The Most Active Options page highlights the top 500 symbols (U.S. market) or top 200 symbols (Canadian market) with the highest total option trading volume for the day. A high put call volume ratio reflects bearish sentiment, while a low ratio reflects bullish sentiment, as more calls were bought than put options.
Symbols must have a last price greater than 0.10. We divide the page into three tabs - Stocks, ETFs, and Indices - to show the overall options volume by symbol, and the percentage of volume made up by both calls and puts.
The page starts updating for the new trading day at approximately 9:50a.m. ET. Options information is delayed approximately 25 to 30 minutes, and is updated approximately every 5-minutes through-out the trading day.
Note: 0DTE Friday option expirations are removed from the website at 7:45pm ET each Friday.
Emailed Reports
Site Members may opt-in to receive an End-of-Day Email report of the top Stocks, ETFs, and Index symbols found on the Most Active Options pages. The End-of-Day Email digests are sent at 5:30 PM CT, Monday through Friday. Barchart Premier Members may also receive the same reports at mid-day (noon CT) for a closer look at daily developments.
The Main View contains the following fields:
- Last: The last trade price of the underlying asset.
- Change: The difference between the underlying asset's current price and the previous day's settlement price.
- %Chg: The difference between the underlying asset's current price and the previous day's settlement price expressed as a percentage.
- IV Rank: The at-the-money average implied volatility relative to the highest and lowest values over the past 1-year. If IV Rank is 100% this means the IV is at its highest level over the past 1-year.
- Options Volume: The total options volume traded today across all options for the underlying Stock or ETF.
- % Put: The percentage of the total options volume that are put options.
- % Call: The percentage of the total options volume that are call options.
- Put/Call Vol: The ratio of put options traded divided by call options traded. Typically a put/call ratio for stocks above 0.7 is considered a bearish signal as more traders are buying puts rather than calls. This implies that investors are anticipating the underlying stock to decrease in value. Conversely a put/call ratio for stocks below 0.7 is typically considered a bullish signal as more traders are buying calls rather than puts. This implies that investors are anticipating the underlying stock to increase in value. The more extreme the put/call ratio, the stronger the conviction of investors as to the potential move.
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, 5-Day Percent Change, 1-Month, 3-Month and 1-Year Percent Change, YTD 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.
