Unusual Options Activity (UOA) shows the contracts and spreads whose session on the tape is far outside what that contract and that name normally do, read the way the flow scanners read a print: which side, how urgent, how large for the name, whether it opened a position, and which way it leans. The scores say how unusual and how clearly read the day was; they do not say what follows, because nothing on the row does.

How a row is made

Every print carrying enough premium is placed against the quote it executed at, the print before it and the quote's move, and read as bought or sold with a confidence. Prints of one name in the same instant are grouped into a structure — a vertical, a straddle, a strangle, a risk reversal, a calendar, a diagonal, a butterfly, an iron condor — before any leg is read for direction. Then, per contract, the engine reads:

• Sweep — a burst of same-side prints across venues inside a second, scored 0–100.
• Block — the largest print's percentile among the name's prints of the same kind of contract at the same time of day.
• Volume / OI and relative volume — the day's volume over the open interest, and over what the contract usually prints by that hour.
• Premium, IV change and rarity — each against the contract's own recent sessions and the name's own distribution.
• Opening probability — an estimate from the turnover, confirmed or refuted the next morning from the settled open interest; the row says which it carries.

The scores

UOA weighs relative volume, volume/OI, premium, sweep, block and rarity. Direction runs −100 to +100 from the side the premium was read on, the option type and the delta: a call lifted at the ask leans bullish, but a 95-delta call is the stock changing hands and reads neutral, a five-delta weekly says a third as much, and a spread is read from its net structure. Conviction gates the strength of the reading by how clearly the tape said what it was. The score on the row is 0.40 UOA + 0.25 conviction + 0.20 |direction| + 0.15 opening, tiered unusual at 60, strong at 75, extreme at 90.

Beside the row: the stock's move over the last five sessions, as a fact, refreshed from the close after the session. A name reporting earnings after the close or before the next open also carries two reads of its option chain, each −100 to +100 against every name on the tape that day. The report tilt reads where the chain prices calls against puts, how that moved today, its skew and its implied premium over realised volatility: above +30 the report has moved about a point and a half better than the market on average, below −30 about a point worse, on some eight thousand reports. The move read reads the chain's IV rank, term structure, open-interest change and option volume against the stock's, together with the name's own record of how far it moved through its last eight reports against today's straddle, and says how much of the implied move the report tends to use: on average a report moves two thirds of its straddle; reports read high (+40 and above) have moved four fifths of it and beyond it a third of the time, reports read low (−25 and below) under half of it and beyond it one time in ten. Both tilt the odds of the overnight move through the report; neither is a call, and neither carries anything on any other session. They are not in the score; measured against the other names that had made the same move at the same volatility on the same day, no score on the row told which name would move next. The one shape of the flow that has: a far_otm tag marks a bullish or bearish single leg ten percent or more out of the money, three weeks or less to expiry, a quarter-million or more of premium, read as opening, with no report scheduled — the shape informed trading is known by. On the bullish side a surprise gap of 8% or more followed within a week one time in five, against one in thirteen for comparable names; on the bearish side nothing, and it is far too rare and too new to be more than a flag.

The row also carries, as tags, the rules the retail flow scanners publish, read over the same prints: volume above the open interest (`vol_over_oi`), one execution larger than the open interest (`size_over_oi`), either with the contract's implied volatility rising (`iv_rising_over_oi`), a sweep bought for a million dollars or more that is larger than the book (`golden_sweep`), five weeks or less to expiry and 7.5% or more out of the money (`short_dated_otm`), an out-of-the-money contract with volume above the open interest on a quarter-million or more (`otm_vol_over_oi`), more than five executions at about one price (`repeated_hits`, and `_ascending` or `_descending` when the fills walked up or down), ten or more sweeps followed by a large floor print (`sweeps_then_floor`), and floor prints on an out-of-the-money contract into a report, on a contract that rarely trades, or on a small or mid cap (`otm_earnings_floor`, `low_volume_floor`, `small_cap_floor`, `mid_cap_floor`). Beside the row sits the name's net premium for the session — calls bought less calls sold, puts the same way, and the bullish side less the bearish — summed the way those feeds draw their tide. None of it moves the score; each is measured on the same control as everything else, and none has earned more than a tag.

How to use UOA

• Start from High Score (strong and extreme), or filter by Premium for size.
• Read the row's context: a call surge on a name down 8% this week is a different thing from one on a name up 8% — a different thing to look into, not a better bet. The context is refreshed from the close after the session.
• Click into a symbol to see its Stock Analysis tabs and confirm with the positioning charts.
• Save a filtered view (e.g. "$1M+ calls bought, score 75+") and re-open it with one click later.

Pair with alerts

The Alerts page ships with a curated set of UOA recipes. Pick one to get UOA delivered without checking the page yourself.