Every day, there are more compelling options trades than any one trader can productively parse for actionable insights, and options volume is only growing from here. Daily contracts, also known as zero-DTE or 0DTE, on single names are in the works, and 24/5 common stock trading is already achievable today on some platforms. Options volume in per share equivalent terms already eclipses total shares traded on many days. Further, there is recent momentum in DC to press FINRA to reduce its’ Pattern Day Trader (PDT) minimum balance requirement for margin accounts – which hasn’t changed since its implementation in 2001 (!) – from $25,000 to $2,000. Options utilization will only continue to expand in these conditions, by both retail and professional/institutional market participants.
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It is well documented by unusual options activity (UOA) experts in the field that regular monitoring and cogent interpretation of options time and sales data is a source of material alpha, especially when combined with effective fundamental, technical, and market structure analysis. However, options datasets are notoriously large and difficult to work with, due to the many combinations of strikes and expirations that are continuously emerging and deprecating as unique contracts are made available for trading and ultimately expire.
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The purpose of the OptionsGOAT tool and way of working is to empower individual traders to independently and efficiently identify and explore the flow of relevance to their universe, and specifically in a manner that is highly conducive to spotting and separating complex positions and rolls from opening single-leg positions. The tabular user interface, presentation of trades by directionality, drill-in-and-out functionality, sorting by contract volume, and more have all been carefully constructed to provide the trader with an unparalleled options interpretation experience. Sometimes you don't need dozens of multicolored visuals to find and grasp what you seek - sometimes you just need the numbers laid out in a smart way.
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Until now, in the absence a tool like the OptionsGOAT which makes it easy to interpret options flow with great efficiency, any trader that developed a serious interest in options flow naturally had to learn how to interpret individual trades themselves manually. This is a valuable and rewarding pursuit, and occasionally still important to do, but always costs time and mental energy. An automated approach, whereby an algorithm performs the interpretation logic in a consistent manner for all trades and renders the result in an analytics-ready user interface, is vastly more productive.
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The OptionsGOAT auto-interpretation algorithm is multifaceted and has been refined over many years. Sometimes it will yield an interpretation result that you might not expect – that a given contract was bought where you might infer that it was sold. We are confident in the logic but always improving. If you have a differing interpretation for a particular trade, feel free to challenge us and share your analysis, public or private! If we accept your interpretation and ultimately modify our logic, we will reward you with kudos and discounted access! We live for options flow interpretation so if you prefer to build your own machine, go for it! If you want to get rocking and rolling today, join us!
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Performance specs:
The machine in the above demo video has:
Intel i9 @ 3.70 GHz
Samsung SSD
64 GB ram