Words the desk uses

The desk prints two kinds of number. One kind is a place in a ranking, produced by Ohey's models. The other kind is a price or a count, copied from the public options market. This page defines both sets of words, in the plainest terms they can carry.

At a glance

• Two families. Ranking words describe Ohey's model output. Options words describe observed market data.
• How to use this page. Find the word, read the sentence, then open the pane that prints it for the full version.
• What no entry does. No definition here says whether a reading is good, bad or worth acting on.
• Key difference. A ranking word compares one name with tonight's other names. An options word restates a price or a count the market already published.

Ranking words

• Rank. A place in tonight's queue of about a thousand names, sorted strongest to weakest. Think of a teacher ordering a class without predicting anyone's score. It is never a price and never a return.
• Chance. How often names read like this one finished the horizon on the signal's side, measured on trading days the model never trained on. Any stock, the coin flip, sits beside it.
• Confidence. High, Medium, Low or no edge. It says how rare a name's slice of the ranking is, not how sure the model feels.
• Signal. The model's side on a name that passes the trade rule. The rule: the top or bottom 5 percent at 45 trading days, or 2 percent at 20. Realized volatility must also be over 25 percent a year. Trade Cards carries a trade for every signal. Confidence High or Medium.
• Outlook. The model's side on a name that misses the trade rule. That slice of the ranking still beat any stock by 2 points or more in 4 of 5 years. A measured edge, but no trade. Confidence Low.
• No edge. That slice of the ranking has done no better than any stock, so the desk names no side.
• Edge. The measured probability minus the any stock figure for the same side. A positive edge is measured strength on that side; it is not itself a probability.
• Model move. The model's expected size of the move over the next 20 trading days, a percent of the close. A size, not a direction and not a target.
• Pullback chance. The model's chance of a fall of 6 percent or more from a peak within the next 20 trading days. Higher is riskier, and it is a chance, not a certainty.
• Vol outlook. The model's signal of realized volatility over the next 20 trading days against the last 20: rising, steady or falling.
• Time frame. One of the three stretches the models score over: 45, 20 and 10 trading days. The 10 day one is context only, since it failed its holdout test.
• Agreement. Whether the 45 and 20 trading day ranks put a name on the same side tonight, and for how many trading days. It is a fact about the readings, not a probability.
• Neutral. A rank from 20 to 80 sits too close to the middle to call a side. It counts toward neither bullish nor bearish.
• Held. A count of trading days behind a signal, not a position. See the Held section below.
• Book. The short list of names the firm publishes each evening, with a side and a reason for each. Trade Cards, the first screen, is where it is read. It places no order.
• Bullish side and bearish side. The two sides of the book. Bullish is names to hold. Bearish is names not to hold, and in the model book that side is a short.
• Model book. Five bullish and five bearish names, equal weight, that the paper record scores. The current model ranks it on its twenty trading day rank from 25 Sep 2026; the earlier model ranked it before that.
• Published example. A real, complete book from a past trading day, shown with its date. It is a record of what was published then, never tonight's names.
• Trading day. One evening's run of the models, which is one trading day. So "one trading day later" means the next trading day.
• Covered names. The names a pane holds data for. The ranking scan covers about a thousand. The nightly options capture covers about 400. A name outside a pane's list is told to you.
• Median filled. Where a measurement the model wanted was missing, a stand-in value is used instead of leaving a hole. Most of what feeds the ranking is filled that way. Treat a rank as a place to start looking, not an answer.

Held

Held counts the trading days in a row a name's signal state has run, tonight included. It prints as "Signal held 7 trading days". A name with no signal prints "No signal for at least 14 trading days".

Held is not a position. Nothing is bought, sold or kept in an account, and the count says nothing about a price. It is also not Hold on Trade Cards, which is the time a structure is held over, such as 45 trading days.

Key difference. Held counts the trading days behind a signal. Hold is the horizon ahead of a trade.

Options words

• IV rank. Where tonight's implied volatility sits in the name's own weekly record, 0 to 100. Near 0 its options are as cheap as they have been; near 100, as rich. Market Scan and Trade Cards split it at 50: 50 or more reads rich, under 50 cheap. A pane that instead prints rich, middle or cheap uses a wider band around the middle; say which pane you mean if the two disagree.
• Implied volatility. What it costs today to trade on a share moving, quoted as a percentage a year. Read it like an insurance quote. It prices the size of a possible move, never the direction.
• Realized vol. How much the shares actually moved over the last 20 trading days, annualized as a percentage a year. It is observed price history, not a model output, and it is what implied volatility is compared against.
• Probability of profit. The option market's own odds that a structure finishes profitable, read off its short strike's delta. It is a market price for risk, never the model's own measured chance. See the Chance entry above for the difference.
• At the money. The strike sitting nearest the current share price. Several panes read their headline figure there.
• Strike. The fixed price written into an option contract. It is the price the holder can buy or sell the shares at, if they use the contract.
• Expiry. The date an option contract runs out. One share has many expiry dates open at once.
• Open interest. How many contracts are still open and have not been closed. Think of it as a stockpile of standing positions, not a record of today's trading.
• Put and call. A call is the right to buy the shares at the strike. A put is the right to sell them at the strike. Every contract has a buyer and a seller on opposite sides.
• Skew. How much more the market charges to protect against a fall than to take part in a rise. It is arithmetic on quoted prices, and it carries no view on direction.
• Gamma. When the share price moves a dollar, an option's own price moves by some amount. Gamma is how fast that amount itself changes as the share price keeps moving.
• Dollar gamma. Gamma stated in dollars, for a one percent move in the share price, summed over the open contracts. Net dollar gamma is calls minus puts, a sign convention that never says who holds the contracts. Total dollar gamma adds both sides. Gamma Map draws it by strike.
• IV crush. The drop in implied volatility once an event such as an earnings report has passed. Option prices carried the size of the move the event might bring, and that unknown is gone. It is a general pattern, not a forecast for any one name.
• Priced range, also called priced move. The size of the move option prices carry out to one expiry date. The up side and the down side are worked out separately and are never added together. Market Scan and Trade Cards average the two legs into one figure and call it priced move. It restates today's quotes and is never a target.
• Term structure. The pattern of implied volatility across expiry dates, one reading per date. Volatility Weather draws it as a curve. Near dates can be priced above far dates, or below.
• Changed hands, also called traded volume. How many contracts changed hands during one trading day. It counts that day's activity, and it is never added to open interest.

Desk words

• Following. The desk holds one name at a time, and every screen that follows the desk shows it. The chip at the top prints it as "Following AAPL".
• Pinned. A Price Chart holding its own name against the desk. It wears a pin mark before its ticker, and clicking into it never moves the desk.
• Sync group. A letter, A to D, on a chart's toolbar. Charts in one group share the visible dates and the crosshair, and nothing else.
• Key difference. Following is the desk's one name. Pinned is one chart's own name, kept for a side by side compare.

Words the desk does not have data for

Terms customers ask about that no pane on this desk shows or builds.

• Max pain. A calculated strike price where option sellers as a group would lose the least money at expiry. The desk does not calculate or show it.
• Vanna. How much an option's delta changes when implied volatility changes. The desk does not calculate or show it.
• Charm. How much an option's delta changes as a day passes. The desk does not calculate or show it.
• A market-wide put/call ratio. One ratio built from every put and call traded across the whole market. The desk only shows a put/call figure for one name at a time, on Strike Table and Options Screener.
• Assignment and early exercise. What happens when an option holder exercises a contract before or at expiry. The desk does not track or show either one.
• The wheel. A recurring plan of selling puts, then selling calls if the shares get assigned. The Ask can teach this as a cycle of two strategy families that fit a name's own readings. See Options strategy families. No pane names or builds the plan itself.
• Covered calls. A plan of selling a call against shares you already hold. The Ask teaches when this family fits a name's own readings. No pane names or builds the plan for you.
• Cash-secured puts. A plan of selling a put backed by cash set aside to buy the shares. The Ask teaches when this family fits a name's own readings. No pane names or builds the plan for you.
• Spreads of any kind. A trade built from two or more option contracts at once, such as a vertical or a calendar. The Ask teaches which of these families fit a name's own readings. See Options strategy families for the whole set. No pane on this desk builds one or picks contracts for you.
• Dealer positioning across the whole market. An estimate of whether market makers are net long or short every option in the market at once. The desk works from one name's own chain, not the whole market, so it publishes no such figure. For one name, Gamma Map's Hedging pressure tab reads the net hedge change per one percent move. It marks the gamma flip strike where that reading changes sign. It names the call wall and the put wall. All of it rests on the stated assumption that open calls are held by hedgers and open puts are sold by them.

Frequently asked questions

Why do two panes use the same word for different things? They do not, and that is the reason this page exists. Where two readings sit close together, the owning pane's guide prints a Key difference line naming both.

Which words are Ohey's own output? Everything under Ranking words. Everything under Options words is copied from public option quotes. Desk words name controls, not readings.

Where is a word this page does not carry? Each pane guide defines its own terms the first time they appear. Open the pane's guide from the assistant, or read The Panes for the full map.

Related panes

• Rank Not Return, the primer behind every ranking word here.
• Reading The Options Suite, the primer behind every options word here.
• Market Scan, where most ranking words are printed.
• Options Snapshot, where most options words are printed.
• What not to do with what you see, the misreadings these words attract.