Changed Hands

This screen shows how many option contracts traded today, next to how many were already open. It covers one name at a time and the whole covered list. These are counts we observe. Nothing here is a forecast. See Reading The Options Suite for how to read it.

At a glance

• An option contract. It gives someone the right to buy or sell a stock at a set price, up to a set date.
• A call and a put. A call is the right to buy. A put is the right to sell.
• Strike and expiry. The strike is the set price. The expiry is the last date. Those two numbers identify a contract.
• Traded, also called volume. How many contracts changed hands during one trading day. It is a count of that day's activity.
• Open interest. How many contracts are standing open at a capture, counted after the close. Think of it as a stockpile of positions, not a day's trading. The drill table prints the count that stood before the day began.
• Put to call ratio. Puts traded divided by calls traded. Both halves are counts of what traded.
• Why we print both. No sum or subtraction turns traded into open interest. So the two sit side by side as two observed facts. We never merge them into one figure, such as a net opened number. A merged figure would be a claim the data cannot support.
• What a day's trading cannot say. A trade can open a new contract, close an old one, or pass one between holders. The trade record does not say which.
• The next evening check. The following night's open interest is the only honest check on a busy contract. Even then it cannot name buyers or sellers.
• When it is captured. Once a trading day, in the early evening after the close. Nothing here is live, and nothing moves during the trading day.
• What you will not find. No list that labels a count. No word about mood or side. No score. Those are judgments, and this screen prints counts. Key difference: traded = the day's activity. Open interest = positions still standing.

Where the numbers come from

The numbers come from one capture a night. Some columns compare that capture with earlier ones, and each says so.

• The capture. The same nightly option chain capture that feeds the panes counting what is held. It records each covered option's traded volume and its open interest.
• The clock. Once per trading day, in the early evening after the close. Nothing is live and nothing is intraday.
• The date shown. The screen prints its own capture date.
• The coverage line. It names the covered list, the counting floors and the capture time, so none of that is left implied. Two counting floors, and one rule about blanks. Floor one, to be flagged busy. A contract has to clear all three of these.
• Traded today. 200 contracts or more.
• Already open. 100 contracts or more, before the day began.
• Ratio. The day's trading is at least twice the number already open. Floor two, to be checked the next evening. At least 500 traded. A confirmation claim deserves a stronger footing than a listing. The rule about blanks. When the closing quote was not live, the price based figures are left blank, never substituted. A quote is not live when it fails fixed tests at the close, such as no bid, or a bid above the asking price. The counts still print, because they were observed.

The columns

Every column on the screen, in one place. The by strike and by expiry drill for the linked name. "OI" is short for open interest.

The confirmations table, yesterday's busy contracts in the next evening's open interest.

The cross name board. Every covered name, counting only contracts that expire tomorrow or later. Contracts expiring today are left out, for the reason given below.

The next evening check

A contract that traded heavily today traded above the floors: heavy volume against the positions already open. What that volume means is unconfirmed until the next trading day. The volume on its own cannot say whether positions were opened, closed, or passed between holders. The next evening's capture is the only honest check.

• Open interest rose. More contracts were opened than were closed.
• Open interest fell. The reverse: more were closed than opened.
• It barely moved. Heavy opening and heavy closing may have cancelled out exactly. The trade record will never say. A rise in open interest cannot tell you who bought and who sold. Every contract has a buyer and a seller. So five thousand more open contracts means five thousand more buyer and seller pairs. It does not say which side started the trade, or which side wanted it. The confirmations table states what was observed, in the past tense, and stops there.

What "busier than 14 of 20" means

It compares a name only against its own recent record.

• The comparison. Tonight's traded count against that same name's last 20 captured trading days, at most.
• How it is printed. As a count with the denominator visible, such as "busier than 14 of the last 20 captured trading days".
• What it is never. Never a bare percentage, never a percentile, never a comparison against other names. How much a name normally trades is a property of that name. So ranking names against each other would mostly measure which ones are large. The trading days counted are captures that actually exist. A holiday or a missed capture narrows the denominator. It is never quietly padded. With fewer than 20 trading days, the screen says how many it has. With no history at all, it says the count begins with tonight's build instead of printing a zero. The screen will sort by the put to call ratio if you ask it to. It highlights nothing, and it labels no reading.

The estimated dollar figure

The board's dollar column is time value traded, estimated at the closing midpoint. The midpoint is the halfway point between the closing buy and sell prices. The column is deliberately not called premium traded.

• Intrinsic value. What an option would be worth if exercised right now. A deep in the money option's price is mostly this.
• Time value. The rest of the price, the part above intrinsic value. It is what the day's trading paid for uncertainty.
• Why not premium traded. Multiplying a big traded count by a mostly intrinsic price gives an enormous dollar figure that says almost nothing.
• Why the plain total misleads. On a typical trading day, about seventy percent of a straight price times volume total comes from deep in the money contracts.
• What we print instead. The traded count times the time value only, taken at the end of day midpoint.
• How exact it is. It is an approximation, labelled an estimate on the screen. Where the closing quote was not live, it is left blank, never guessed.

What this screen will never show, and why

• No "unusual" list. Calling a count unusual puts a judgment inside a measurement. This screen states a count against the same name's own record, with the denominator visible. Whether that is remarkable is your reading to make.
• No side, no sentiment, no intent. Words like bullish, bearish, smart money, aggressive, sweep or bought to open claim to know who pushed a trade and why. A daily total cannot show that. The mix of opening, closing and passing between holders cannot be seen. So this screen will never print a side, a sentiment or a score. The permanent note on the screen says the same.
• No live feed. Everything here is captured after the close, once a trading day. Services that sell a streaming feed are selling speed. This desk does not have it and will not claim it.
• No same day expiry rows. About a third of all contracts traded on a normal trading day expire that same day. We leave them out. They can never show up in the next evening's open interest, so nothing can confirm their trading. Comparing their volume with the open interest means nothing either. They appear in one place only: the footer sentence naming their share of the day. So the exclusion is stated, not silent.
• No made up history. Where a prior capture does not exist, the screen says so. A blank with a reason is a fact. A zero would be a lie.

Frequently asked questions

Can I add traded volume and open interest together? No. One counts a day's activity, the other counts standing positions. No arithmetic turns one into the other, so they are printed side by side. Does heavy trading mean people were buying? No. A trade can open a contract, close one, or pass one between holders. The trade record does not say which, and this screen will not guess. What does the next evening check actually prove? Only whether the total of standing contracts rose or fell. It cannot name buyers or sellers, because every contract has one of each. Why is a figure blank? A figure is blank when we could not observe it.

• The closing quote was not live. The price based figures go blank.
• There is no prior capture for that contract. The overnight change goes blank.
• Too few contracts traded for that column. Its figure goes blank. We leave it blank and say why, instead of printing a zero. Is any of this live during the trading day? No. It is captured once a day, in the early evening after the close. Nothing on the screen moves while the market is open. Where are the contracts that expire today? They are left out of the tables. They can never reach the next evening's open interest, so nothing can confirm their trading. The footer names their share of the day. Is the dollar column what people spent on options? No. It is an estimate of the time value that changed hands, at the end of day midpoint. It leaves out intrinsic value on purpose.

Related panes

• Reading The Options Suite is the shared primer. It covers the vocabulary and the rules every options pane follows.
• Positioning Replay is the other side of the same rule: open interest played back trading day by trading day, one frame per close.
• Options Screener puts every covered name's options in one sortable table.
• Since Yesterday shows overnight changes in the counts of what is held, level by level.
• The Panes is the full map of all thirty-nine panes, grouped by workspace.