Your position's profit or loss at every combination of stock price (down the side) and date (across the top). Green is profit, red is loss, and the deeper the color the bigger the number. Before expiration the option still holds time value, so the numbers are smooth; the last column is the hard payoff at expiration.
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Bigger profitSmall profitBreak evenSmall lossBigger loss▸ current $420 price
Assumes implied volatility stays constant across the grid. Values from Black-Scholes with rates set to zero, for clean intuition. TSLA $420 is illustrative only.
Plain EnglishThis grid is the whole life of your trade on one screen. Read down a column to see what happens as the stock price moves on a given day, and read across a row to see what time does to that same price. A long option loses a little value each day it sits still, which is why a row of green can fade toward red as you move right, even when the price never changed.
Three things to read from this table:
Down is price, across is time. Generally the left column is today with all the time value still on, and the right column is expiration, where the numbers harden into the plain payoff.
Green is profit, red is loss. In practice the deeper the shade, the larger the dollar swing, so the color alone tells you where the trade lives or dies.
Time is working on you. As a rough guide, not a promise, a long option drifts toward red as you move right at the same price, because time value bleeds away; a short premium position drifts the other way.
Taxes are not shown here. Options and the underlying stock are taxed differently, and it depends on your holding period and account type. None of this is tax advice.