Option Flow + Dark Pool: A Powerful Combination

by InsiderFinance Team on 03/30/2022

If you’ve never traded with option order flow or dark pool prints before, you’ve been trading blindly.

Option order flow is a strong leading indicator, and dark pool prints serve as support and resistance levels. 

The powerful combination of option flow and dark pool helps traders determine market direction and increase the chance of success on every trade.

InsiderFinance intelligently identifies and highlights market-moving flow so you can gain an immediate trading advantage.

Option Order Flow

Option order flow is an excellent leading indicator of short-term market direction, and InsiderFinance brings the trades that matter front and center with built-in intelligence.

Below are some key definitions to help you interpret the flow:

Top Positions: a contract where the contract size is greater than open interest on its own. The size text is highlighted in blue for these orders.

"Golden Sweep": a sweep over $1M in premium that's also a top position. These characteristics imply urgency in execution, and golden sweeps typically determine short-term market direction.

Unusual Options Activity: a contract greater than or equal to 10% OTM with less than 35 days to expiry.

Order Side: The A means the trade was executed at Ask (i.e., offer or buy-side), and the AA means the trade was executed Above Ask.

If a trade was executed Above Ask, this implies that the buyer was very bullish on the trade and willing to pay extra to make sure he/she can enter it.

You could also view this as "aggressively" entering the position.

 

Heat Score: Our proprietary indicator of how aggressively a trade was executed (see our Heat Score article for additional detail).

You can sort for this to put aggressive trades front and center!

Dark Pool Prints

Dark Pool Prints help traders accurately identify support and resistance levels for a ticker, and InsiderFinance brings the trades that matter front and center with built-in intelligence.

Below are some key definitions to help you interpret the prints:

Late Buys and Sells: InsiderFinance highlights dark pool prints reported late. These are the trades that institutions make an extra effort to hide. 

Dark pool prints traded below the open of the current trade day are highlighted in green and imply bullish sentiment, which means an institution bought the stock before it increased in price the following day.

Late Buy -> Bullish Sentiment


Dark pool prints traded above the open of the current trade day are highlighted in red and imply bearish sentiment, which means an institution sold the stock before it decreased in price the following day.

Late Sell -> Bearish Sentiment


InsiderFinance provides added context for whether late trades on major indexes (SPY, QQQ, IWM, and DIA) were made with bullish sentiment or bearish sentiment.

We do this by showing red or green dots next to major index trades to identify whether the current spot price when the trade was reported is above or below where the index is currently trading for the day.

Late Buy + Green Dot  → Bull Trend


Late Buy + Red Dot → Possible Bear Reversal


Late Sell + Red Dot  → Bear Trend


Late Sell + Green Dot → Possible Bull Reversal


Unusually High Volume Orders: Dark pool prints where the block size is at or above 30% of the stock’s daily average volume can be particularly interesting and significant.

InsiderFinance makes these trades easy to spot with a gold box around the order size.


Large Premium Orders: Dark pool prints where the notional value is above $50 Million are also worth watching.

InsiderFinance makes these trades easy to spot with blue text on the notional amount.

Case Study: Golden Sweeps + Dark Pool Prints

In the below example for TSLA, we see Golden Sweeps puts traded around 11:45 am, then Dark Pool prints with large premiums reported around 2:45 pm.

Let’s look at a chart to see how the trades impacted price action (keeping it simple and easy to read with line charts).


Shortly after we see the Golden Sweep puts come in, we see a downward trend start on the chart until around 2:45 pm, when the dark pool prints are reported and serve as a support level.

Golden Sweep Puts Start Downtrend


Dark Pool Prints Create Support


As you can see from the example above, options flow and dark pool make a powerful combination when used together. 

Of course, option flow and dark pool are only one piece of the puzzle, and you should always pull up a chart before entering a position.

Our automated technical analysis tools make validating trade decisions with technical analysis fast and easy.