it lives under some combination of Accounts, History, Activity, Statements or Documents, usually behind a date-range picker with a short default window.

Two things worth checking wherever you find it:

The date range default is too short. It is frequently 30 or 90 days. Set it to the full period you want before exporting, or you will quietly get a fraction of your history.

Trades are not the same as activity. Many platforms separate a “trade history” export from a fuller “account activity” one. Only the second includes assignments, exercises, dividends and fees — and without those, wheels cannot be reconstructed at all.

What a typical export contains

The option symbol is the fiddly part

Every broker encodes the contract differently. Some use the standard OCC format, some use a readable variant, some split strike and expiry into separate columns.

Whatever the format, the four pieces you need are the same: underlying, expiration, strike and type. Together they identify a contract uniquely, which is what lets you match an opening trade to its close. Normalising to those four fields on import is what makes multi-broker consolidation possible — see tracking across brokers.

What no export contains

The universal omission: which trade relates to which.

A broker records that you bought a contract back and sold another. It does not record that those two were one roll decision, because that relationship is not part of any broker's data model.

It can be inferred — same underlying, same day, opposite actions, often the same timestamp — and that inference is the core of rebuilding history. But it is reconstruction, not retrieval, and ambiguous cases should be flagged rather than guessed.

Export before you need it

Online history retention is shorter than people assume — commonly around two years, sometimes less for the export function specifically even when statements go back further. Older data may need a support request, and closed accounts are considerably worse.

The practical advice is unglamorous and worth following: export your full activity once a year, save the file somewhere durable, and do it regardless of whether you currently have any use for it. It costs five minutes and it is the only version of this problem that cannot be solved later.

Verify what you exported

Three checks before trusting a file:

• Does the row count look plausible for the period?
• Do the earliest and latest dates match what you asked for?
• Are assignments present, if you had any?

A silently truncated export is far worse than a failed one, because you will build on it without knowing. Then reconcile against the broker's own totals — see reconciliation.

What can go wrong

Exporting trades only. Assignments missing means wheels cannot be rebuilt.

Accepting the default date range. Usually a fraction of your history.

Assuming fees are itemised. Some brokers net them into the price.

Waiting until you need it. Retention windows expire and closed accounts get difficult.