Reading one ticker's flow
The Pulse and the Whales board describe the market. Most decisions are about one stock, and for that the app has a page per ticker: the flow stream for that name beside its price chart, its analyst ratings, a snapshot of its valuation and profitability, and for Realtime subscribers the FundSpec model reads. This guide is about reading that page as a whole, so that a print is judged in the context of the stock rather than on its own.
Getting there
Any ticker on the tape, on the Pulse or on the Whales board opens its page with a tap. The Search screen finds any US stock or ETF by ticker or company name. On the web, the address is the ticker after the domain, so a link to a ticker's flow can be shared or bookmarked.
The quote and the chart
The page opens on the live quote, session aware, so before the open and after the close it shows the extended hours print beside the regular session close rather than blending the two. The price chart runs from one day to one year. Read the chart before the flow, because the same print means different things at different points on it: a large call purchase after a month of decline is a call for a turn, while the same purchase after a month of gains is a call for more of the same, and those are different levels of conviction.
The Options Activity tab
The Options Activity tab is the ticker's own unusual flow stream, every print the feed has reported in the name, with the same premium, sentiment colour, sweep tag and conviction tier as the main tape, and the same detail sheet. Read it as a sequence rather than as a list.
Look for agreement. Five bullish prints across three expiries over a morning are a pattern; one whale print with nothing around it is an event. Patterns carry more information than events, because a pattern required several decisions.
Look for the other side. A large call purchase in a name where the rest of the day's flow is put buying is contested, and contested flow around a known date often means the market is positioned for a large move rather than for a direction.
Look at the expiries. Flow clustered in one expiry points at a date, and the date is usually on the calendar: an earnings report, a product event, a court ruling. Flow spread across expiries is a view about the stock rather than about a day.
Analyst ratings and the price target
The page shows the count of analyst ratings from strong buy to strong sell and the average price target. The useful question is where the target sits relative to the price and to the strikes the flow is buying. Calls bought at a strike above the average target are a bet that the analysts are too cautious. Puts bought at a strike far below the price in a stock analysts rate a strong buy are either protection or a strong disagreement, and the execution helps decide which.
Valuation and profitability
The company snapshot shows the valuation multiples (forward and trailing price to earnings, price to sales, price to book, enterprise value to EBITDA), technical levels and the profitability figures (revenue per share, margins, return on equity and on assets). This is context, not signal. It answers the question of what kind of company the flow is betting on. A whale call print in a stock trading at eighty times earnings is a bet on growth continuing; the same print at eight times is a bet on a re rating. The snapshot tells you which kind of bet you are looking at.
FundSpec intel
Realtime subscribers see four more reads on the page, computed nightly by the FundSpec models: the momentum read, which describes the stock's recent trend as bullish, bearish or neutral with a confidence; the relative value rating against its industry; and sector and industry fair value estimates. Each is described on fundspec.ai with its method and its limits. The interesting cases are the disagreements. Bullish flow in a stock the momentum read calls bearish is either early or wrong, and the chart usually settles which within a few sessions.
Sharing the page
The share button turns the page into a link or an image. The link opens the same ticker page in the app for anyone who has it and in the web app for anyone who does not, so a stock's flow can be sent to someone and read the way you read it.
The order to read it in
Chart, then flow, then expiries, then the rest. What has the stock done; what did the unusual money do about it; when does the money expect to be right; and what kind of company is it betting on. A print read in that order is a print you understand. A print read on its own is a number.
Put this to work in the Options Sentiment Screener web app. The same screen is in the iOS and Android apps.
Search a ticker