Ryan Kalagin
Financial software developer, previously eight years in banking.
I build software for private investors, focused on the parts that have to be exactly right: cost basis, UK tax rules, and a clear audit trail behind every figure.
Options Wheel Tracker
A desktop application for running the options wheel from a UK account, with HMRC capital gains reporting built in rather than bolted on.
The wheel is straightforward to trade and genuinely awkward to account for. Assignment changes your cost basis. A roll closes one position and opens another on the same day. Every premium, fee and currency conversion has to land in the right place, in the right tax year. Kept in a spreadsheet, the records start to fall apart within months.
Options Wheel Tracker handles that accounting end to end, across cash-secured puts, covered calls, assignment and rolling.
Section 104 pooling
Shares are pooled the way HMRC requires, with same-day and thirty-day matching applied before anything reaches the pool.
Currency at the right rate
Every premium, fee, assignment and disposal is converted to sterling at the rate on the day it happened.
An audit trail behind every figure
Each number can be traced back to the trades that produced it, so it can be checked rather than taken on trust.
Reports for your return
CSV and PDF outputs for a capital gains return or an accountant, plus performance tracking across positions.
Built in Python with PySide6 and SQLite. More than thirty releases so far and in active development. Free, or pay what you want.
Related article
Section 104 pooling and the options wheelWhy the wheel is simple to run and awkward to account for: pooled cost basis, the thirty-day matching rule, assignment, and the currency problem underneath it all.
Personal projects
Alongside my main work, I make a few free websites that I hope are of benefit to the Ummah. All four are live and still being improved.
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Ummah Salah
Prayer times worked out on your own device from your location, with a drawing of the sun’s path through the day and a Qibla direction. Every setting is explained in plain language, and there’s an optional way to line the times up with your mosque’s timetable.
Runs entirely in the browser, using the open-source Adhan library for the astronomy. No accounts, no tracking and no adverts.
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Prayer Pronunciation
The words of the daily prayer in transliteration, laid out to read from a phone on the prayer mat, even in the dark. Choose your prayer, open only the parts you’d like help with, and the text sizes itself to fit the screen.
A single small page. It keeps the screen awake with the Wake Lock API and remembers your choices on your phone.
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New Muslim Companion
A free learning path for new Muslims, and anyone who’d like a refresher, with the essentials of Islam in a suggested order. The first lessons are written, and the rest are being added slowly and carefully.
A static site where each lesson is a plain text file, so corrections are easy to make and every change is kept.
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Ummah Canvas
A shared canvas two thousand pixels across, where everyone adds to the same picture one pixel at a time. Made with geometric patterns and calligraphy in mind, though anything kind is welcome.
Node.js and PostgreSQL, with live updates over WebSockets so each pixel appears on everyone’s screen as it’s placed.
Writing
Finance and tax
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Section 104 pooling and the options wheel
Why the wheel is simple to run and awkward to account for: pooled cost basis, the thirty-day matching rule, assignment, and the currency problem underneath it all.
Notes from the personal projects
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Introducing Ummah Salah
A simple prayer times page that works everything out on your own device, with the sun’s path drawn through the day.
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Introducing Prayer Pronunciation
The words of the prayer for a phone on the prayer mat, with text that sizes itself to fit and a screen that stays on.
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Introducing New Muslim Companion
A gentle, suggested order for learning the essentials of Islam, and why each lesson is a plain text file.
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Introducing Ummah Canvas
A shared pixel canvas, and what it took to make one person’s pixel appear on everyone else’s screen.
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Twilight, latitude and the London prayer timetable
Notes from building Ummah Salah: which angle counts as dawn, what happens to Fajr and Isha in a northern summer, and why the timetable most London mosques follow can’t be reproduced by any calculation.
About
I’m a financial software developer based in the United Kingdom. I spent eight years in banking before moving into software, and earlier in my career I worked in manufacturing.
Banking taught me that a number is only as good as the record behind it. That principle runs through everything I build: figures that can be traced back to the transactions that produced them, rules applied the way HMRC actually applies them, and software that shows its working rather than asking to be trusted. I work mainly in Python, and I put correctness and auditability ahead of shipping quickly.
Alongside that work, I build a small number of free websites for Muslims. I’m not a scholar and they aren’t religious guidance. They’re resources I hope are of benefit to the Ummah, made while I keep learning myself, so where anything on them differs from your local mosque or a qualified teacher, please follow them.
Contact
For questions about Options Wheel Tracker, or anything else, email ryan@ryankalagin.com. I’m also on LinkedIn.