Trading Options Steam

 

 

Options Steam

 

When we think about who really moves the stock market day in and day out its the Big Banks, Hedge Funds, and Institutional money.  Our job as retail traders if to find clues like a detective of what the big guys are doing and follow them.  We cannot move the markets on our own.  Let's talk a little bit about Options Steam.

 

Options Steam is just a fancy way of saying options order flow or the Purchase or Sale of options on a particular stock or index. When a big position is taken in a stock through options we start to get interested.  We would be really interested if the big position was taken in the near term which could potentially mean the stock could move very soon.  Here is some steam from today:

 

Alert: YHOO May16 35.0 Puts Sweep: 1498 @ ASK $1.14: 1539 traded vs 2243 OI: Earnings 4/19 $37.19 Ref (This is a $170,000 bet for a sell off to 33.86 by May16 Exp)

Alert: YELP May16 15.0 Puts: 500 @ Above Ask! $0.45: 2700 traded vs 3197 OI: Earnings 5/4 $20.17 Ref (This is a $121,500 bet for a sell off to 14.55 by May16 Exp)
Alert: DAL Fri 4/8 48.5 Calls (Wkly) Sweep: 1332 @ ASK $0.55: 1681 traded vs 613 OI: Earnings 4/20 $48.23 (This is a $73,260 bet for a move up to 49.05 by FRIDAY!)
Alert: FEYE May16 21.0 Calls Sweep: 803 @ ASK $0.67: 803 traded vs 744 OI: Earnings 5/5 $17.88 Ref (This is a $53,801 bet for a move up to 21.67 by May16 Exp)

Note: Ref is where the stock was trading at the time of the purchase.

 

As you can see some big bets are coming in on both sides of the market for individual stocks by "The Big Guys"