How to set Custom Alerts on Interval Flow for Improved Flow Feed Filtering
Author’s note: I am purposefully underselling this article title, because after we work through this example together my belief is that you won’t just think of Interval Flow as a novelty – you will be rushing to convert your tried-and-true Flow Feed filters into Interval Flow filters… I know I am.
We have a lot of experience with our trusty 500K OTM Call Buyer filter in the Flow Feed tool – and if you have not built it yet, you can follow this written guide:
https://unusualwhales.com/information/how-to-filter-the-flow-feed-part-1
Or follow this sub-12 minute video on Youtube:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-OlXAq0XPzo
Let’s implement these same filtering criteria using Interval Flow via the Custom Alerts tool, which will allow us to add notifications via the web platform and mobile app. (Yes you read that right, PUSH NOTIFICATIONS – the app will alert you, no need to manually check.)
A quick summary of the criteria:
- OTM Call buyers
- Opening trade
- Single name equities only (no ETFs, no indexes)
- Desk spent at least $500K to initiate the position
- All bought in the same order or filled across many orders on many exchanges
- Contracts expire at least 2 weeks but at most 6 months from now
In brief, Interval Flow functions a lot like the Flow Feed you know and love but it adds a time window of 5 minutes, 10 minutes, or 30 minutes as of this writing. This slick functionality allows you to catch trades that otherwise match your criteria but were executed in a few blocks 20-30 seconds apart for example. Like the Flow Feed, but more comprehensive.
Navigate to https://unusualwhales.com/custom-alerts to get started
First, click “Interval alert” under the “Options” header, then click “All” in the next column like this:
We need to give this Custom Alert a name, so to keep everything clear in our mind we will call it “500K OTM Call Buyer Custom Alert”:
And as I mentioned in the intro, Interval Flow hinges on a specified time interval so let’s start with 5 minutes like so:
And with that, all Interval Flow-specific requirements have been satisfied – that’s it! All we need to do now is execute on the original criteria, so let’s scroll down to the “Type” field and select “call”:
Since we want to focus on Call buyers, we want to make sure the majority of the trade is Ask-side and single-leg, so we will set the Ask % minimum bar to 80% and the Multi-leg Volume % maximum bar to 20% like this:
Now we need OTM opening trades only, so scroll down a bit more and toggle on both the “Is OTM” and “Interval Opening Flow” switches:
We only want to see single name equities, so let’s scroll up to the “Issue Types” field and pick BOTH “Common Stock” and “ADR” from dropdown:
Only a few left to go! The next criteria is a minimum premium of $500K, so let’s scroll up and enter 500000 into the “Min” column for “Premium” like this:
Thanks to the design of Interval Flow, the next criteria, all bought in the same order or filled across many orders on many exchanges, is already accomplished intrinsically. Since Interval Flow is examining rolling time windows, single orders and many orders alike will be caught in the 5-min window, so let’s move right on to our final criteria.
We want to see contracts that are expiring anywhere between 2 weeks and 6 months from now, and you will recall that the cadence of option expiries in single name equities allows us to achieve this by setting the minimum Days To Expiry to 6 and the maximum Days To Expiry to 183, like this:
To finalize this Custom Alert based on Interval Flow, we scroll back down and click the blue “Create Alert” button:
You will get a little green banner with a checkbox letting you know “Alert created: 500K OTM Call Buyer Custom Alert”. Well done!
Now if the market happens to be closed, fear not – your Custom Alert is working just fine, pinkie promise – Custom Alerts only work on a forward basis, and this criteria is fairly stringent, so there might only be a few qualifying trades per day.
Let’s enable push notifications for Custom Alerts on the mobile app. (You DO have the Unusual Whales app for iPhone / Android, right?)
Scroll to the bottom of the Custom Alerts page and click the small silver “Alert Settings” icon (which looks like a gear) then toggle on “Mobile Alerts”:
And with that, your Unusual Whales mobile app will now notify you when this Interval Flow condition occurs!
The Alert Feed section at the bottom of the https://unusualwhales.com/custom-alerts page offers more than just the Alert Settings though – here you can see a concise list of the contracts that triggered these Interval Flow conditions as well as any other Custom Alerts you have configured.
Click the gold “Filters” icon to see all the filtering options you have, from only displaying today’s alerts to isolating specific Custom Alerts:
That sums it up for this how-to guide, now it’s your turn – do you have a unique filter or streamlined workflow? Share it in the Discord!
You can learn about enabling Push Notifications for your custom alerts in this article
And you can see another example of Interval Flow filters in this article