What makes options activity unusual?
Learn what unusual options activity means, how premium, volume, open interest, sweeps, and blocks add context, and how to inspect delayed options tape scans.
Read the guide7 min readLearn
Read the tape for yourself.
Plain-English guides to reported options activity — what the words mean, how the surfaces read, and what a print can and can't tell you. Every screen referenced here is in the product.
How do you read options flow?
Options flow is the stream of reported options trades. Learn how calls, puts, premium, sweeps, blocks, and open interest add context—not a forecast.
Read the guide10 min readWhat's the difference between a sweep and a block?
Learn the differences between intermarket sweep orders and negotiated block trades, how NBBO routing works across exchanges, and how to read ask/bid execution footprints.
Read the guide8 min read
What is dealer positioning?
Learn how market makers hedge options risk, how gamma exposure (GEX) models mechanical re-hedging, and what long vs short gamma regimes mean for market volatility.
Read the guide9 min readVocabulary
Words on the tape.
The terms every guide leans on, short enough to check mid-read.
Premium
The dollars a trade committed — contracts times price times the 100-share multiplier. The truer weight of a print than its contract count.
Sweep
A marketable order split across several exchanges at once, taking the displayed offers — a burst of fills that reads as urgency.
Block
A single outsized print, often negotiated off-screen and crossed at an agreed price — size done with patience instead of speed.
Open interest
Outstanding contracts for a strike and expiry, updated after clearing. Volume measures turnover and does not by itself establish whether a print opened or closed a position.
Moneyness
Where a strike sits against spot: in the money, at the money, or out of the money. Sets how an option's value responds to the stock.
Gamma exposure
An estimate, from open interest, of how much mechanical re-hedging by market makers a move in the underlying would imply.
The guides explain it. The tape shows it.
Run a ticker through the scanner and read a real session, free and without an account.