The Options Change in Open Interest page shows equity options with the largest increase and decrease in open interest from the previous trading session. Open Interest is the total number of open option contracts that have been traded but not yet liquidated by either an offsetting trade or an exercise or assignment. It gives you important information regarding whether there is an active secondary market for the option, and can be used as a tool to predict price trends along with reversals.
"Open Interest Change" represents the change in the number of option contracts traded but not yet liquidated. Since options can be bought and sold (with both types of transactions either opening or closing a transaction), it's important to understand what a large change in either direction for open interest may mean.
First, it's important to understand that you have no way of knowing whether the change in an option's open interest means the option was bought or sold. A trade can either increase or decrease open interest, so a significant change to this number simply means there are significant changes in traders' positions. When an option has a large shift in open interest, you should look at the shift relative to the volume of contracts traded. When volume is higher than open interest, that typically indicates that trading of the option was high for the day. Also, when an option has a large open interest, there is an active secondary market that makes it easier to trade the option at a reasonable spread between bid and ask.
A sharp increase in open interest typically indicates new money coming in, with a continuation of the present trend (up, down or neutral). A sharp decrease, conversely, is an indication that the market is liquidating. Look for the price trend to come to an end.
Choose to view Stocks or ETFs using the selector at the top of the table. The page is initially sorted in ascending or descending daily Open Interest Change. You can re-sort the page by clicking on any of the column headings.
The number of options displayed is capped at the top 100 for both increase and decrease, for Stocks and ETFs.
Flipcharts are available, and you may choose to view charts for the underlying equity or for the option strike when you open the Flipcharts link. Site Members may also download the data on the page to a .csv file.
What's Included
For U.S. market, an option needs to have volume of greater than 500, open interest greater than 100, a last price greater than 0.10. For Canadian market, an option needs to have volume of greater than 5, open interest greater than 25, and last price greater than 0.10. (Canadian options open interest is not updated until approximately 5:30pm CT each trading day.) For both U.S. and Canadian markets. we also show only options with days till expiration greater than 14.
Options information is delayed 15 minutes.
Screen
Available only with a Premier Membership, you can base an Options Screener off the symbols currently on the page. This lets you add additional filters in the Options Screener to further narrow down the list of candidates.
Example:
- Click "Screen" on the page and the Options Screener opens, pulling in the symbols from the page.
Note: ALL the symbols from the page are pulled into the screener. To narrow the list down by expiration date, use the "Days to Expiration" filter in the screener. - Add additional criteria in the Screener, such as "Moneyness", or "Implied Volatility".
- View the results and if you wish, save the Screener to run again at a later date.
- Running a Saved Screener at a later date will always start with a new list of results. Your Saved Screener will always start with the most current set of symbols found on the source page before applying your custom filters and displaying new results.
Data Updates
For pages showing Intraday views, we use the current session's data with new price data appear on the page as indicated by a "flash". Stocks: 15 minute delay (Cboe BZX data for U.S. equities is real-time), ET. Volume reflects consolidated markets. Futures and Forex: 10 or 15 minute delay, CT.
The list of symbols included on the page is updated every 10 minutes throughout the trading day. However, new stocks are not automatically added to or re-ranked on the page until the site performs its 10-minute update.
For reference, we include the date and timestamp of when the list was last updated at the top right of the page.
Page Sort
Pages are initially sorted in a specific order (depending on the data presented). You can re-sort the page by clicking on any of the column headings in the table.
Views
Most data tables can be analyzed using "Views." A View simply presents the symbols on the page with a different set of columns. Site members can also display the page using Custom Views.
Each View has a "Links" column on the far right to access a symbol's Quote Overview, Chart, Options Quotes (when available), Barchart Opinion, and Technical Analysis page. Standard Views found throughout the site include:
- Main View: Symbol, Name, Last Price, Change, Percent Change, High, Low, Volume, and Time of Last Trade.
- Technical View: Symbol, Name, Last Price, Today's Opinion, 20-Day Relative Strength, 20-Day Historic Volatility, 20-Day Average Volume, 52-Week High and 52-Week Low.
- Performance View: Symbol, Name, Last Price, Weighted Alpha, YTD Percent Change, 1-Month, 3-Month and 1-Year Percent Change.
- Moving Averages View: Symbol, Name, Last Price, 20-Day Moving Average, % From 20-Day Moving Average, 50-Day Moving Average, % From 50-Day Moving Average, 100-Day Moving Average, % From 100-Day Moving Average, 200-Day Moving Average, % From 200-Day Moving Average.
- Fundamental View: Available only on equity pages, shows Symbol, Name, Market Cap, P/E Ratio (trailing 12 months). Earnings Per Share (trailing 12 months), Net Income, Beta, Annual Dividend, Dividend Yield, and Latest Earnings Date.
Note: For all markets except U.S. equities, fundamental data is not licensed for downloading. Your .csv file will show "N/L" for "not licensed" when downloading from a Canadian, UK, Australian, or European stocks page. - Mini-Chart View: Available for Barchart Plus and Premier Members, this view displays 12 small charts per page for the symbols shown in the data table. You may change the bar type and time frame for the Mini-Charts as you scroll through the page. The default settings for Mini-Charts are found in your Site Preferences, under "Overview Charts".
- Pre-Post Market Data: Available for Barchart Plus and Premier Members, this view will show any pre- or post-market price activity for U.S. equities only.
View Symbol More Data (+)
Unique to Barchart.com, data tables contain an option that allows you to see more data for the symbol without leaving the page. Click the "+" icon in the first column (on the left) to view more data for the selected symbol. Scroll through widgets of the different content available for the symbol. Click on any of the widgets to go to the full page. The "More Data" widgets are also available from the Links column of the right side of the data table.
Flipcharts
Also unique to Barchart, Flipcharts allow you to scroll through all the symbols on the table in a chart view. While viewing Flipcharts, you can apply a custom chart template, further customizing the way you can analyze the symbols. Flipcharts are a free tool available to Site Members.
Note: Flipcharts, unlike the full-page chart or Dashboard, does not stream updated data to the chart.
Download
Download is a free tool available to Site Members. This tool will download a .csv file for the View being displayed. For dynamically-generated tables (such as a Stock or ETF Screener) where you see more than 1000 rows of data, the download will be limited to only the first 1000 records on the table. For other static pages (such as the Russell 3000 Components list) all rows will be downloaded.
Free members are limited to 1 site download per day. Barchart Plus Members have 10 downloads per day, while Barchart Premier Members may download up to 250 .csv files per day.
Note: Due to licensing restrictions, Canadian fundamental data cannot be downloaded from Barchart.com. You will see "N/L" in a downloaded column when this is the case. Fundamental data for US equities is also limited to 15 fields per download request.
Should you require more than 250 downloads per day, please contact Barchart Sales at 866-333-7587 or email solutions@barchart.com for more information or additional options about historical market data.
