Options

The Options surface is the full chain for any US underlying. Calls left, puts right, strikes sorted, ITM contracts tinted green or red. Three modes share one symbol input: CHAIN for the raw grid, STRATEGY_BUILDER for a multi-leg payoff modeler, and ANALYTICS for an IV summary, put/call gauges, and a volatility smile pulled from the loaded chain. This is the surface for *chain* analysis — for sweep and block detection see Options Flow, and for dealer positioning see Gamma Exposure. All three modes here are Free.

What it is

A live US options chain. On load the page pulls the full chain — every strike across every listed expiration at once — then filters down to the selected expiry. Each contract carries strike, last, bid, ask, net change, percent change, volume, open interest, implied volatility, expiration date, and an in-the-money flag. Per-contract Greeks (delta/gamma/theta/vega) are *not* included — the chain grid renders the eight columns most traders scan; the Greeks you see in the strategy builder are model-estimated, not live.

The data is US-listed (OPRA) options only. Anonymous visitors are served from cache — a cold, rarely-requested symbol can come back empty for a logged-out guest because guests don't trigger a live fetch. Sign in — Free is enough — to force a live pull on a cold name.

When to use it

Pick the chain when you want the strike ladder around the money: where premium is concentrated, where the bid/ask is wide, where open interest is stacked. Pick the strategy builder when you want to model a defined-risk trade — vertical, condor, straddle, butterfly, covered call — and read max profit/loss, net cost, break-evens, and the P&L curve before you place anything. Pick analytics when you want a chain-level read on IV level and skew without rebuilding the smile in your head.

Open it

• Path: /options (defaults to AAPL); /options/:symbol jumps straight to a ticker (e.g. /options/TSLA).
• Symbol box: type a ticker in the SYMBOL input and click LOAD. The URL updates to ?symbol=....
• Shortcut: none — reachable from the sidebar; ⌘K → "options" also works.
• Tier: not gated. The /options page is public and auth-optional. Free can pull any symbol's chain, builder, and analytics. (Options Flow and Gamma Exposure are the Pro surfaces — they are separate pages.)

How to use it

1. Open /options. AAPL loads by default. To jump straight to a ticker use /options/TSLA, or type a symbol in the SYMBOL box and click LOAD.
2. Pick an expiration. The pill row under the tabs shows up to 12 listed expirations; click one to filter the chain to that date. The nearest expiry is selected by default.
3. Stay on the CHAIN tab to scan strikes. Calls are on the left, puts on the right, strikes sorted ascending. In-the-money rows carry a faint tint — green for ITM calls, red for ITM puts.
4. Read the summary strip below the grid: total call volume, total put volume, the put/call volume ratio for the loaded expiry, total call OI, and total put OI.
5. Switch to STRATEGY_BUILDER to model a trade. Either click a preset (Covered Call, Bull Call Spread, Iron Condor, Straddle, Butterfly, and more) or click Add Leg and set type/side/strike/premium/quantity by hand.
6. Set the Underlying price in the builder header — it auto-fills from the live quote, but you can override it to model a what-if spot.
7. Read the Analysis panel (Max Profit, Max Loss, Net Cost, Break-evens) and the estimated combined Greeks (Δ/Γ/Θ/ν), then check the P&L_AT_EXPIRATION payoff diagram below — green is profit, red is loss, yellow dashed lines mark break-evens.
8. Switch to ANALYTICS for the IV summary (ATM call IV, ATM put IV, average IV), the two put/call gauges (volume and open-interest, each tagged Bullish/Neutral/Bearish), and the volatility smile (strike on x, IV on y, calls green, puts red).
9. For institutional sweep and block detection use Options Flow, not this page; for dealer gamma positioning use Gamma Exposure.

Option chain

The default CHAIN tab is two synchronized grids — CALLS (green dot, left) and PUTS (red dot, right) — for a single selected expiration. Each grid header shows the contract count for that expiry. Strikes run ascending top to bottom; ITM rows are bolded and tinted (faint green for ITM calls, faint red for ITM puts) so the money line is obvious at a glance.

Expirations

The pill row under the tab bar lists up to 12 listed expirations, nearest first; the closest expiry is selected on load. Click a pill to refilter both grids to that date. Expirations beyond the 12th exist in the underlying data but are not pickable from this row. The picker is a horizontal scroll on narrow screens.

Columns

Column	What it is
STRIKE	Contract strike price
LAST	Last traded premium
BID	Current best bid
ASK	Current best ask
VOL	Session volume on this contract
OI	Open interest as of prior close *(hidden on mobile)*
IV	Implied volatility, percent *(hidden on mobile)*
CHG	Percent change vs. prior close, green/red *(hidden on mobile)*

On mobile the OI, IV, and CHG columns hide so the core columns (Strike, Last, Bid, Ask, Vol) fit without horizontal scroll.

How to read it

Scan for where volume and OI cluster — that's where positioning lives. A wide bid/ask is your real round-trip cost; the LAST print can be stale on a thin contract. The ITM tint marks the money line: calls tint ITM below spot, puts tint ITM above spot, so the boundary between tinted and untinted rows brackets the current price. The IV column is your fast skew read down the ladder — rising IV into the wings is the smile you'll see plotted in Analytics.

Summary strip

Below the grids, a per-expiration stats strip:

Stat	Formula
TOTAL_CALL_VOL	Sum of volume across all call rows for the selected expiry
TOTAL_PUT_VOL	Sum of volume across all put rows for the selected expiry
PUT/CALL_RATIO	Total put volume ÷ total call volume
TOTAL_CALL_OI	Sum of open interest across all call rows
TOTAL_PUT_OI	Sum of open interest across all put rows

These are scoped to the loaded expiration only — a thin weekly can read an extreme ratio. The Analytics gauges give a steadier read split by volume vs OI.

Strategy builder

The STRATEGY_BUILDER tab models multi-leg positions and draws the payoff at expiration. It has four parts: presets, the leg editor, the analysis + Greeks panel, and the P&L diagram.

Presets

Eight one-click preset structures seed the leg table around the current underlying price. Each chip has a hover tooltip describing it:

Preset	Structure
Covered Call	Sell one ~5% OTM call (against owned shares)
Protective Put	Buy one ~5% OTM put (against owned shares)
Bull Call Spread	Buy a near-ATM call, sell a higher call
Bear Put Spread	Buy a higher put, sell a lower put
Iron Condor	Sell an OTM put spread + sell an OTM call spread (4 legs)
Straddle	Buy an ATM call + ATM put
Strangle	Buy an OTM call + OTM put
Butterfly Spread	Buy 1 lower call, sell 2 mid calls, buy 1 higher call

Presets pre-fill strikes and rough premiums from the underlying price; edit any leg afterward to match real chain prices. There is no calendar/diagonal preset (legs share one model expiry).

Building legs by hand

Click Add Leg to append a row, then edit per-leg fields in the table:

Field	Options
Type	CALL (green) / PUT (red)
Side	BUY (green) / SELL (red)
Strike	Numeric strike
Premium	Per-share contract premium
Qty	Contract count (min 1)

Trash-icon each row to remove it; Clear wipes all legs. Editing any leg or adding one clears the active preset highlight. Underlying (header input) auto-fills from the live quote on load and drives both the analysis and the payoff x-axis — override it to model a different spot.

Analysis + Greeks

Once at least one leg exists, the builder shows two panels side by side:

Analysis — computed by sampling P&L at expiration across a wide price range (2,000 steps):

• Max Profit — peak P&L, or Unlimited for open-ended upside (e.g. a long call).
• Max Loss — trough P&L, or Unlimited for open-ended downside (e.g. a naked short call).
• Net Cost — total debit (red) or credit (green) to open, per the premiums entered.
• Break-evens — every zero-crossing of the payoff, found by interpolation; a condor or straddle shows two.

Greeks — combined position delta (Δ), gamma (Γ), theta/day (Θ), and vega/% (ν), summed across legs with sign for buy/sell × quantity. These are estimates from a Black-Scholes model at a fixed ~30-day expiry and 30% IV (labeled "est. 30d, IV 30%" in the panel header) — a directional sanity check, not a live per-contract Greek read.

Payoff diagram

Below the builder, the P&L_AT_EXPIRATION chart renders the position's payoff per contract (×100 shares):

• The line is the position P&L across spot at expiration; the area is filled green above the zero line and red below.
• The zero baseline is a solid horizontal line; grid lines are dashed.
• Break-evens are yellow dashed verticals with price labels at the bottom; they're also listed in the header (BE: $…) and the footer legend.
• The underlying price is a faint dashed vertical with a $ label at top; each leg strike is a small dot on the zero line (green for calls, red for puts).
• Hover anywhere on the chart for a crosshair tooltip showing the spot price and the exact P&L at that price.

Analytics / Greeks

The ANALYTICS tab summarizes the loaded chain in three stacked cards. It needs a chain loaded (it reads the same calls/puts as the grid); with no data it shows NO_OPTIONS_DATA_FOR_ANALYTICS.

IV summary

Three stat cells across the top:

• ATM Call IV — implied vol of the call whose strike is nearest the underlying (green).
• ATM Put IV — implied vol of the nearest-strike put (red).
• Avg IV — mean IV across every contract with a valid (non-zero) IV in the loaded expiry.

ATM IV is your headline read on what the market is pricing for the underlying; a gap between ATM call and put IV hints at directional skew. Contracts with IV of 0 (no recent trade to fit against) are excluded from the average so one dead weekly doesn't drag it down.

Put/call gauges

Two gauge cards side by side, each a ratio with a fill bar and a sentiment tag:

• P/C Ratio (Volume) — total put volume ÷ total call volume for the expiry.
• P/C Ratio (OI) — total put OI ÷ total call OI.

Sentiment thresholds: below 0.7 reads *Bullish*, above 1.0 reads *Bearish*, in between is *Neutral*. Volume P/C is the intraday flow read; OI P/C is the standing-positioning read and is steadier day to day.

Volatility smile

A line chart of IV by strike — strike on the x-axis, IV% on the y-axis — with calls (green) and puts (red) overlaid and a dashed ATM reference line at the underlying price. Only contracts with a valid non-zero IV are plotted, and gaps are not connected (a missing strike breaks the line rather than interpolating). The shape is the read: a steep left-side rise is classic downside put skew; a symmetric U is a true "smile"; a flat line means the chain isn't pricing much tail risk.

Greeks, in short

• Delta (Δ) — P&L sensitivity to a $1 move in the underlying; also a rough probability-ITM proxy. Position delta in the builder is the net directional exposure.
• Gamma (Γ) — how fast delta itself changes as spot moves; highest near ATM and into expiry.
• Theta (Θ) — daily time decay; negative when you're net long premium, positive when you're net short it.
• Vega (ν) — P&L sensitivity to a 1-point change in IV; long options are long vega.

Remember the builder's Greeks are modeled at fixed 30-day/30%-IV assumptions — directionally right, not a substitute for a live per-contract Greek surface.

Limits

• Strike depth: you get roughly 20 strikes each side of spot per expiry — not the full ladder out to the wings or deep LEAPS strikes.
• Greeks in the grid: only IV is shown per contract. Delta/gamma/theta/vega are not in the chain data; the builder's Greeks are Black-Scholes estimates at 30 days / 30% IV.
• Expirations: the picker caps at 12; later-dated LEAPS exist in the data but aren't pickable.
• Mobile: OI, IV, and CHG columns hide on small screens.
• Refresh: not auto-refreshing — the chain re-pulls only when you change symbol (click LOAD). Expect sub-minute staleness during market hours.
• Anonymous users: served from cache; cold/rarely-requested symbols can return empty for logged-out guests. Sign in (Free) to trigger a live pull.
• After-hours/overnight: chains still return data, but volume zeros out and the bid/ask widens drastically — treat a closed-market IV as stale.
• Coverage: US-listed (OPRA) options only. Single-stock futures, futures options, and foreign-exchange contracts are not covered.
• Builder model: all legs share one expiry/IV assumption, so multi-expiry structures (calendars, diagonals) aren't modeled accurately; premiums you enter are not validated against the live chain.

Troubleshooting

Chain loads with NO_CALL_OPTIONS or NO_PUT_OPTIONS. The underlying has no listed options for that side/expiry, or the selected expiration was filtered out. Try a different expiry; if every expiry is empty, the symbol has no listed options at all (most sub-$5 OTC names).

§ERR / OPTIONS_FEED · symbol returned no chain. Either the ticker is invalid (typo, delisted) or the options feed errored. Verify the ticker on /research first — if Research loads, the ticker is real and the feed is the problem. Re-try in a minute.

IV column reads 0.0% on every strike. Common on illiquid weeklies — implied volatility reads 0 when there's no recent trade to fit an IV against. Switch to a more-traded expiry, or use the ATM strike's IV as the read on the underlying. (Zero-IV contracts are also excluded from the Analytics average and the volatility smile.)

Logged out and a cold symbol returns empty. Anonymous requests are served from cache — a rarely-requested symbol won't trigger a live fetch for guests. Sign in (Free is fine) to force a live pull, or load a popular symbol that's already warmed in cache.

P/C ratio looks extreme (10× or 0.1×). The summary strip is per-expiration scope; a thin weekly skews it. Switch to a longer-dated, more-liquid expiry to see it normalize, or read the Analytics gauges, which split volume vs OI.

Strategy builder P&L curve is flat. Your legs cancel — typically a long and a short of the same strike/type/quantity. Check the leg list at the top of the builder and adjust a strike or side.

Builder Greeks don't match my broker. They're meant to be a directional estimate, not a live read — the model uses a fixed ~30-day expiry and 30% IV for every leg regardless of the contract's real DTE or IV. Use them for the sign and rough magnitude of net exposure, not for hedging math.

Volume is zero and the bid/ask is huge on every contract. The market is closed. Chains keep returning data after hours and overnight, but volume zeros out and quotes widen drastically as market-makers pull tight prices. Treat a closed-market chain — especially its IV — as stale, and re-check at the next open.

Related

• Options Flow — institutional sweep & block detection (Pro). Distinct from this chain page.
• Gamma Exposure — dealer gamma positioning (Pro).
• Research — verify a ticker and see the underlying's fundamentals.
• Charts — chart the underlying alongside the chain.