Unusual Whales is the most complete and affordable options, equity, flow platform available to retail traders.

Subsequent reports on Congressional Trading have been cited by ABC News, Bloomberg, Reuters, and Unusual Whales' work has even been cited within Congressional hearings.

Unusual Whales is run by a small team with zero outside funding. Our efforts are focused not only on leveling the playing field for retail traders, but on building awareness for topics such as Congressional insider trading and corporate lobbying in America.

Unusual Whales utilizes a variety of different data sources to bring you fast and accurate market data. Whether it's options flow data, dark pool prints, analyst price targets, or the news, we've got you covered.

Our 2021 Report on Congressional Trading gained nationwide attention, putting the spotlight on this important issue and spurring immediate action. Within six days of the report's release, six new bills were proposed by lawmakers. These reports are released annually, such as the 2023 Report on Congressional Trades.

First, if you haven’t already, create an account on the website. To do this, click “Sign In” in the top right hand corner on unusualwhales.com. On the right hand side of the next page, click “Create an Account”, and fill out the email and password you’d like to use to sign in. Click the Terms of Service text to review our Terms. If you agree to the Terms of Service, select the checkbox, and click Sign Up. Now you have an Unusual Whales account!

To subscribe,  head to the the Settings and Billing page. Select your tier and payment schedule (monthly or yearly). Then, fill out your personal and payment information. Once you’ve subscribed, you should have instant access to all of your selected Tier features!

If you’re new to the stock market, or a beginner with options trading, it’s important to garner a solid foundation of basic options knowledge. Unusual Whales has numerous articles explaining everything from the Options Basics to the Advanced Greeks: https://unusualwhales.com/course

You’ll also want to learn how to navigate the Unusual Whales platform, which is luckily fairly simple! We created this Overview video to help you learn where pages are located, and what information each page holds.

Then, you'll want to join the Unusual Whales Discord Server and link your Discord account to your Unusual Whales account!

To enable and disable push notifications to your mobile device, head to the Notifications tab in Settings. From here, you can select which notifications you’d like to push to your mobile device via the Unusual Whales Mobile App, whether you want all notifications, just major notifications, or none at all!

Most issues with any of the feeds themselves can usually be resolved by resetting your filters.

However, things do break from time to time! If you have an issue with any part of the website/subscription send us an email at support@unusualwhales.com or swing by the Discord server and post in the Questions channel near the top of the server.

When emailing or posting in the Discord server please post as much information as possible. URL(s) and screenshots can assist us in identifying the issue.

The Market Overview page is a dashboard where you can get a bird’s eye view of how the Market is performing overall. At the top, a ticker bar showing index and volatility performance. Directly beneath is the Market Tide–this chart displays put premium versus call premium on either a 1 Day or 1 Hour time frame. You can also adjust to view only premiums on contracts that are out of the money.

On the right is a table displaying the top tickers by daily net premium. Beneath those are the Market Tide, which tracks the net Put and net Call premium for the S&P 500 over time; Sector flow that displays each sector’s market performance for the day, as well as the Unusual Whales newsfeed, so you can stay informed throughout the day. At the bottom, we’ve got Market Seasonality that displays the MTM performance of the markets, as well as a customizable watchlist for you to track any tickers you’re watching.

All sales are final.

Please reference the terms of service for more information.

The Open Interest change feed updates in the premarket at approximately 645 AM Eastern time on days in which the stock market is open.

We currently only accept Card via Stripe.

You can purchase a subscription via the billing page.

To gift a subscription on Unusual Whales, you’ll navigate to the same place you would to manage your own subscription. From the Settings and Billing page, you’ll select “Gift Options.” On the next page, you’ll select which subscription tier you’d like to gift; fill out the Sender email (you), and the Recipient email (the person you’re gifting; they will use that email address for their login). Finally, select Checkout, fill out your payment information, and you’ve successfully shared the gift of flow!

Unusual Whales does have a Mobile App! It can be found in the Apple Store and the Google Play Store. 

The Ticker Overview tab. Much like the Market Overview, the ticker Overview for any given ticker houses at-a-glance insight into the ticker’s options and overall market performance. As with the other pages, we’ll dive deeper later on, but within this tab you can view the call to put ratio, the bullish vs. bearish premiums for the day, top volume options chains, top open interest options chains, you can even monitor the ticker’s volatility from this page. Here at the top is the navigational dropdown, where you can jump to any information you need about the ticker, from options chains, to the Greeks, and even charting for the ticker.

A dark pool is a privately organized financial forum or exchange for trading securities. Dark pools allow institutional investors to trade without exposure until after the trade has been executed and reported. The Unusual Whales Dark Pool Flow feed tracks trades such as these, in real time. 

There are FOUR ways in which you can transact an options contract:

• Buy a call option (Ask side/At the Ask)
• Sell a call option (Bid side/At the Bid)
• Buy a put option (Ask side/At the Ask)
• Sell a put option (Bid side/At the Bid)

Let's say you're bullish company ABC. You can buy a call option. When you decide to close the position you would then sell the call option. Now let's say you're bearish on company XYZ. You can buy a put option. When you decide to close the position, you would then sell the put option.

Once you've gotten a grasp on the 4 basic ways in which you can transact an options contract it's time to start educating ourselves on the ways the options are being transacted.

You can watch a more in-depth explanation with examples straight from the Flow Feed on the Unusual Whales Four Ways Options Transact video!

--

Let's simplify the 4 ways (buy a call, sell a call, buy a put, sell a put)

Buying a contract

Within buying there is:

Buying to open (BTO)

Buying to close (BTC)

Selling a contract

Within selling there is:

Selling to open (STO)

Selling to close (STC)

The phrases "To open" and "to close" give added meaning and provide additional context to the trade. Every option transacted will either be transacted 'to open' or 'to close'.

A "buy to open" refers to a trader buying for themselves a new position (whether it be a call or a put). When the trader is ready to sell (or close) their position they would be "selling to close".

A "sell to open" would refer to a trader opening a new position, but being on the short side. Selling (or writing) a covered call/cash secured put would be an example of a 'sell to open transaction.' In order to close a position that was 'sold to open', you would "buy to close".

How do you know if something is more likely to be a buy than a sell? The SIDE of a bid/ask spread. 

Side is a term that you'll see as a column header on the Unusual Whales flow feed. It is most often used to reference where along the Bid-Ask spread a trade took place. 

Sides

Every trade is tagged with a side. There are four possible sides:

Ask - A transaction that took place at or closer to the ask will have the side ASK. 

Bid - A transaction that took place at or closer to the bid will have the side BID.

Mid - A transaction that took place exactly between the bid and the ask will have the side MID.

None - The previous 3 labels made reference to where along the Bid-Ask spread a trade took place. The NONE tag is used in situations where the Bid-Ask spread may be irrelevant. Cross trades, trades that are out of sequence or late,  or trades which have been modified or cancelled will be tagged NONE.

One thing to note is: an at-ask fill is not a guarantee the contract is bought, and an at-bid fill is not a guarantee the contract is sold; only a higher likelihood one way or the other. In future articles, we’ll walk through how to make these determinations, but be aware that this education is not a guarantee of accuracy)

--

Why does this matter?

Understanding these concepts is crucial for any trader interested in analyzing flow, and especially for those attempting to follow 'unusual options flow'.

What makes distinguishing between 'opening' and 'closing' trades difficult is the fact that they are not expressly labeled as such.

Consider that a transaction in which a trader has bought (to close) $1,000,000 in (covered) calls will look very similar to a trader who is buying (to open) $1,000,000 in calls, but the sentiment is wildly different between the two traders.

Now we'll go over some examples of clear and unclear analysis of 'opening' and 'closing' flow trades. 

Buy to Open Flow

Here, we see a number of orders that hit the tape at or near the ask price. For this example of an at-ask opening trade, we’re looking at the $EVA $0.5C 03/15/2024. The Bid/Ask spread for this trade was $0.15 - $0.20. Directly to the right of that, we see the Spot (or Fill) price was $0.20 - right at the ask. Additionally, the Size of the trade was 470 contracts, while the Open Interest was 0. Therefore, we know this is an Opening trade (Size > Current Daily Volume + Open Interest). 

Below that, we have an example of a near-the-ask opening trade. Ticker $CRON in the bottom example; $CRON $4C 1/16/2024 hit the tape with a Bid/Ask spread of $0.25 - $0.35. The Spot/Fill price was $0.33. While this isn’t an exact ask-fill, the sentiment can remain more or less the same here; the fill occurred significantly closer to the Ask price than it did the Bid price. We also know once again that this is an opening order, as the 100 contract size of the order is greater than the sum of the total prior daily volume and existing open interest.

Both of these trades potentially have the sentiment of Bullish positioning. Note, however, that this is not an exact science. At-ask and near-the-ask fills are not a guarantee of contracts being bought–the likelihood is higher that they’re bought, but again, this is not guaranteed.

Sell to Open Flow

The process of scoping out Sell to Open trades is identical to that of Buy to Open trades, only we’re looking for at-the-bid or near-the-bid transactions. For this At the Bid example, we’ll be looking at the $CHWY $21.5P 2/2/2024. The Bid/Ask spread at the time of this order was $2.45 - $2.49. To the right, we see the Spot/Fill of this order occurred right at the Bid of $2.45 per contract. The Size was 175 vs only 67 OI, and combined with the fact that this order size was greater than total prior daily volume and Open Interest combined, we can deduce this is an opening trade.

Now for the $LLY $617.5P 2/2/2024. The Bid/Ask spread sat at $8.15 - $8.80. Our Fill came in at $8.20; not at-the-bid, but very close given the wide spread. Again, comparing the Size of the order to the pre-existing volume and open interest, we can deduce that this was an opening trade.

Buy to Close

For Buying to Close, the flow would look similar to the Buy to Open examples above; only in this case we need to have some existing Open Interest–in order for there to be a position closure, there needs to be an existing position to begin with. In the case of this $AAPL $185P 12/29/2023, we noted the entry short on 11/16 when 17.5k volume transacted mostly at the Bid, and open interest rose on 11/17 by just under 16k volume. That position held for 2 weeks, until 12/13 when we noted at-ask fills on the contract, nearly the same amount of volume as our original entry. The next day, on 12/14, we see the open interest drop considerably, confirming our suspicions of at least a partial exit on the initial position.

Sell to Close

Here for Selling to Close, just like the Buy to Close example above, we need to have some existing Open Interest–in order for there to be a position closure, there needs to be an existing position to begin with. In this case with $SPR $23C 11/17/2023, we see a total of 5,066 volume transacting on 11/10 versus 10,078 open interest. The 5,066 volume came in at the Bid price of $1.46. With this, we can’t confirm a position closure until the open interest updates the following morning before market open. In this case, we got exactly that. The Open Interest on 11/13 dropped by 2,324 contracts, giving us the confirmation that a position was at least partially closed.

The Analyst Ratings page gives real time updates to changes in analyst ratings across all companies. You can further filter this to narrow down your search to one (or several) tickers, which firm issues the rating, what rating change was made (HOLD, BUY, SELL), the action (Maintained, Initiated, Reiterated, Downgraded, Upgraded), and the star rating for any given company/ticker, across any sector and market cap level.

The Analyst profiles page is exactly that; a flow page outlining different analysts from various firms across sectors. This page also tracks each analysts’ performance via success rate and excess returns.

The Unusual Whales Discord Server

To start, join the Unusual Whales Discord server by selecting “Connect” on the main page, then click the “Unusual Whales Discord”

This will open a new window to Discord (or, if you have the Discord app installed, it will open the app) where you’ll accept the Discord Server invitation. Now you’ve joined the discord server, it’s time to link your Discord account to your Unusual Whales account.

First, click the Profile Icon in the top right of the page. Then, select “Link Discord” under the General settings tab.

This will again open up a new tab or the Discord app, where you’ll accept the request to link your Discord account to your Unusual Whales account. You’re also able to link roles within the Discord server to your account.

Breaking down the Unusual Whales Discord Channels

There are a lot of channels within the Discord that cater to different interests. We’ll focus here on the key channels that benefit everyone and have a lot to offer.

#-only-flow

The #only-flow channel is exactly that; a place where users can post interesting flow and ideas. Any flow posted in this channel is automatically re-posted in the #-flow-discussion channel, where users can engage in deeper discussion into the options  flow. 

#-flow-discussions

The #-flow-discussions channel acts as a sort of extension of #-only-flow. Here, users can discuss options flow and flow concepts, as well as ask for other opinions on options flow they’ve found.

#-private-treehouse

The #-private-treehouse is the general hangout and discussion spot for Unusual Whales subscribers. This is where subscribers can talk about anything from their hobbies to market concepts. For non-subscribers, the channel for this is #general-chat, and for memes, jokes, and general goofing around, #-ree-venting-bonking exists.

Options and Market Alerts Channels

The Options and Market Alerts channels are set up to automatically push alerts for their respective categories without the need to use bot commands. These alerts are tied to the Unusual Whales Custom Alerts screener on the platform: https://unusualwhales.com/custom-alerts

On the Custom Alert page, you can fully customize the alerts you receive, spanning across all categories from Analyst rating changes, Economic releases, Insider trades, specific Options contracts and Interval flows, even trading halts. There are also pre-built alerts. Each of these alert categories also hold the ability to create entire watchlists to look back on. All of these alerts are tied to the respective Alerts channels in the Unusual Whales discord when your Discord account and Unusual Whales account are linked. These alerts also push to the Mobile App, if you have it installed.

The Unusual Whales Options Profit Calculator is a must-have tool to project the potential profitability (or losses) of options chains and strategies. You can go directly to the OPC from the Flow Feed to visualize a trade that hit the tape, or you can create your own custom trades and spreads to display the profit/loss profile of the trade.

Long calls, also known as calls bought to open, are the most similar to buying stock in a company. When the stock goes up, your call should go up in value, too. Long calls have a theoretically infinite upside, so the higher the stock price rises, the more profit can be made on Long calls.

You can join the public Unusual Whales Discord server here: discord.gg/unusualwhales (Please familiarize yourself with the rules)

All subscriber channels can be found within the public Unusual Whales Discord server. There is NO private Discord.

Once you've joined the server you can gain access to the subscriber only channels by visiting the settings page and selecting `Link Discord`. If you ever lose your roles you can regain your subscriber roles using the ‘Relink Discord Roles’ button.

To have a different Discord account linked send an email to support@unusualwhales.com .

What plans are currently offered?

We currently offer one subscription tier at 2 different intervals. Subscriptions are offered for $48 monthly or $528 annually (normal pricing). Please reference the billing or pricing pages for the most update to date pricing information as these prices may be out of date. 

----

With your subscription you get access to:

All currently existing website features including LIVE data feeds such as the options flow feed which provides data on every options trade across all US exchanges

Access to the subscriber only Discord channels

Unlimited usage of the Unusual Whales Discord bot inside of the Unusual Whales Discord server

Free monthly credits to the Data Shop (monthly subscribers: $15, annual subscribers: $30). Annual subscribers also receive access to daily downloads containing full trade data for the previous 30 days. 

Enhanced mobile application iOS / Google Play

More features and updates are forthcoming. Check out the changelog to see all of the latest platform updates.

While we do not offer a trial period many of our feeds have limited and/or delayed data and a functional filter menu so that you can play around with the website's functionality.

Here's a non-exhaustive list of pages that you can try out:

Options Flow feed (limited and delayed data)

Hottest Contracts (limited data)

Flow Alerts (delayed data)

Open Interest feed (fully functional!)

Contract look up (limited functionality) 

Check out our Youtube channel and Twitch streams and VODs for another look at the platform.

If you have any questions about the subscription please email support@unusualwhales.com .

Unfortunately there is nothing that explicitly states whether a contract in the flow feed was the result of a buy or sell order.

We generally try to use the bid/ask and fill prices of the trades to help us determine a buy or sell but can't do so with total certainty. 

You may be able to use the options flow feed and other supporting information to help you formulate a thesis. An in-depth video on this process can be found our Youtube channel. 

A ‘call option’ is not necessarily bullish, nor is a ‘put option’ necessarily bearish.

For example:

• purchasing a call (buying to open) would be a bullish trade while writing a call (selling to open) would be a bearish trade
• similarly someone writing a put would have a bullish lean, while a trader buying a put would be bearish

The ‘bullish’ and ‘bearish’ logic is as follows:

• a CALL at the ASK = bullish
• a CALL at the BID = bearish
• a PUT at the ASK = bearish
• a PUT at the bid = bullish

Keep in mind that this assumes that the trades are being opened, and also assume that a trade taking place at the ask was bought and a trade taking place at the bid was sold.

Seasonality tracks the historical and current month to month performance of any given stock or ticker. This page can be filtered by month, and whether or not the stock is optionable, as well as various other filter parameters to fine-tune your seasonality feed to your liking.

The ‘side’ of the trade is determined by a few factors:

• the bid/ask of the contract at the time of the trade
• the trade price

Trades taking place at or closer to the NBBO Ask will be labeled ‘ASK’

Trades taking place at or closer to the NBBO Bid will be labeled ‘BID’

Trades taking place at the midpoint will be labeled ‘MID’

The Unusual Whales Flow Feed displays all options flow across multiple exchanges. If an order fills on an option contract, it will show up in this feed whether it involves 10,000 contracts, or just a single order. On the left side of the header for the Feed are the Filters, Settings, and My Trades (this is where you can save the flow you want to track.

On the filters tab, you can narrow down what contracts appear in your Flow Feed, and are able to toggle basic settings like what side of the bid and ask the trade occurred on, the option type (calls, puts), all the way down to fine tuning the premium, size, volume, percentage out of the money, and all the greeks.

The Unusual Whales options flow feed provides real time data on all completed options trades across all US exchanges. 

The information is presented in an easily readable table that can be filtered and customized to the user's liking.

By tracking every transaction Unusual Whales is able to provide a variety of supplemental views and feeds that are all tailored to help retail investors identify potential opportunities in the markets.

As we continue to develop the website we'll look to add a tool-tip to each feed describing its use case.

Flow Feed Columns/Glossary

• Side: The Side refers to which side of the bid/ask spread an order fills on. For example, if the bid/ask spread of a contract is $0.95 and $1.00, and the transaction fills at $0.99, that would be considered “Ask Side.”
• DTE (days to expiration):
  • The DTE for an options contract is the number of days remaining until that contract’s expiration
• SP (Underlying): SP/Underlying refers to the stock price at the time of the options transaction.
• % Out of The Money (OTM):
  • “Out of the money is an expression used to describe an option contract that only contains extrinsic value. Percent (%) OTM refers to how far out of the money that particular contract is. If a stock is trading at $100 per share, the $105 Call contract for that stock would display as “5% OTM”
• IV: Implied Volatility 
• % Change:
  • The ‘percentage change’ in an option’s contract represents the change in the respective contract’s price from the previous close. A contract that closed the previous day at 1.00 that is now trading at 1.50 would have a ‘% Change’ of 50%.
• % Diff:
  • The ‘percentage difference’ is the difference between the stock price and the transacted contract’s strike price. This value can be both positive (out of the money) and negative (in the money).
• % Floor:
  • ‘% Floor’ is the total percentage of volume for a given option’s contract that took place via a Floor Trade.
• % Multi:
  • ‘% Multi’ is the total percentage of volume for a given option’s contract that has been labeled as a ‘multi-leg trade.’ Also see multi-leg.
• % Total Vol:
  • ‘% Total Vol’ is the percentage value of total volume for an overall equity that is being taken up by the respective options contract.

For example if an option’s contract has a ‘% Total Vol’ value of ‘35%’ that means that for every 100 trades for the respective equity 35 of them were for the respective options contract.

• Ask:

The ask price represents the minimum price that a seller is willing to take for that same security.

• Bid:
  • The bid price represents the maximum price that a buyer is willing to pay for that same security.
• Bid-Ask Spread:
  • The bid-ask spread is the difference between the highest price that a buyer is willing to pay for an asset and the lowest price that a seller is willing to accept.
• Buy to Open (BTO)/Buy to Close (BTC):
  • “Buy to open is a term used by brokerages to represent the establishment of a new (opening) long call or put position in options.” “Buy to close is used when a trader is net short an option position and wants to exit that open position.” You can find out more information here: Four Ways Options Transact.
• Dark pool:
  • “A dark pool is a privately organized financial forum or exchange for trading securities. Dark pools allow institutional investors to trade without exposure until after the trade has been executed and reported.”
• .
• In The Money (ITM):
  • “In the money is an expression that refers to an option that possesses intrinsic value. A call option is in the money (ITM) if the market price is above the strike price. A put option is in the money if the market price is below the strike price. An option can also be out of the money (OTM) or at the money (ATM). In-the-money options contracts have higher premiums than other options that are not ITM.”
• Multi-leg:
  • “A multi-leg options order is an order to simultaneously buy and sell options with more than one strike price, expiration date, or sensitivity to the underlying asset’s price. Multi-leg options orders allow traders to carry out a complex options strategy that involves several different options contracts with a single order. Multi-leg options orders save traders time and usually money, as well. Traders will often use multi-leg orders for complex trades where there is greater uncertainty in the trend direction.” “A common multi-leg options order is a straddle, wherein a trader buys both a put and a call at or near the current price.” You can learn more about spotting multi-leg trades in the Flow Feed by watching the YouTube video on shortcut links.
• Open Interest (OI):
  • “Open interest is the total number of outstanding contracts.” OI is not updated during the trading day.
•  
• P/C Ratio:
  • The Put/Call Ratio compares the total number of puts and calls traded. The put-call ratio is calculated by dividing the number of traded put options by the number of traded call options.
•  

<YT:https://www.youtube.com/embed/GHNvlJAm-qU?si=Ka6WDkEBXGk2uExW>

What is the difference between Periscope and the existing greek exposure (GEX)?

Periscope is based on a unique SPX data set, updated every 10 minutes, with verified details simply not available for other securities. This level of clarity allows the positioning and greek exposure in Periscope to far exceed what is possible elsewhere.

Why should I pay extra for Periscope?

Periscope reveals actual Market Maker net positioning and net greek exposure in SPX with updates delivered every 10 minutes. This level of clarity is not possible in most securities and goes beyond the modeling assumptions used elsewhere on Unusual Whales.

If your trading focus does not include S&P 500 products like SPX, SPY, or XSP directly (or significant beta to that index), then Periscope might not be worth the investment.

But if the S&P 500 products themselves and / or indices with a lot of overlap like NDX and QQQ are central to your strategy, then the actionable insight you get through Periscope makes its cost a small investment compared to the edge it provides.

Will a Periscope-type view be made available for tickers besides SPX?

No. The special characteristics of SPX index products makes this kind of data processing and analysis possible, but these characteristics are unique to SPX.

Do lifetime subscribers need to pay for Periscope?

Yes. Many lifetime subscribers understandably expect all-inclusive access to Unusual Whales’ tools, but the exchange-verified Market Maker positioning data is a new endeavor beyond what we even thought possible when we offered lifetime subscriptions.

Since we cannot afford to add Periscope to existing lifetime subscriptions, we made the month-to-month subscription as affordable as possible to ensure you can try it in a low pressure context.

What do the dots represent on the Periscope greek exposure chart?

Each dot represents the value of the greek exposure bar from the last 10-min slice. This allows you to quickly assess how net Market Maker exposures are changing throughout the day.

My Periscope view is broken!

Before you reach out for assistance, remember that the SPX index price is only active and available between 9:30AM and 4:00PM eastern. (This period is frequently referred to as the “cash session”.) Option trading in SPX does occur overnight, but in exceedingly small volume compared to the cash session. This means that the gamma and charm bars are unlikely to change enough to produce a visible difference.

Visit the settings page and under the ‘Account Info’ section you will find a dropdown next to the time zone selector from where you can pick between several date layout options. 

The Open Interest Chain Explorer is where you can go to easily track which options chains or tickers had the most carryover from the prior day’s volume to the current day’s open interest. The first tab, Chain OI Change, tracks the biggest open interest changes by total amount and percentage change on a contract. 

The Ticker OI Change tab shows the same, but is inclusive of all available options chains for each respective ticker. So this page will show which tickers have had the largest change in OI from the previous close.

Interval Flow is another iteration of the Options Flow Tool. In this case, the orders for any given options chain are aggregated over a period of time; you can choose your own time window between 5 minutes, 10 minutes, and 30 minutes. All the filter capabilities of the main Flow Tool are also available on Interval Flow, so you can still fully personalize what types of orders hit your feed.

This position would read: NET 102C 3/08/2024.

Let’s break this down to explain each part: 

The first part, NET, is the stock “ticker”, an identifying abbreviation, for the company Cloudflare Inc. This just tells you what company or stock the contract is for. (For example, the “ticker” for the S&P 500 ETF Trust is SPY).

The second part, 102C, actually has two pieces of information. The 102 refers to the “strike”, or the price the stock price must reach for this contract to be “in the money”. 

The C indicates that this contract is a “Call” (whereas a P would be a “Put”) 

The last part of this contract, 3/08/2024, is the expiration date of the contract. This is exactly what it sounds like; the last date this contract can be transacted, and after which, will cease to exist. 

At the expiration date of a contract (in this case, March 8th, 2024), there are 3 potential circumstances that can happen for a call contract. 

• The contract expires in the money, which means the underlying share price’s value is greater than the strike price, or NET > $102. This gives you the option to exercise the contract and purchase 100 shares of Apple at $190 a share. We’ll talk more on exercising later in this section.
• You can also sell the contract beforehand, and collect money from the sale. Depending on certain circumstances, which we will get to later, this may either be a gain or a loss. This option is the most common for retail traders like us.
• NET shares might be less than $102, which means the contract expires worthless, and is then worth $0. Why does it expire worthless? It simply does not make sense to purchase the shares for more than they are worth. If the stock is not $102 or higher, this contract would expire worthless on the expiration date.

Long puts (puts bought to open) are most similar to shorting stock in a company. When the stock goes down, your put theoretically should go up in value. Long puts have a limited theoretical max gain, as the underlying stock cannot go below $0 per share. However, long puts have the same loss potential of long calls, which is the total value of your initial investment.

Similar to short calls, short puts (puts sold to open) are betting that the price of the underlying does not fall to the strike price of your sold put. Short puts also have a theoretically unlimited downside, with the maximum possible loss being reached if the underlying stock reaches $0 per share. 

Much like with short calls, short puts would give you an obligation to purchase shares at the strike price, in this case, if the value of shares is less than the strike price you sold the option for, you would be on the hook.

A spread is a type of options strategy in which the trader simultaneously buys or writes different options of the same type (call or put) on the same underlying asset, but with different strike prices and/or expiration dates. Not to be confused with the bid ask spread. 

The term spread by itself is quite vague. A spread can be opened via a credit or a debit. In other words: some spreads require a debit to open (a debit spread), whereas other spreads may provide the trader with a credit (a credit spread).

Flow Feed Columns

• Side: The Side refers to which side of the bid/ask spread an order fills on. For example, if the bid/ask spread of a contract is $0.95 and $1.00, and the transaction fills at $0.99, that would be considered “Ask Side.”
• DTE (days to expiration):
  • The DTE for an options contract is the number of days remaining until that contract’s expiration
• SP (Underlying): SP/Underlying refers to the stock price at the time of the options transaction.
• % Out of The Money (OTM):
  • “Out of the money is an expression used to describe an option contract that only contains extrinsic value. Percent (%) OTM refers to how far out of the money that particular contract is. If a stock is trading at $100 per share, the $105 Call contract for that stock would display as “5% OTM”
• IV: Implied Volatility, commonly referred to as IV, is best described as the options market's expectation of a likely move in a security's price over a period of time. 

News and rumors alone are enough to effect the IV of a security and its options. Known events, such as an earnings call or an investor day, also have an effect on IV. 

IV is a forward looking value and is not based on historical activity. 

• Shares Equivalent: The 'size' of the option position if the trader had decided to use shares instead of options to take a position. This does, however, have the caveat that options can and will behave differently as time goes on, the underlying price changes, and as traders are active in those options.
• Sector: The Sector column simply indicates which market sector the underlying stock belongs to; examples include Energy, Basic Materials, Consumer Cyclical, etc.
• Industry: Similar to the Sector column, the Industry column displays which Industry a given stock belongs to. Examples include Advertising Agencies, Airlines, Banks etc.
• Earnings Report: The Earnings Report column indicates how many days until the next projected Earnings Date for the underlying ticker.
• Show Flow Alert: The Show Flow Alert column will display the TYPE of Flow Alert that a transaction triggered. This only applies if a transaction was part of a Flow Alert.
• Trade Code: The Trade Code indicates the execution method of the trade. Examples are AUTO - Trade was executed Electronically; ISOI - Trade was an execution of an order identified as an Intermarket Sweep Order. You can read about all codes in the Trade Code FAQ.
• Exchange: This column refers which exchange the transaction took place on. Examples include CBOE, NYSE, etc. You can learn more about the different exchanges here.
• Flags: This column is where different trade Flags such as Floor Trade, Sweep, Cross Trade, will appear. 
• Tags: The Tags column shows the different identifiers for transactions in your flow feed, such as ASK, BID, ER UPCOMING, etc. All tags can be viewed on the Tags FAQ.
• Greeks: The Greeks columns allows you to toggle whichever of the listed Greeks you'd like to view in real-time within your Flow Feed. You can select from Delta, Theta, Gamma, Vega, Rho, and Theo. You can learn more on the Greeks FAQ.

Short calls, also known as calls sold to open, are betting that the price of the underlying stock stays below the price you sold it for by the expiration of the contract. Short calls have a theoretically unlimited downside, as in, the share price of the underlying can potentially rise far above the price of the sold call. Here’s an example:

Suppose stock XYZ is trading at $23. You forecast a decrease in volatility and a neutral to slightly-decreasing XYZ price.

You sell a $24 Call for $0.50 to express this view. Your breakeven XYZ price at expiry is $24 (strike price) + $0.50 (premium received) = $24.50, but since the time component of your trade plan may not extend all the way to expiration you should be prepared to buy to close at a variety of XYZ prices as the market value of your $24 Call changes.

Because the price of XYZ can increase infinitely in theory, selling a Call without owning shares as collateral or buying a further OTM Call to create a fixed-risk spread carries a high "risk of ruin". This means that an adverse price move, like a surprise earnings beat or buyout that increases price greatly, can cause catastrophic losses.

Vanna is the change of delta with respect to a change in volatility, or a change in delta with a change in volatility. When IV rises, the spread of delta gets wider, and vanna measures that. It is the same for both calls and puts, and changes accordingly.

You can visualize this in the Unusual Whales Vanna and Vanna Exposure tool. Above, we’re set to 3DTE, but you can set this to 0DTE, or any expiration date you’d like. Here, we see that Net Vanna Exposure for $QQQ for the 3/26/2024 is highest at $460. The Net Put and Net Call Vanna Exposure sits at $455; remember, Vanna functions the same for Calls and Puts; only Vanna for calls is positive, and Vanna for puts is negative. 

So, what does this mean?

When Vanna decreases, it’s an indication of how much the Delta of an option contract will shift in response to changes in the Implied Volatility. However, recognizing and interpreting this direct impact of Delta from a drop in Vanna necessitates an understanding of the context; whether IV increases or decreases, and what type of option contract is analyzed (call or put).

In scenarios of escalating implied volatility, a positive Vanna would amplify delta for a call option while diminishing it for a put option. Conversely, a decrease in Vanna (indicating reduced delta sensitivity to implied volatility changes) would result in a less pronounced alteration in delta compared to a scenario where Vanna remained high.

In regards to Delta: Delta spans from 0 to 1 for call contacts, and from -1 to 0 for put contracts. With positive Vanna, heightened implied volatility could bolster delta for calls (nearing 1) and diminish it for puts (nearing -1). Conversely, a decrease in Vanna suggests a dampened delta sensitivity to implied volatility shifts. Consequently, given a similar shift in implied volatility, the change in delta would be less significant.

How can I renew my subscription?

All subscriptions will auto renew by default. You can cancel your subscriptions auto renewal at anytime.

---

How can I cancel my subscription?

You can cancel your subscription at anytime. Your subscription will remain active for the remainder of the paid period.

• To end your subscription’s autorenewal visit the settings page & click “Manage Subscriptions.”
• If you subscribed via Paypal please cancel your subscription via the Paypal website.
• If you purchased a subscription on the mobile application you can cancel your subscription using the side menu.
• If you purchased a Discord bot subscription you can manage your subscription using the bot commands. For server subscriptions use `/server subscription`. For an individual subscription use `/user subscription'.

----

How can I upgrade my subscription?

You can upgrade an existing subscription by visiting the settings page and clicking “Upgrade Plan." The upgrade will be automatically prorated based on the time elapsed since the purchase of your previous subscription. 

If your current subscription was purchased via Paypal please send an email to support@unusualwhales.com

Mobile application subscriptions are currently limited to a monthly period only. 

The Market Tide charting uses the SPY equity price as a proxy for how the market is performing.

The net call and put premium used in the Market Tide chart encompass tickers across the market, beyond that of the SPY ETF holdings.

The SPY Net Flow chart also uses the SPY equity price, but by default the net call and put premium values are ONLY for SPY options. 

A switch has been added to the SPY and QQQ Net Flow charts, allowing you to view the aggregated net call and put premiums for tickers being held by the aforementioned SPY and QQQ ETFs.

To set up a Cash Secured Put, a trader sells (short) an OTM Put at a strike price where you want to buy (long) 100 shares. A trader who wants to buy 100 shares of stock if and only if the stock price decreases to a certain price can short a Put at that price. The trader receives a credit to sell the Put and has the obligation to buy 100 shares at the strike price.

A trader who owns 100 shares of stock may sell (or write) a Covered Call. The trader receives a credit for selling the Call and is obligated to sell those 100 shares at the strike price of the Call. One goal of Covered Calls is to capitalize on downward fluctuations in the share price of a stock you own 100 shares of. Selling Naked calls, or writing calls, without Shares as collateral can have a very high risk of ruin due to the hypothetically infinite upside of call contracts. With Covered Calls, if the trade goes against you, instead of covering and having to buy the contract(s) back, you’ll more likely lose your shares to cover those contracts.

A trader who is short 100 shares of stock may sell (or write) a Covered Put. The trader receives a credit for selling the Put, and is obligated to buy those 100 shares at the strike price of the Put.

There are a few common applications of the Covered Put: 1. Reduce the cost basis of shares 2. Generate a yield from short shares 3. Systematic profit-taking.

A Protective Call is an options strategy wherein a trade is short (or sells short) 100 shares and buys one at the money or out of the money Call contract. The purpose of buying the call contract is to offset upward movement on the shares the trader shorted. As the stock gains money, the trader loses money on their short, but gains money on their Call, thus offsetting losses incurred on the shares.

A Protective Put is an options strategy wherein a trader buys (or already owns) 100 shares and also buys 1 at the money OR out of the money Put (one contract per 100 shares) The purpose of a Protective Put is to offset any losses on the shares from short-term volatile downward movement. The theory is that as the shares lose money on a downward spike or pullback, the protective Put will gain money, thus offsetting losses incurred on the shares.

A trader who wants to speculate on an increase in price with a neutral to small increase in volatility can buy a Call Debit Spread, also known as a bull call spread. To form a Call Debit Spread, The key to a call debit spread is selling a call at a higher strike than you buy a call, all on the same expiration date.

The trader pays a debit for the whole position, called a premium, though this debit is smaller than the debit associated with buying a Call alone. In exchange for this price reduction, a Call Debit Spread gives up the theoretically unlimited profit associated with a Call as the max profit is limited to the width of the spread between the bought Call and the sold Call minus the debit paid.

A Call Credit Spread, also known as a bear call spread, is an options strategy to speculate on neutral to slightly-decreasing stock price with neutral to slightly decreasing volatility. To form a Credit Spread, a trader would sell a call at one strike price, and simultaneously buy a separate call contract of a higher strike price

The trader receives a credit for the whole position, called a premium, though this credit is smaller than the credit associated with selling a Call alone. In exchange for this reduction, the max loss of a Call Credit Spread is limited to the width of the spread plus the credit received.

A Long Strangle is an options strategy in which a trader speculates on a large increase or decrease in stock price, and large increase in volatility. To open a Long Strangle, a trader pays a premium to buy one out of the money put and one out of the money call simultaneously, of the same expiration date but different strikes. The goal of this strategy is to capitalize on a large upward or downward movement on the underlying stock. The max loss on this strategy is the cost of entry; that is, if both contracts purchased go to $0, the max loss is whatever premium was paid to open the position. The max profit is hypothetically infinite, as the Call contract can hypothetically keep rising until it expires as the stock price rises, while the Put contract can only go to $0. 

A Long Straddle is an options strategy in which a trader speculates on an increase in volatility and large increase or decrease in the underlying stock price. A Straddle is similar to a Strangle in that the trader buys both a call and a put; however unlike a Strangle, a Straddle uses the same strike for the contracts. So, if a stock is trading at $100, a trader wanting to open a Straddle would purchase one $100 put contract and one $100 call contract of the same expiration date. The goal of this position is to capitalize on large movements either up, or down, in the underlying stock.

A Collar is an options strategy designed to protect downward fluctuations in the price of owned stock shares. If a trader expects large price drops in the shares they own, they can protect those shares by buying one out of the money put, and selling (or shorting) one out of the money call for every 100 shares owned. As the stock price falls, the value of this position increases as the call contract will lose money, and the put contract will gain money. This sort of position will also drastically limit profit potential on the owned shares, because as the stock price rises, the value of this type of options position will drastically drop. The setup of a Collar is similar to that of a Bearish Risk Reversal.

The Custom Alert Screener is exactly what it sounds like; a dashboard where you can set up and track your very own, customized alerts. You can have your custom screener alert you about anything from Analyst rating changes, FDA updates, insider and politician transactions, or your own stock and options contract filters. All of the alert options have their own set of filters and Unusual Whales provides a number of pre-built custom alerts as well. In this video, Unusual Whales demonstrates how to build your own option alert screener. 

For example, to build out a custom options alert, select Option Contract. The Option Interval option also works if you’re looking to emulate the Interval Flow feed with your custom alert. In the contract alert tab, you’ll first select whether you want to get alerts for all options that meet the criteria, or just for specific filters. You can also set it to only alert contracts from your watchlists. Set it to “All” to include all tickers.

You can also enable push notifications for it to your mobile device via the app. All you have to do is install the app, then head to settings on the browser version, Notifications, then select which alerts you want to ping your mobile!

What are the Greeks?

Options greeks are derivatives of the options prices themselves. In short, they all measure some rate of change, much like taking a derivative in calculus would. 

Be that rate of change of the underlying share price, or rate of change of the option price, or acceleration of the rate of change of time.

There are three levels to greeks, with all being some form of a partial derivative. These three levels in terms of effects are known as first order, second order, and third order, respectively.

What are the first order Greeks?

Delta: Change in option price in relative to underlying stock change in price

Theta: Change in option price over time

Rho: Change in option price relative to interest (risk-free rate)

Vega: Change in option price relative to option Implied Volatility

What is Delta?

Delta is the change in option price relative to a change in the price of the underlying.

Delta ranges from 0 to 1 for long stocks, long calls, and short puts, while it ranges from 0 to -1 for short stocks, long puts, and short calls. 

What is Theta?

Theta can be seen as the decline of the price of an options contract due to passage of time. Theta will eat away at the value of a contract, and increases heavily heading into the expiration.

Theta is a disadvantage for long call and put buyers, but an advantage to short call and put sellers. 

What is Rho?

Rho is known as the effect of an options price relative to a 1% change in the risk-free rate / interest rates.

What is Vega?

Vega is known as the change in an options contract value relative to a 1% change in implied volatility. 

Implied volatility (“IV”) should be thought of as the market’s annualized prediction for the price range of an asset. When IV is lower, the predicted price range is more narrow.

What are the second order Greeks?

Gamma: The rate at which delta changes relative to a $1 move in the underlying price

Vanna: The change in delta relative to a change in volatility

Charm: The rate at which delta changes over time

Vera: The change in rho relative to a change in volatility

Veta: The change in vega relative to passage of time

Vomma: Rate of change of vega relative to change in volatility

What is Gamma?

Gamma is the instantaneous rate of change of delta.

Gamma is the only second order Greek that has a direct response with price movement of the underlying. Oftentimes, you will see gamma lumped together with the other first order Greeks, and this is done so because of gamma’s importance.

Gamma is the same for both call options and put options, with long calls/puts having positive gamma, and short calls/puts having negative gamma.

What is Vanna?

Vanna is the change of delta with respect to a change in volatility, or a change in delta with a change in volatility. When IV rises, the spread of delta gets wider, and vanna measures that. It is the same for both calls and puts, and changes accordingly.

What is Charm?

Charm (also known as “delta decay”) is the decay of delta with the passage of time. ATM delta will always be 50, regardless of how near-term the expiration of the contract is.

What is Vera?

Vera is the change in rho relative to a change in volatility. 

What is Veta?

Veta is the change in vega relative to passage of time.

What is Vomma?

Vomma is the rate of change of vega relative to change in volatility

The Portfolio Tracker documents and tracks the performance of filed trades. All members of Congress can be found here, including Nancy Pelosi, as well as some public figures such as Dave Portnoy. You can search through all portfolios, and save those you wish to follow to your own watch list.

<IMG:https://storage.googleapis.com/uwassets/img/what-is-the-portfolio-feature.mp4

SPOT GAMMA EXPOSURE (GEX) is the assumed $ value of gamma exposure that market makers need to hedge per 1% change of the underlying stock's price movement. A positive value is long gamma while a negative value is short gamma.

Investors and large funds lower risk and protect their money by selling calls and buying puts. Market makers provide the liquidity to facilitate these trades.

GEX assumes that market makers are part of every transaction and that the bulk of their transactions are buying calls and selling puts to investors hedging their portfolios.

If a market maker has one contract open with a gamma value of 0.05, then if the underlying stock price moves by 1%, that market maker is exposed to $[0.05 gamma * (100 shares * 0.01) * stock price * underlying parameter of the greek variable]. The total market maker spot exposure is calculated by summing up the spot exposure of all open contracts determined by the daily open interest (purple) or by volume (yellow).

The Unusual Whales Spot Gamma Exposure GEX Tool allows you to visualize this in real time for any given ticker. 

HOW TO USE THIS TOOL

The use of this tool will be explained using a gamma exposure scenario.

Market makers profit from the bid-ask spreads and as such, they constantly gamma hedge (they buy and sell shares to keep their positions delta neutral).

Long call positions are positive gamma - as the stock price increases and delta rises (approaches 1), market makers hedge by selling shares, and they buy shares if the stock price decreases and delta falls.

Short put positions are negative gamma - as the stock price increases and delta falls (approaches -1), market makers hedge by buying shares, and they sell shares if the stock price decreases and delta rises.

As such, in the event of large positive gamma, volatility is suppressed as market makers will hedge by buying as the stock price decreases and selling as the stock price increases. And in the event of large negative gamma, volatility is amplified as market makers will hedge by buying as the stock price increases and selling as the stock price decreases.

What is the Gamma View?

The Unusual Whales Gamma View is a visualization of gamma, calculated from open interest each morning based on the spot price of the underlying at yesterday’s close, in four unique ways:

1. Daily Gamma Exposure (GEX)
2. Gamma Exposure by Strike
3. Gamma Exposure by Expiry
4. Largest GEX by Strike And Expiry

Daily Gamma Exposure (GEX) pictured above is the sum (meaning all strikes across all expiries) of call gamma and put gamma. On average, realized volatility tends to be lower (price moves less) when this sum is positive and higher (price moves more) when this sum is negative. 

Gamma Exposure by Strike pictured above displays exactly that; which strikes across the sum of expiration dates have the most Gamma Exposure. In the image above, the $MSFT $410 strike has the most Put Gamma (negative), whereas the $425 strike has the most Call Gamma (positive). However, it may not always be the case that the most Net positive or Net negative Gamma falls on the same strike as the most Call or Put gamma; it’s contingent on the sum of Call Gamma (positive gamma) and Put gamma (Negative gamma). 

Gamma Exposure by Expiry pictured above displays which expiration date across all strikes hold the most Gamma Exposure. In the above image, we can see that the expiration date with the most Gamma Exposure for both Puts and Calls across all strikes for $NVDA  is the March 28, 2024 expiration.

Largest GEX By Strike And Expiry pictured above displays, by expiry date (which you can adjust from the dropdown above the chart), the GEX by strike. This chart is updated once per day, in the morning, after OI updates occur.

Recall that gamma is larger in closer-dated expiries than further-dated ones, and note that within the same expiry gamma is largest at the ATM strike and gets smaller in both directions as strikes get further away.

How can you use Largest GEX By Strike And Expiry to make better-informed trading decisions? Consider the Largest GEX By Strike And Expiry chart above from pre-market on Tuesday Mar 19th, 2024. The careful observer can see that the largest Put (negative) GEX bar for this week’s expiration (again, recall that gamma is largest near-term) at the $415 strike, which was slightly OTM based on the MSFT close price of $417.32 on Monday Mar 18th, 2024. Using this same technique, we see that the largest Call (positive) GEX bar for this expiration is at $425.

If the price of MSFT were to trade up into the $425 area or down into the $415 area, we might see a mean reversion-type price reversal. Think about it: we know these are short-dated options, expiring in only a few days, meaning traders have limited time to act on these positions. Consider the speculator buying $415Ps expiring the same week. If MSFT price in this example were to drop from $417.32 and decline closer to $415, the price of those $415Ps would appreciate significantly. 

The speculator might monetize those long $415Ps and collect the profit, which en masse can create buying in $MSFT stock. If price does not keep declining and instead begins to reverse back up, anxious $415P buyers might be inclined to sell to and cash-in modest profits if they fear that this is “the bottom”.

Looking at the one-minute candlestick chart image above for $MSFT on Tuesday Mar 19th, 2024, we can see that price did indeed trade down into the $415 range (low of $415.55) before reversing back up. Our diligent trader drew a rectangle around the $415 area of that chart as a visual reminder of this positioning.

It’s important to note that even if no one monetizes their $415Ps, large negative gamma will result in higher volatility and big bounces because shares are sold on the way down and bought on the way up.

Charm (also known as “delta decay”) is the decay of delta with the passage of time. So, Charm measures how much the delta of an option contract changes over time. ATM delta will always be 50, regardless of how near-term the expiration of the contract is. So while Delta indicates how much the option’s price will change for a $1 change in the underlying stock price, Charm tells us how that Delta changes as time progresses.

Charm can be positive or negative. Positive charm means the delta of the option increases as time passes, while negative charm means the delta decreases over time. It's important to note that charm exposure is influenced by changes in implied volatility. High volatility can amplify charm effects, while low volatility may dampen them.

The Earnings Page houses all upcoming and projected earnings for all stocks. There are two different views for the page; the calendar and list view. The List view displays intraday data for each ticker, the date, current stock price, volume, options volume, and more. It also displays the Implied Move of the stock upon earnings, derived from the implied volatility of options contracts.

You can filter this Earnings List view feed on the left hand side of the page by a number of criteria. The Calendar Page also allows for numerous ways to organize and filter the page.

<video controls width="640"> <source src="https://storage.googleapis.com/uwassets/img/where-can-i-view-upcoming-earnings-gif.mp4" type="video/mp4">  </video>

<IMG:https://storage.googleapis.com/uwassets/img/where-can-i-view-upcoming-earnings-gif.mp4

Let’s start off with what we’re talking about, here. A stock split is when a company increases the number of outstanding shares. Companies perform stock splits for myriad reasons, but one common reason is to boost liquidity in the stock. Another reason is when a stock price has become too high for investors, and a stock split can create accessibility for lower price-per-share entry, with the lower share price appearing more attractive to investors.

On the other hand, stocks can perform a reverse stock split, wherein the company will lower the number of outstanding shares, raising the price-per-share. This generally occurs if a stock is facing the risk of delisting from an exchange. 

A company can face delisting from the NASDAQ if the company trades for 30 consecutive business days below the minimum closing bid requirement, which is typically $1.00. A company may undergo a reverse split in order to meet this minimum bid price requirement.

Let’s map out an example of a stock split here. Walmart $WMT recently performed a 3:1 stock split. Post-split, the owner of 1 share would now have 4 shares when adjusted for the split.

Let’s say the trader in the above picture is you. You own a single $WMT $180C 5/17/2024 contract, and paid $2.40 for it. After the $WMT 3:1 stock split finalizes, the options contract price will adjust by (roughly) the same ratio as the stock; 3:1, and the strike of your contract will also adjust. So post split, you will own 3 contracts of the $WMT $60C 5/17/2024.

The cost of those contracts also adjusts. Just like with the stock split, there's no change to your total equity. So the total premium you spent ($240) remains unchanged. The only change is instead of owning one contract at $2.40, you now own 3 contracts at $0.80 each, assuming all other factors remain equal (such as stock price fluctuation).

General
The Unusual Whales Discord bot is free to add to any server: you can use a variety of slash commands to request a variety of different types of data. Use command /help for a full command listing. 

Much of the functionality of the Discord bot is mirrored on our Twitter bot @markets_bot. Tweet at the bot using any of the provided slash commands and it will reply with your requested dataset. 

Locked information can be unlocked by purchasing an Unusual Whales subscription or by purchasing a standalone subscription to the Discord bot ($3.99 monthly). Unusual Whales subscribers and those who purchase the standalone bot subscription will have unlimited command usage when using the commands in the Unusual Whales Discord server. 

Unlimited command usage for ALL users in your own Discord server can be purchased for $124.99 monthly.