Options Band is a research and education website about the options market. We show what option prices say about a stock, and we explain how to read them. We do not tell anyone what to buy or sell.
Option prices carry a lot of information. They tell you how big a move traders are paying for, by what date, and where positions are piling up. Most of that usually sits inside professional software. We work it out from delayed exchange data and publish it for 316 of the most traded US stocks, ETFs and indexes, along with lessons that explain what each number means.
Research and education only
Options Band is a publisher of financial research and educational material. It is not a financial services firm.
- We are not a registered investment adviser (RIA), broker, dealer or financial planner, and we are not registered as any of these with the SEC, FINRA or any state securities regulator.
- We do not manage money, hold customer funds, take orders or execute trades.
- We do not give personal advice. Nothing on this site is a recommendation to buy, sell or hold any security or option, or a view that any strategy suits you.
- Everything here is general information, the same for every reader. Options carry substantial risk and are not suitable for everyone.
If you want advice about your own money, please speak with a licensed professional. The full terms are on our Disclaimer page.
What you will find here
What the market is pricing today. Expected moves, implied volatility, open interest and probability estimates, all read from current option prices.
A record you can check. Each trading day we save those expectations before the outcome is known, and later compare them with what actually happened. Entries are never edited or deleted, so the record shows how the market did, and how our numbers did.
Explanations. Every figure links to a lesson in everyday language and to a methodology page with the formula, the assumptions and the known limits.
You will not find trade ideas, ratings or lists of stocks to buy. We publish the information and leave the conclusions to you.
Where the data comes from
Option chains are delayed data from Cboe. Stock quotes, price history, company profiles and earnings dates come from Financial Modeling Prep. We calculate everything else ourselves, including expected moves, IV30, skew, probabilities and the historical record. The details are on the Data Sources and Methodology pages.
How we work
- Delayed data is marked as delayed, and data that has gone stale is flagged rather than quietly replaced.
- When a value is missing, we show a dash and say why. We never fill the gap with an estimate.
- Our historical record starts on the day we began collecting it. Nothing has been added afterwards to make it look longer.
- News comes from named publishers and links to the original story. The short data briefs we write ourselves are labeled as ours.
- An automated check scans the text on this site and flags anything that reads like a recommendation, so a person can review it.
Some of the text and data compilation on this site is prepared with the help of AI tools. Figures can be out of date, so please check primary sources before relying on them. Questions or corrections: Contact.