Unusual options activity
Options trading that stands out against a contract's normal size, volume, premium or timing. It is a starting point for research and proves nothing by itself.
Scanners flag unusual options activity by comparing a trade or a day’s trading with a baseline: volume against open interest, premium against the contract’s typical size, or activity in a strike or expiration that usually trades little.
Some of that activity reflects informed positioning, and much of it reflects hedging, rolling, closing trades and multi-leg strategies. Context such as upcoming earnings, the contract’s liquidity and whether the print was bid-side or ask-side helps separate the two, and no single print establishes intent.
Illustrative example (hypothetical numbers, not a real trade): a stock’s options usually trade 5,000 contracts a day. One morning a single out-of-the-money call strike prints 12,000 contracts against open interest of 900, mostly on the ask. That combination is the kind of pattern a scanner labels unusual.