Options flow glossary

Options Sentiment Screener, 28 September 2026

The terms used on the tape, the Pulse and the Whales board, defined in the sense the app uses them. Where a term has a broader meaning in the options market, the definition here is the narrower one that applies to the screen.

Contract basics

Call. A contract giving its holder the right to buy one hundred shares of the underlying stock at the strike price until the expiry. Its holder profits if the stock rises above the strike by more than the premium paid.

Put. A contract giving its holder the right to sell one hundred shares at the strike until the expiry. Its holder profits if the stock falls below the strike by more than the premium paid.

Strike. The price at which the contract can be exercised.

Expiry. The date the contract stops trading and is exercised or expires worthless. Weekly, monthly and, in the largest names, daily expiries exist.

0DTE. Zero days to expiration: a contract expiring at the close of the current session. The 0DTE chip isolates such prints; the 0DTE week rule keeps a screener on the current week's expiries.

Open interest. The number of contracts outstanding in a strike and expiry at the start of the day, updated overnight by the exchanges.

Volume. The number of contracts traded in a strike and expiry so far in the session.

The print

Print. One executed trade, reported with its contract, size, price, the bid and ask at the time and its execution. Each row on the tape is one print.

Unusual print. A print that stood out from the contract's normal activity by size, premium or execution. The tape shows unusual prints only; it is not total market volume.

Size. The number of contracts in the print.

Premium. The money behind the print: size multiplied by the option price multiplied by one hundred. Printed large on every row and used to sort and sum everywhere in the app.

Bid and ask. The best price a buyer was offering and the best price a seller was asking at the moment the print executed. The ask is also called the offer.

Spread. The difference between the bid and the ask. A print's position in the spread is shown on the detail sheet.

Midpoint. The price halfway between the bid and the ask.

Execution

Execution. Where the trade price sat relative to the quote: above ask, at ask, at midpoint, at bid or below bid. Used to infer sentiment and scored for conviction.

Aggressor. The side that initiated the trade by crossing the spread. A buyer who lifts the offer is the aggressor; so is a seller who hits the bid. The aggressor distance measures how far past the midpoint the trade printed.

Sweep. An order split across several exchanges to fill immediately at whatever prices are available. Tagged SWEEP on the tape, isolated by the Sweeps chip and the trade type filter, and worth fifteen conviction points.

Block. A large order negotiated and printed at a single venue, often inside the spread. On the tape, a large print without the sweep tag.

Above ask, below bid. The most aggressive executions: paying more than the offer, or accepting less than the bid.

Sentiment and scoring

Sentiment. The app's inference of which way a print leans, Bullish, Bearish or Neutral, from the option type and the execution. Drives the row colour, the chips and the Pulse sums.

Bullish premium, bearish premium. The money behind prints inferred bullish and bearish respectively.

Net premium. Bullish premium minus bearish premium over the session's tracked prints.

Tracked premium. The total premium behind every unusual print tracked in the session.

Put call ratio. Put premium divided by call premium over the tracked prints. Weighted by money, not by contract count.

Sweep share. The percentage of tracked prints executed as sweeps.

Conviction score. A 0 to 100 score summing premium (up to 40), size against open interest (up to 20), sweep execution (15), execution side (up to 15), aggressor distance (up to 10) and repeat flow (up to 10).

Notable, High Conviction, Whale. The conviction tiers: 40 or more, 60 or more, 80 or more. A print with a million dollars or more of premium is a Whale regardless of score.

Size over OI. A print whose size exceeds the contract's open interest, which cannot be a position closing and is therefore new. A chip on the tape and a rule in the screener builder.

Repeat flow. Further unusual prints in a contract that has already seen one in the session.

The app

Pulse. The opening screen, summing the session's tracked prints.

Flow. The live tape of unusual prints, with quick chips and saved screener tabs.

Whales board. The largest premium prints of the session and of the trailing seven days, ranked.

Screener. A saved set of filters that becomes a tab on the tape and, for Realtime subscribers, a source of push alerts.

Whale of the day. The session's single largest print by premium, shown on the Pulse.

Delayed, Realtime. The free app shows prints twenty minutes after they execute. Realtime removes the delay and refreshes as often as every ten seconds.

FundSpec intel. The momentum, relative value and fair value reads shown on ticker pages for Realtime subscribers, computed by the FundSpec models and described on fundspec.ai.