So for example if I wanted to buy a option and the the quote was 0.8 bid, 1.1 asked I would put in a limit order for 0.95, and if that didn’t fill after a few minutes, cancel that order and re-enter at 1.00. I usually have to give up a penny or nickel to the market maker.

Options with low / non-existent volumes often quote wide big / asked spreads, but I’ve found that I can often buy or sell options close to the price halfway between those two quotes. Option volumes tend to be very light except for the popular stocks/ETFs and even then most of the action is in the option strike prices close to where the stock is currently trading. I’ve heard that optionsExpress, has good options charts, but I have not seen them. The only free options charts I’m aware of are at BigCharts (see ). Categories Advanced Topics, all, Covered Calls, Options, Options, VIX Tags fidelity Active, Fidelity Active Trader Pro, free option charts, option charts, Schwab, Schwab StreetSmart Edge, standard option format Bid / ask history would be much better than nothing. Since many options are lightly traded their charts are deserts of information. What I would really like options charting packages to do would be to chart bid/ask values if actual trade values are not available. They need to allow a range of dates to be displayed, not just assume that you want everything referenced back in time from today’s date. But it looks like it still suffers from the problem that intra-day information becomes unavailable soon after the options expire. Once you get a chart you’ll probably want to click on the Advanced on Interactive Chart button towards the top to get more control over the chart.īigCharts avoids the huge issue of charts not being available after the options expire. Click on the “quote” link in the option chain to get a chart. Then click on the option chain link above the quote information to show the available options. To get the BigCharts option symbol to use, enter in the underlying symbol (e.g, INTC) towards the top of the screen and click one of the chart buttons. csv files, even for intraday intervals-a very nice feature.īigCharts uses their own custom option symbols. Fidelity’s option charts allow export of trade information as. Neither of these use the “standard” option symbols, but rather use their own proprietary Fidelity or Schwab symbology.

Recently Schwab (StreetSmart Pro) and Fidelity (Active Trader Pro and standard web site) have started offering option charts to customers, but they require you to at least setup an account with them. I provide more information about it below. I have only found one site that offers completely free option charts for stocks, Exchange Traded Products, and indexes: BigCharts.

Streetsmart edge trade settings