Getting started with options on this desk

You have never traded an option, and the desk shows several panes about them. This page is the way in.

At a glance

• What an option is. A contract about a share, bought and sold in public.
• What the desk does with it. It copies the public prices once a night and restates them.
• What the desk never does. It never builds a position and never says which contract to trade. Ask it which strategy family fits a name and it teaches the families that fit the readings, as education for every reader.
• What the published books hold. Shares only. The books the firm publishes never include options on a single company.
• Where to start. Options Snapshot, which puts the whole picture for one name on a set of number tiles.
• Key difference. The options panes restate what the market already priced. The ranking panes show what Ohey's own models produced. They are two separate sources and the desk never joins them.

What an option is, in one paragraph

An option is a contract about a share. It gives its holder the right to buy or to sell that share at a fixed price, up to a set date. That fixed price is called the strike. That set date is called the expiry. A call is the right to buy. A put is the right to sell. Options are quoted and traded in public, the same way shares are. The market sets each contract's price, not Ohey. Every figure on these panes is copied from those quotes.

What the desk shows, and what it never shows

• Observed data only. One capture a night, taken after the close, for about 400 widely traded names. Nothing here is live during the day.
• Restated, not judged. The panes count contracts and print prices, and attach no view to either.
• Never a trade. No pane builds, prices or grades any combination of contracts; the panes show single contracts as the market lists them. The Ask teaches the strategy families that fit a name's readings, see Options strategy families.
• Never a recommendation. No pane names a strike to trade or a date to pick. That choice is yours and the desk stays out of it.
• Never held back. This is public market data, so every plan sees the newest capture.

The order to open the panes

Link a name first, by clicking its row on the Market Scan or by typing the ticker in the search box. Then work down this list.

1. Options Snapshot. Open it. One set of number tiles for the whole name. The share price, the movement rate built into option prices, and the counts of contracts already open.
2. Priced Range. Open it. A fan of brackets, one per expiry date. Each arm is the size of an ordinary move that option prices carry for that date.
3. Volatility Weather. One curve, one dot per expiry date. Each dot is what the market charges today for movement out to that date, as a yearly percentage.
4. Strike Table. One row per strike, for one date at a time. The main figure is open interest: how many contracts are still open at that strike.
5. Expiry Ladder. One bar per expiry date. Thickness is how many contracts are open at that date.
6. Gamma Map. For a reader who wants detail. Bar length is a dollar figure worked out from the contracts open at each strike.
7. Changed Hands. Also for the detailed reader. It counts how many contracts traded in one trading day, beside how many were already open.

The four things not to do

• Do not read implied volatility as a forecast. It is a price the market sets today, like an insurance quote. It says what movement costs, not what happens next.
• Do not treat the priced range as a promise. The arms on Priced Range are the size of an ordinary move as priced today. Bigger moves happen and the figure changes every night.
• Do not compare one name's implied volatility with another's. Every company has its own ordinary level. A higher number is not a stronger signal.
• Do not wait for the desk to pick a strike or a date. It never does.

What the desk cannot tell you

The desk restates market prices and contract counts for one name at a time. It shows the volatility built into each option, the priced range the market quotes carry, and how many contracts are open at each strike. Open interest counts contracts, not holders. A pile of open contracts is a fact about positions, not a proven effect on price near any strike. The market sets each price, not Ohey. Every figure here is observed data from the previous close.

Frequently asked questions

Does the desk show a put spread or any other strategy? The panes show single contracts as the market lists them: their strikes, their dates, their prices and how many are open. Ask the desk which strategy family fits a name and it teaches the families that fit the readings, with each one's risk. It builds none of them and picks no strike for anybody. Any combination you go on to make is yours.

Is a high implied volatility good or bad? Neither. It is a price. A high reading means movement costs more to trade on today for that name. The option figures are market data; the desk's view on direction is on the Read-out and in the Ask, labelled.

Which pane should I open first? Options Snapshot. It is the short version of the whole suite on one screen. Open Priced Range second.

Are these live prices? No. They come from one capture taken after the previous close. Nothing on these panes moves during the trading day.

Related panes

• Reading The Options Suite, the shared primer for the words and the rules.
• Options Snapshot, the first stop.
• Priced Range and Volatility Weather, the two pricing reads.
• Strike Table and Expiry Ladder, the two counts.
• What not to do with what you see, the misuse warnings for the whole desk.