Unusual options activity with the context needed to review it.

What makes options activity unusual

Unusual options activity is a relative measurement, not an absolute one. Twenty thousand contracts is a quiet afternoon in SPY and an extraordinary event in a mid-cap industrial. Any screen that filters on raw volume alone will return the same handful of mega-cap names every session.

The useful comparisons are against the contract's own history and its own position base: volume against open interest, today's volume against the contract's typical volume, and premium against what that contract normally attracts. A contract clearing several times its standing open interest has genuinely changed state, regardless of whether the absolute number is large.

ConvexRadar scores on those relative measures first, then layers absolute liquidity as a filter so the results stay tradeable rather than merely statistically interesting.

Sweeps, blocks and why the distinction is inferred

Two descriptions dominate flow commentary. A sweep is an order broken across multiple exchanges to fill quickly, generally read as urgency. A block is a single large negotiated trade, generally read as a planned institutional position.

Both categories are real. What matters for anyone reading a flow tool is where the label comes from. Identifying sweeps definitively requires the consolidated options tape with exchange-level execution detail — a licensed feed with real cost attached.

ConvexRadar does not license that feed and does not claim to. Print characterisation here is derived from chain behaviour, and the interface says so. A scanner that presents inferred labels as verified execution data is making a claim it cannot support, and the distinction matters when you are deciding how much weight to put on a row.

The opening-versus-closing problem

This is the objection most flow marketing avoids, and it is the correct objection. When volume appears in a contract, nothing in the public data states whether positions were opened or closed. A large buy could be a new bullish position or someone closing a short. The two have opposite implications and look identical in the volume figure.

There is one imperfect check available: the following day's open interest. If open interest rises by roughly the traded volume, positions were opened on balance. If it falls, they were closed. That answer arrives a day late, which makes it useless for an intraday decision but genuinely useful for reviewing whether yesterday's flagged contracts represented new positioning.

Treating each flagged contract as a question rather than a conclusion is the only defensible way to use this data.

Putting a flagged contract in context

A contract that clears the volume filters is the beginning of the work. The context that follows determines whether it is worth anything.

Implied-volatility rank tells you whether the option is expensive relative to its own past year. Unusual buying into already elevated IV means paying a premium for a move that the market has partly priced. The same activity at low IV rank is a materially different proposition.

Catalyst timing matters just as much. Positioning ahead of a scheduled earnings date is an ordinary, well-understood behaviour and rarely tells you much. The same activity with no scheduled event inside the contract's life is a different kind of observation.

ConvexRadar attaches earnings dates, recent filings, analyst target changes and company headlines to each row so that context arrives with the contract instead of requiring four more tabs.