📡 Unusual Flow

“Unusual” here is relative, not absolute. A ticker qualifies when its options premium is large compared to its own typical activity — not just large in raw dollars. That framing matters: $2M of premium might be routine for a heavily traded mega-cap but extraordinary for a name that usually trades a fraction of that. Ranking against each ticker's own baseline surfaces genuine standouts instead of a list that is permanently dominated by the most liquid symbols.

The header summarizes the current scan — how many symbols qualified, the number of qualifying hits behind them, and the combined premium those hits represent — giving you a quick read on how active and how concentrated the day's positioning is.

Each row packs several signals into one line. From left to right, the columns work together to describe both the size and the character of the flow:

• Ticker — the symbol, often carrying badges such as ETF, an index/basket tag, or EAR when an earnings event is near. The most active strike and expiration for that name are shown beneath it.
• Last Hit & Hits — the time of the most recent qualifying print and how many qualifying prints have stacked up so far.
• Σ Qual — the qualifying premium: the dollar value of the prints that actually met the unusual threshold. This is the figure the ranking leans on.
• Hourly — a mini bar chart of activity through the session, so you can see whether the flow arrived in one burst or built steadily.
• Σ All — total premium across the ticker, giving context for how the qualifying slice compares to the day's full options activity.
• C/P Bias — a horizontal bar showing the call-versus-put split, with the dominant side and its percentage labeled.
• Aggr & Sweep — the share of flow that crossed aggressively into the offer/bid, and the share that came in as sweeps. More on these below.
• Spot, Avg DTE & %OTM — the underlying price, the average days-to-expiration of the qualifying activity, and how far out-of-the-money the positioning skews.
• # K/Exp & Score — how many distinct strike/expiration buckets were involved, and a composite score (covered in its own section) that blends these signals into a single sortable number.

Three flags describe the texture of the flow — the part that hints at intent rather than just size.

• Aggressor — the percentage of premium that traded aggressively, lifting offers or hitting bids rather than resting passively. A high aggressor share suggests a participant willing to pay up to get filled.
• Sweep — the share that arrived as sweeps, where an order is split across multiple exchanges to fill quickly. Sweeps are often read as a sign of urgency or conviction.
• Cluster — a tag, frequently with an ×N count, that appears when repeated qualifying prints stack up on the same name. Clustering shows the activity is not a single outlier ticket but a recurring pattern building through the session.

The Score column rolls the row's signals — qualifying premium relative to the ticker's norm, call/put conviction, aggressor and sweep intensity, clustering, and breadth across strikes and expirations — into a single number you can sort on. It is a ranking aid, a way to float the most distinctive setups to the top of a long list, rather than a measure of how a trade will perform.

Sorting by Score is the fastest way to triage the board, but it rewards reading the underlying columns afterward. Two rows can share a high score for very different reasons — one driven by a single enormous swept print, another by dozens of clustered, one-sided hits — and those tell different stories.

Unusual Flow and Live Flow are complementary views of the same activity at two different zoom levels. Unusual Flow is the aggregate — one row per ticker, ranked across the whole market, built to answer “what is unusual right now?” Live Flow is the tape — a real-time, trade-by-trade feed showing each print's time, strike, expiry, premium, size, price and sweep/block tags.

A natural workflow is to scan Unusual Flow for a standout name, then drop into Live Flow filtered to that ticker to watch the individual prints build — confirming whether the aggregate score is driven by clean, repeated buying or a messier mix of two-sided activity.

1. Sort by Score to bring the most distinctive setups to the top of the board.
2. Filter to your universe — use the controls and presets to narrow by the characteristics you care about so the list reflects setups you would actually trade.
3. Read the texture — check C/P bias, aggressor and sweep share, and whether a cluster tag is present. One-sided, aggressive, clustered flow is a cleaner signal than split, passive activity.
4. Note the context — average DTE, %OTM, and an EAR badge tell you whether the positioning is short-dated and speculative or longer-term, and whether an earnings catalyst is in play.
5. Drill down — pull the name's chart and GEX profile, and watch the prints arrive in Live Flow before forming a view.