Common Flow Questions

Options flow is a real-time feed of options trades. It highlights unusual size, speed, and direction to help infer large traders' sentiment and potential positioning.

We highlight correction and canceled trades because it's important to know if a large trade was reversed or corrected by the exchange.

Purple: daily volume has exceeded the open interest (OI) for the contract. Green: The size of the trade itself exceeds the OI.

A sweep splits a large order across multiple exchanges to fill quickly (often urgency). A block is any single fill, large ones are often executed off-exchange (often deliberate size with less urgency).

If it is a common ticker (e.g., AAPL, TSLA), it may be that the ex-dividend date is the next day. If this is the case, we hide those trades by default as they are often noisy and unreliable (click the ex-dividend checkbox in the filters menu to un-hide). Otherwise, the ticker may not have had any unusual flow recently.

Trades lifting the Ask are typically buys; hitting the Bid are typically sells; between indicates a mid or negotiated fill. Context with size, time, and direction still matters.

Volume is contracts traded today. Open Interest (OI) is the number of open contracts after settlement. Basically OI = previous OI + buys - sells. Large changes in OI can indicate new positions being opened or old ones closed.

Visit bullflow.io/academy. Watch the tutorials and complete the quizzes to learn the basics. Then practice reading flow in real-time and correlating with price action. Don't rush, it takes time to build intuition! The discord community is also a great place to ask questions and learn from others.

Anything out of the ordinary. A rarely seen penny stock seeing huge trades, or repeated aggressive buys in a stock that usually has balanced flow. Look for size, speed, and direction that stands out from the norm. You can also refer to the Sigscore column to gauge relative unusualness.

Sentiment blends direction (call/put), side (buy/sell vs. bid/ask), premium, and context like sweep/block. It is a heuristic; always validate with price structure and catalyst risk.

Some negotiated prints or complex spreads can appear differently or be delayed. Feeds and venues vary. We surface the most actionable prints, but not every execution venue is equally transparent.