Now the payoff: our data tools track unusual options activity - the footprints big institutional traders leave behind. With the basics under your belt, here's the vocabulary you'll see on the Smart Money Flow page and what each term actually means.
Every options trade is logged. Flow is that stream of trades; unusual flow is activity that stands out - unusually large, aggressive, or out of step with a contract's normal volume. It can hint that someone with conviction (and capital) is positioning ahead of a move. It's a clue, never a guarantee - you can't see why the trade was made, or whether it's a hedge.
Flow Alerts are individual options trades large or unusual enough to stand out, on a single stock. These are the "smart money" prints people watch, because a big, decisive options bet often reflects a strong conviction.
Premium is the total dollars spent on the trade. Size is how many contracts changed hands. OI (open interest) is how many contracts of that exact option already existed. When size is large relative to OI, the trade is likely opening a fresh position rather than closing an old one, which tends to be the more meaningful signal.
A green CALL is a bet the stock rises; a red PUT is a bet it falls. One alert is just one trade, not a recommendation, so it is the pattern across many that tells a story.
The Flags column tags each print with how it was executed, so you can tell at a glance what kind of trade you are looking at. Use the filter chips above the table to show only the type you care about.
Sweep - a single order filled immediately across multiple exchanges at once. Sweeps signal urgency: the buyer wanted in now and took every available offer rather than waiting for a better price. Often read as aggressive, conviction-driven flow.
Block - one large single print rather than many small fills. Blocks are typically institutional-sized orders, often negotiated privately and printed in one go. (The data feed has no dedicated "block" flag, so we mark a print as a block when it is a large single-leg trade made of very few transactions.)
Floor - a trade negotiated on the physical exchange floor by a broker, rather than routed electronically. Floor trades frequently come from large or institutional participants and are watched as "smart money" prints.
Opening - today's traded volume was greater than the contract's existing open interest (vol > OI), which is strong evidence the trade is opening fresh positions rather than closing old ones. Opening flow tends to carry more signal, because someone is putting on new risk, not unwinding existing risk.
Multi - the print is one leg of a multi-leg options strategy (such as a spread), so it should be read as part of a combined position rather than a standalone directional bet.
DTE is how many days were left until the option expired at the time the trade printed. We calculate it from the trade's own date to the contract's expiration date, so it reflects what the trader was actually looking at.
0DTE means the option expired the same day it traded - the fastest, highest-risk, highest-leverage bet, very common on index names like SPY, QQQ and SPX. 1DTE expires the next day. Larger numbers (e.g. 30DTE, 94DTE) are longer-dated positions giving the trade more time to work.
Short-DTE flow tends to be a bet on an immediate move; longer-DTE flow is more of a positioning or hedging play. Click the DTE column header to sort, for example to surface all the 0DTE prints at once.
Put / Call Skew compares how many options dollars are flowing into puts (downside bets / hedges) versus calls (upside bets) across the whole market this session. It is shown as a ratio of put premium to call premium.
A reading above 1.0 means more money is going into puts than calls - a defensive, more bearish lean (we label it "put-heavy"). Below 1.0 means calls are winning the dollars - a more bullish lean ("call-heavy"). Around 1.0 is balanced. We color it red when put-heavy and green when call-heavy to match the rest of the page.
This is a premium skew (where the money is), not an implied-volatility skew. It is a quick read on session-wide sentiment, not a recommendation, and it shifts through the day as flow comes in.
Market Tide tracks where options money is going across the whole market today. It separates the dollars chasing calls (bets the market goes up) from the dollars chasing puts (bets it goes down).
For each line we take the money spent buying aggressively (at the ask) and subtract the money spent selling (at the bid). A positive number means traders are leaning in; a negative number means they are backing off.
The gap between the two lines is the signal. If they move together, bulls and bears are roughly matched. If they pull apart, sentiment is tilting: rising calls or falling puts is increasingly bullish; falling calls or rising puts is increasingly bearish.
The volume bars below do the same math with contract counts instead of dollars. Premium and volume are best read together, since a few expensive contracts can move premium without much volume behind them.
Top Net Impact ranks individual stocks by how much net options money is flowing into them today, drawn from the same alert data as Flow Alerts but rolled up per ticker.
For each stock we add up call premium (bullish bets) and subtract put premium (bearish bets). A green bar to the right means traders are net-bullish on that name; a red bar to the left means net-bearish. The longer the bar, the bigger the lean.
It is a quick way to see which specific stocks the options market is most fired up about right now, and in which direction, without scrolling the full alert list.
Smart Money Flow → Dark Pool → Short Interest → Full Definitions & FAQ →
(The data tools require a login.)
This is the end of the guide. Every term here also lives in our searchable Definitions & FAQ.