It’s a record year for options trading as coronavirus drives more people into the market. Over 5.4 billion contracts were cleared through September, according to OCC. That flew past the previous record of 5.24 billion for the entirety of 2018.
With so much activity in the market, some traders may struggle to keep up. That’s why TradeStation is joining forces with BlackBoxStocks, a provider of advanced analytics and scanners for stock and options traders.
BlackBox uses real-time algorithms to sift through the millions of options trades that occur each day. Their technology then finds the handful of transactions that show real buying or selling interest by large institutional investors.
BlackBox also taps into equity markets, scanning both public exchanges and dark pools. Its proprietary logic uses volatility to find outliers to consider for long and short opportunities.
Traders interact in a moderated chat room. If BlackBox’s team sees repeated activity in certain options, they’ll highlight the transactions in an alert. Users can also scan for options with notable volume or changes in open interest.
TradeStation Integration
TradeStation clients can take advantage of BlackBox with a WebAPI linking directly to their brokerage accounts.
They start by clicking on Account -> My Settings and then selecting the Enable TradeStation Trading button under their profile form. This will prompt for TradeStation credentials and establish a secure link.
Users viewing alerts on BlackBox can then click on the green dollar sign icon. This will create an order ticket, letting them quickly buy calls and puts based on the alert. It eliminates the need for digging through large options chains with dozens of strike prices and expiration dates.
BlackBox’s chat room also has ideas from moderators, which users can follow with a copy-trade functionality.
Readers wanting to learn more can watch the presentation at 4:30 p.m. ET, this Thursday, October 22, for more.
