The Options Chain shows every strike we track for SPY and QQQ that expires today, with one column you will not find on a broker's chain: the same score the automation uses when it picks a contract for you.

Note

This page is in beta. It covers SPY and QQQ only, and only contracts expiring the same day.

What you are looking at

Calls run down the left of the strike column, puts down the right — the same layout your broker uses, with the bid and ask sitting closest to the strikes.

A yellow line runs across the board showing where the underlying is trading right now, with the price pinned to it. It moves as the market moves, so you never have to work out where you are on the ladder.

The Score column

Every strike on the board gets a score out of 1.00. It is the automation's own contract-selection maths, applied to the whole chain rather than to the handful of strikes it would normally look at.

The score blends four things: how much the contract has traded today, how far its delta has moved, how much open interest it carries, and how its implied volatility compares with the rest of the board.

Important: A score only means something compared with the other strikes on the same side of the same board. A 0.85 call today and a 0.85 call tomorrow are not the same thing, and a call's score is not comparable with a put's.

What stands out

The panel at the top is the part most people will use. It picks out the strikes that have genuinely separated themselves from the rest of their side, and says why in plain badges you can hover for the numbers:

• 3.2x vol — it has traded over three times as much as a typical strike on its side
• vol>OI — more contracts changed hands today than the entire position that existed before, which usually means new money rather than existing holders trading between themselves
• OI +4,100 — open interest built (or unwound) sharply against yesterday's close
• IV bid — this one strike is priced well above the strikes either side of it, so somebody is paying up for it specifically
• gamma — a large amount of dealer positioning sits at this strike
• in move — it is inside the move today's option prices are paying for

Each entry also shows what the contract costs now and how far it has moved since it joined the list, in dollars and percent. That tracking follows the contract, so a strike sliding from first place to fourth keeps its original figures.

Warning

Showing strong calls and strong puts at the same time is not a prediction. Calls are only ever compared with calls and puts with puts, so both sides will often light up together. It means "these are the most interesting calls, and these are the most interesting puts" — never that we expect the market to go up and down at once.

Bot would buy now

Underneath the panel is a single line naming the call and the put the automation would choose at this exact moment, and those two contracts are highlighted in yellow on the board — the call on the call side, the put on the put side.

This is a different question from the Score column, and the numbers will not match. The bot only ever looks at five strikes just out of the money, and a score only means something against the set it was measured in. The chain score ranks a strike against the whole board; the bot's score ranks it against the four others it is choosing between.

The pair also moves during the day. The five strikes the bot considers shift as soon as the underlying crosses a whole dollar, so the highlight will jump as price moves.

Note

After 3:30 PM ET the bot stops using contracts that expire today and rolls to the next expiry, so the pick disappears and the page says so. The rest of the board still works.

Implied move

At the top you will see something like ±4.57 (0.6%). That is the move today's option prices are paying for. With SPY at 762, a 0.6% implied move is about four and a half dollars either way, so the strikes between roughly 758 and 767 are the ones the market expects to be reached.

Those strikes are shaded on the board. Next to it sits the IV percentile — if it reads 61%, implied volatility is higher than it has been on 61% of past days, which tells you whether options are expensive today in a way the Score column cannot.

How often it updates

Nothing here needs a page refresh, but not everything moves at the same speed.

The strikes nearest the money update in real time. For the five strikes either side of the price, the bid, ask, volume, open interest, implied volatility and greeks all tick as the market moves; the next five out update every few seconds. When this is running you will see Near the money — Live at the top of the page.

Further out, the numbers refresh about every thirty seconds. Those strikes are not what anyone watches tick, and following every contract on the board in real time would be a lot of data for very little.

Two more things to know:

• the underlying price and the line across the board move about once a second, and the bot's pick follows that price, so the highlight moves as soon as the price crosses a strike
• the Score column stays on the thirty-second refresh even for the live strikes. Score compares a contract against the whole board, so it would be misleading to recalculate it from the handful of strikes in the middle while the rest of the board had not caught up yet

That is why some numbers tick and others step.

Note

The age at the top of the page reads Score + wings while the near-money strikes are live, because by then it is only describing the part of the board that is still on the slower refresh.

Choosing what to see

The buttons above the board switch column groups on and off — Quote, Greeks, Flow and Gamma — and let you show calls only, puts only, or both. On a phone the board opens on calls, because nineteen columns will not fit; switch sides with the same buttons, and the strike column stays pinned while you scroll sideways.

Tip

Start with Quote and Gamma on. Turn on Greeks when you want to see how fast a contract's delta is melting, and Flow when you want to see whether the volume came through the bid or the ask.

What this page does not do

You cannot place a trade from here. It is for reading the board and understanding why the automation favours the contracts it does.

If you run the automation, place the trade through Hybrid Trade or let your strategies run as normal. If you don't, the board is there to read alongside whatever you trade through — nothing on this page needs a bot.