The "Max Profit" trigger is one of the early exit conditions. An "Early Exit Trigger" is any price condition that closes the trade before it's expirations (See here for more on the subject).
The Max Profit Trigger has a configuration panel of its own where you can select several options.
Lets' see an example to show the differences:
Triggers - Evaluate Max Profits against those triggers
Short Put
Premium received: $1.20
Max Profit Target: 50%
Target Price for MP: $0.60
Day1: Compare $0.85 < $0.60 False
Day2: $0.52 < $0.60 True
So day 2 the Max profit early exit is triggered and the position must be closed. So at what price?
Option EOD: The position will be executed and closed at $0.52. This is equivalent to a trader that checks the market at 3:45 pm (15 minutes before the closes), and seeing that the max profit target was reached, decides to close the position at the current price.
Option Calculated based on the Max Profit setting. The position will be executed and closed at $0.60. This is equivalent to a trader that has an open limit order and that this order is executed at some point in time between D1 and D2. The assumption here is that for the price to go from $0.85 (EOD D1) and reach the $0.52 level at EOD D2, it had to cross the $0.60 level.
Option Replace with open when applicable: If you select this option, The position will be executed and closed at $0.58. As the open price is below the Max Profit target.
The default values for these options are to use only the EOD both for triggering and for executing the trades. This is the option that can always be replicated in real-life trading and that is the reason why we selected as the default value.
