Where to look for what

Some readings sit on the desk under a different name than the one a person searches for. This page is a short finder: the word on the left, the screen and the tab on the right.

At a glance

• How to use this page. Find the phrase closest to what you asked, then open the screen it names. Every entry says what the reading shows and what it does not claim.
• Where these readings live. Mostly the options suite and the Price Chart, built from last night's option chain and five years of daily bars.
• What none of them do. Promise where a price stops or turns. Every reading here is a nightly count or a priced quote, not a forecast.

Key difference. A word like hedging pressure or support names a real reading on the desk. It still is not a promise about where the price goes next.

Hedging pressure and dealer positioning

Open the Gamma Map and choose the Hedging pressure tab. It shows the net hedge change per one percent move in the share price, in dollars and in share equivalents, calls minus puts. The figure assumes the open calls are held by hedgers and the open puts are sold by them. It is a nightly reading from last night's option chain. It never promises a price stops there. The same tab marks the gamma flip strike, or strikes, and the call wall and put wall, the largest strikes each way. Strike Table carries the full nightly count behind the same figures.

Support and resistance and levels

Open the Price Chart and turn on the Swing levels reading, or the Pivots reading, from the indicator picker. Swing levels draws confirmed swing pivots, prices the chart has already turned near more than once. Pivots draws the classic, Fibonacci, Camarilla, Woodie or DeMark levels worked out from the prior period's high, low and close. Both are arithmetic on past bars, computed once a trading day, and neither promises the price stops or turns at the line it draws. The Gamma Map's call wall and put wall are the options based levels alongside them.

The implied move by expiry

Open Priced Range and read the table under the fan. It lists the move option prices carry to every captured expiry date, one ordinary move each way, as priced at last night's close. Some call this the expected move or the one standard deviation move. It restates today's option quotes, not a forecast, and a bigger move than the one priced can still happen.

Playing the chain forward to a date

Every options pane that shows the chain carries a Play forward strip under its tabs. It moves every such pane to one later date, and each pane states its answer in one line.

• Where the walls sit after an expiry. Gamma Map, any tab. Step to the expiry to see the call wall, put wall and gamma flip once it has gone.
• How much open interest disappears on a date. Expiry Ladder. The line states the share still open.
• Pin risk around a big expiry. The Gamma Map and the Expiry Ladder, one step before the expiry and one step after it.
• The range the market prices by an exit date. Priced Range, the marker on the fan.
• How fast a position decays. Strike Table, the Call value and Put value columns, today and at the date.
• Whether a calendar spread is priced in its favour. Volatility Smile or Volatility Surface, the forward volatility line. Every figure holds today's positions and prices still. It is not a forecast, and open interest changes every day.

Is volatility high or low for this name

Open Volatility History. It places today's implied volatility reading against sixteen years of that name's own weekly history, plus a daily tail. It reads "higher than N percent of weekly readings since" a given year. The reading is last night's option chain measured against its own past. It says nothing about which way the share price moves next. The Options Screener carries the same reading as a column, IV vs own history. It ranks every covered name on the same measure at once. Volatility History's second view, the Implied vs realized tab, states whether option prices carry more or less movement than the shares have actually shown.

What traded today, the options flow

Open Changed Hands for what traded in the name's options today, set against the open contracts that stood before the trading day began. Open Since Yesterday for what changed in the census overnight, one name or the whole universe. Both are counted once after the close and never claim who was on either side of a trade.

Trade Cards: probability, outlook, themes and the study

Trade Cards is the first screen, and it answers most of what a person asks for by name.

• A name's probability, and its outlook. Every ranked row carries an outlook. A row with no signal still states one. The probability always prints beside any stock, the matched base rate: the desk never states one without the other.
• Why a name shows no signal. It cleared neither the 45 nor the 20 trading day gate, or its own volatility sat under the cut.
• Iron condor, long straddle. The Trade tab's own pick, by IV rank alone, on a row with no side to take.
• Themes, and their categories. Ten named watch lists inside the Leaders tab, each by line of business. A theme holds named category slots; a slot usually names one ticker, sometimes two, sometimes none yet. Ask which category a name sits in, or what a category holds.
• A screen inside a category. Ask which names in a category are cheap on IV, or carry the biggest priced move, the most options volume, or a bearish signal. The answer comes from the rows Trade Cards prints, with their date. A category the desk does not hold gets the list of the ten it does.
• Forward play. A date cursor spreading across the options suite: a captured trade's value worked out on a date ahead.
• The prior trading day. The header names three separate dates and states why they differ.
• The trade study. The Trade tab's Study door, the desk's own tool for one structure.

Why a name has no signal

A name carries a signal only when both of these hold:

• Its rank is at the edge. The top or bottom 5 percent of the ranking at 45 trading days, or the top 2 percent at 20 trading days.
• The shares move enough. Realized volatility over 25 percent a year.

A name that misses either shows "no signal" on the Market Scan. It still carries a measured outlook, the chance its own 5 percent slice of the ranking finished on each side, with any stock beside it.

Key difference. No signal is not a bearish view. It means the name sits where the model's measured edge is small.

How long a signal has held, and why there is no steady word

Two different words share a root, and they are not the same reading. "Hold" on Trade Cards is the horizon a structure is held over, stated once, such as "45 trading days, about two months". "Held" on the Watchlist and the other model windows is different: how many trading days in a row tonight's signal state has run. It prints as "Signal held 7 trading days", or "No signal for at least 14 trading days". Asked how long a name's signal has held, the answer is this second count, not the holding horizon.

There is no steady, drifting or rock steady word any more. That word measured how much a name's rank had moved lately, and it was never checked against what happened next. Checked against sixteen months of real trading days, it read backwards about as often as it read right. A trading day count is a fact the desk measured; the retired word was not.

The Market Scan's signal map, and its new columns

Open Market Scan for every ranked name in one table. A signal map sits above it: rank at 45 trading days across, IV rank or priced move up, sized by options volume. Ask which names carry the highest IV rank, the largest pullback risk, or a rising volatility outlook. The answer comes from this table.

• Pullback risk. The model's own chance, in 100, of a fall of 6 percent or more from a peak over the next 20 trading days.
• Volatility outlook. Rising, falling or steady: whether the model reads the next 20 trading days as calmer or busier than the last 20.
• A category's treemap and scatter. Trade Cards' Leaders tab draws its boards and its themes two ways. A Map is a treemap, sized by options volume. A Scatter plots IV rank against the priced move to the nearest 30 day expiry. Both are the same rows the Lists view prints as a table.

Earnings and the move priced for the report

Open Earnings Radar for when a name reports. It also states the priced move for that report, as a percent of the share price, and the name's own IV rank beside it. Ask about a name's earnings move, and this is where it comes from.

The whole options picture for one name

Open Options Snapshot for the one name census in plain numbers: price, implied volatility, priced range and open contracts. The Options Screener carries the same figures for every covered name in one sortable table.

Which strategy fits a name

The Ask names which option strategy families fit a name's own readings. Options strategy families walks eighteen strategy shapes against eight readings.

• Side and horizon. Trade Cards and the Rank Check layout.
• IV vs own history. The Options Screener column, and Volatility History.
• Implied against realized. Volatility History's second tab.
• The priced move by expiry. Priced Range, the table under the fan.
• Skew. Volatility Smile, the 90/110 reading.
• Term structure. Volatility Weather, and the term slope column.
• The next report date. Earnings Radar.
• Delta per strike. Strike Table.

Related panes

• Options strategy families walks the strategy shapes and which of these readings argue for each one.
• Reading The Options Suite is the shared primer. It covers the vocabulary and what the data covers, and the compliance rules every options pane follows.
• Gamma Map carries the Hedging pressure tab, the gamma flip and the call and put walls.
• Strike Table is the full nightly count of open interest and gamma, strike by strike and expiry by expiry.
• Priced Range carries the move option prices set for each captured expiry.
• Price Chart carries the swing level and pivot point readings.
• Volatility History places today's implied volatility against the name's own past.
• Changed Hands and Since Yesterday carry what traded and what changed overnight.