The options desks
Read the options market
like a quant, not a firehose.
Six desks, each answering one question. Every metric is computed from the same option chains — and every one carries an evidence badge, so you always know which of our own numbers to trust. We read the research so you don't have to.
Durable
Replicated out-of-sample, with a clear economic mechanism. Trust it.
Conditional
Real, but model-dependent — the signal rests on assumptions you can inspect.
Decayed
Was real in-sample; faded after publication. Context, not edge.
Folklore
Popular in trading culture, weak in the evidence. Shown, and labeled.
Framework
A discipline or lens, not a backtested return signal.
01
Vol Desk
Is premium rich or cheap, and what regime am I in?
The strongest-evidence desk in the product — and the one premium sellers live in. It reads where implied volatility sits, whether the market is paying you to sell options, and whether the term structure is warning of stress.
IV rank & percentileFree hook
Where current implied vol sits versus its own trailing year — the basic "is premium rich or cheap" gauge. Table stakes, but the doorway everyone starts at.
Free
Expected moveATM straddle
The market's priced-in move over an option's life, from the at-the-money straddle. The standard earnings-move estimate.
Durable
Variance risk premiumIV − realized
Implied variance systematically exceeds realized — the premium that pays option sellers. High VRP has predicted market returns. Bollerslev, Tauchen & Zhou (2009); replicated internationally.
Durable
IV term structurefront vs back
Contango is the calm default; an inverted (backwardated) curve flags near-term stress and event risk. Vasquez (2017).
Durable
VIX regime toolVIX · VIX3M · VVIX
Term-structure flips and vol-of-vol identify the volatility regime — the context that tells you whether premium-selling or premium-buying is favored.
Durable
What the READ looks like
READSPY premium is rich versus its own year and realized vol is falling — the seller's side of the table is being paid. Term structure is in calm contango; no near-term stress priced.
02
Dealer Desk
Where are the hedging flows?
Dealer positioning drives mechanical hedging flows that dampen or amplify moves. Every metric here is model-inferred — the dealer's side of each trade is estimated, not observed — so each wears a badge and gives you a visible sign-assumption toggle. Honesty is the differentiator against black-box gamma tools.
GEX — gamma by strikedealer γ map
Aggregate dealer gamma: positive suppresses volatility (buy dips / sell rips), negative amplifies it. Shows walls and the flip. Effects are real but episodic and conditional. Cboe-hosted studies; sign must be inferred.
Conditional
Gamma flip & wallsregime line
The price where aggregate gamma crosses zero — above it, calm and mean-reverting; below it, twitchy and trending. Big-OI strikes act as magnets.
Conditional
Vanna & charm exposureOPEX flows
How dealer hedges shift as vol changes (vanna) and time decays (charm) — the flows behind OPEX rallies. Baltussen, Da, Lammers & Martens (2021).
Conditional
Expiration pinningNi-Pearson-Poteshman
Optionable stocks cluster at high-OI strikes into expiry, driven by hedge rebalancing — the evidence-based version. Note: the popular "max pain gravitates to max-writer-profit" theory is weakly supported and lives in our education section as folklore. Ni, Pearson & Poteshman (2005).
Conditional
What the READ looks like
READSpot sits below the 5588 gamma wall and above the 5578 flip — dealers are long gamma here, pinning price and muting moves. Lose the flip and the tape gets violent.
03
Probability Studio
What does the market actually expect?
Options prices encode the market's full probability distribution of where a name will land — not a guess, an identity. This is genuine retail whitespace: almost nobody renders the implied distribution visually.
Risk-neutral densityBreeden-Litzenberger
The market's full implied probability curve for the underlying at expiry, extracted from butterfly spreads across strikes. Model-free — a mathematical identity, not a forecast model. Breeden & Litzenberger (1978).
Durable
Implied skew & kurtosismodel-free moments
Forward-looking asymmetry and tail-fatness from a strip of OTM options, computed from one day of prices. The extraction is robust; return-prediction use is mixed. Bakshi, Kapadia & Madan (2003).
Durable
Implied crash probabilitySKEW logic
Deep-OTM put pricing as a tail-risk gauge — the market's perceived probability of a large downside move. The logic behind the CBOE SKEW index.
Durable
What the READ looks like
READThe market's implied distribution for NVDA into earnings is right-skewed with fat tails — it's pricing a bigger upside surprise than downside, but assigning a real 12% chance to a move beyond ±15%.
04
Event Lab
How is this event priced?
Earnings and scheduled events concentrate volatility. This desk compares what options are pricing to what history actually delivered — highly comprehensible, and beatable on interpretation.
Implied vs realized moveearnings
The pre-event straddle-implied move against the distribution of actual post-earnings moves over prior quarters. Tells you whether the event is over- or under-priced.
Durable
IV crush patternsper name
The systematic post-event collapse in implied vol — its timing and magnitude per name, the core of event premium-selling.
Conditional
Event variance extractionterm-structure kink
Isolates the "event-day" volatility embedded in the jump between pre- and post-event expiries. Dubinsky, Johannes, Kaeck & Seeger (2019).
Durable
05
Surface Lab
Quant tier
Is the surface itself mispriced?
The advanced desk: fit the whole implied-vol surface, hunt no-arbitrage violations, and extract structural signals that live in the relationships between options rather than any single one.
Skew & risk reversal25-delta
The richness of OTM puts vs calls. A fine descriptor of crash pricing — but as a cross-sectional return predictor it has decayed, and much is explained by borrow fees. Xing, Zhang & Zhao (2010); Muravyev et al. (2025).
Decayed
SVI/SSVI surface fitarbitrage flags
A parsimonious arbitrage-free fit of the surface, flagging butterfly (negative density) and calendar violations. Gatheral & Jacquier (2014).
Framework
Implied borrow feeput-call parity
Parity deviations reveal the options-implied cost to borrow a stock — a genuine hard-to-borrow and short-squeeze signal, rare in retail tools. Ofek et al. (2004); Muravyev et al. (2022).
Durable
Box-spread funding curveimplied risk-free
A term structure of implied risk-free rates recovered from SPX box spreads — an options-implied funding gauge. van Binsbergen, Diamond & Grotteria (2022).
Durable
Implied correlationdispersion
Index IV vs constituent IVs — the dispersion-trade signal and a systemic-fragility gauge.
Conditional
06
Flow Room
What is sentiment saying — honestly?
This desk exists because traders expect it — but we frame it truthfully. Most single-name "options predict stocks" signals were strong in-sample and faded after publication, or turn out to be borrow-fee artifacts. So the Flow Room is context, not edge, and we say so on every metric.
Put/call ratiosvolume & OI
Classic contrarian sentiment. Noisy and weak as a standalone signal — useful as context, not a trigger.
Folklore
O/S ratiooption vs stock volume
Where option activity runs hot relative to the stock. A real in-sample anomaly that has decayed. Roll, Schwartz & Subrahmanyam (2010); Johnson & So (2012).
Decayed
Call-put IV spreadrelative richness
When calls price richer than puts, stocks historically outperformed — but two-thirds of that vanishes once high-borrow names are excluded. Largely a borrow-fee artifact. Cremers & Weinbaum (2010); Muravyev, Pearson & Pollet (2025).
Decayed
Unusual options activitysweeps · blocks
Large or aggressive prints, aggressor-side inferred. Widely sold as "smart money," but largely unvalidated as a return signal — we show it with that caveat attached.
Folklore
See it on your own book
Every desk, overlaid on your positions.
The desks read the market. The portfolio reads you. Where they meet is where GradientView earns its name — the gamma flip that matters is the one under your short strikes.
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