Unusual Options Activity: What To Know And How To Trade Using Benzinga Pro

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What Signifies Unusual Options Activity? The phenomenon of equities with options exhibiting significant volume spikes is commonly referred to as unusual options activity. When trading floors were the norm, traders would take note of trends and upticks on contracts, and word would spread throughout the crowd to hike up the daily volume higher.

Now, options activity is largely monitored through virtual mechanisms.

Typically, investors will look for options contracts that are trading at high volumes on the day. A solid benchmark to assess is to see if the traded volume for that day is five or more times the average volume over a period of time (usually 90 days).

Capitalizing on Unusual Options Activity with Benzinga Pro: Benzinga Pro offers traders the ability to create a scanner to watch for unusual options activity in their workspaces. Using the Newsfeed, traders can filter Pro headlines to see options sweeps, which are orders too large to process in one transaction and must be dissected into smaller orders that are fulfilled little by little. Specializing the Newsfeed for this purpose lets options traders benefit from easily seeing all unusual options activity on the day.