Filters:
- Greater than or equal to $25,000 premiums.
- Size (of order) over open interest (OI).
- Sorted descending by size of orders.
- Intraday only.
Example 3
Short-dated, single leg, OTM with lower spot prices.
Filters:
- Greater than or equal to $100K prems
- Spot range of up to $1.20
- Ask-side only
- No ETFs, indices, LEAPs, bid-side
- DTE up to 14 days
- OTM only
- Single legs only
Example 4
Largest bets happening but with the largest market cap tickers removed.
Filters:
- Greater than or equal to $100,000 premiums
- No ETFs, indeces, or upcoming dividends
- DTE only up to 60 days out
- TSLA, AMZN, GOOG, GOOGL, and AAPL *removed*
Please note I never look at just "ask side" or just calls, for instance. I think you always need to look at the overall flow to understand the real positions.
It is especially important when trades are happening at mid prices, or if you are anticipating purchases at the bid.
Always open to other examples and suggestions. There are many ways to look at this, and the more we try to explain/work together on figuring out the best ways, the better off we shall all be!
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$ZI - 🌊🔍 Flow Deep Dive per @unusual_whales 📆📈 - No filters on the below post. Highlighted the unusual trade I am going to look into, the 4K and 2.5K contracts on the $70 and $65 strike call options for 21-Jan.
TL;DR: I think they rolled their strike up and bought more.
Click on the ↕ emoji (where my cursor is) to view the trades that came in together (potentially) as a part of a strategy.
That opens up this panel which shows us the relevant trades that came in together.
On the $65C, we can see that the volume on the day was about the size of this order in fact, but the open interest was 3.8K...so we simply cannot know if they were bought or sold to open.
Folks sometimes will look at the @unusual_whales flow and point to some of the tags as being indicators to take an entry, make an exit, or to outright avoid a trade altogether.
For instance, sometimes there are trades that come through marked as "floor". What is a "floor" trade?
Floor traders work on the floor of an exchange.
When a floor trader executes a trade, exclusively for their own account, it must be reported on an exchange by the "floor" tag.
That's it.
Well...
...Except for the fact they might be initiating a trade on behalf of a client for any other reason or with knowledge from said client(s).
But that's hearsay (literally?).
This is a pretty cool video showing off floor traders from a couple of decades ago:
But the Flow shows a lot of call volume coming ahead of the ex-div date!
- You might be seeing market makers that are looking to capture as much of the dividend as possible, who are looking to exercise deep ITM call options.
But why do MMs trade pre-div dates?
- To capture as much of the dividend as possible, two market makers enter into an agreement to trade deep-in-the-money call options back and forth with each other on the day prior to the ex-dividend date.