What is whales positioning in options flow?
By Faizan Ahmad. Updated .
Whales positioning shows where the heaviest options buying in a stock is concentrated, strike by strike, and how it has built up over the past week. On Tradytics it takes a stock's 10 busiest strikes by number of prints and, for each one, adds up the call premium bought minus the put premium bought, session by session over the last seven sessions. You can read it as lines, one per strike and tagged with the strike at its end, or as a strike ladder with the current price marked between the rows. A strike whose line keeps climbing is drawing steady call buying; one that keeps falling is drawing steady put buying.
How is whales positioning calculated?
- Take the stock's options trades over the last seven sessions, in expiries up to 120 days out (or one expiry you pick).
- Keep the trades tagged as bought (at or toward the ask).
- Find the 10 strikes with the most prints.
- For each strike, each session: call premium bought minus put premium bought.
- Add it up day by day, so each strike gets a running total across the week.
It counts premium bought, not sold, so it shows where buyers committed money. It measures activity, not open positions: a buyer may have closed since. For how the bought or sold tag is set, see how to tell if options were bought or sold.
How is it different from net premium?
| Whales positioning | Net premium | |
|---|---|---|
| Grouped by | Strike, the 10 busiest | The whole stock or market |
| Counts | Calls bought minus puts bought | Calls bought and puts sold, minus puts bought and calls sold |
| Time | Running total over seven sessions, a point per day | Through one session, minute by minute |
| Answers | Which strikes are buyers piling into, and is it building? | Which way did the money lean today? |
Net premium has its own page: what is net options flow (net premium)?
How do you read the lines view?
Each strike is a line across the sessions, in its own color, with a tag at the right edge showing the strike. Point at a day to see every strike's running total at that point.
- A line that climbs steadily is call buying that keeps coming back to that strike, day after day. Repetition across sessions is more telling than one big day.
- A line that falls steadily is put buying building at that strike.
- A line that jumps once and goes flat is a single day's burst that nobody added to.
- Lines bunched near zero mean buying on both sides roughly cancels at those strikes.
Click a strike in the legend to hide it, which helps when one large line squeezes the rest.
How do you read the strike ladder?
The ladder lists the same 10 strikes from highest to lowest, one row each, with a dashed line and a tag where the current price falls between them. Each row shows a small line of the strike's running total over the sessions, today's total as a bar from zero (green for net call buying, red for net put buying, on one shared scale), and the amount on the right.
- Call buying above the price is money on the stock rising through those strikes.
- Put buying below the price is protection or bearish bets on a fall to those strikes.
- Call buying below the price is in-the-money calls, which move closely with the stock; that can be stock replacement rather than a long-shot bet.
- The biggest bars near the price are where buyers are most active around the current level.
What can whales positioning tell you, and what can't it?
| It can tell you | It can't tell you |
|---|---|
| Which strikes buyers have favored over the past week | Whether those positions are still open |
| Whether buying at a strike is building, fading or a one-off | Whether a call buyer is betting on a rise or hedging a short |
| Where the price sits against the busiest strikes | Where the price will go |
Tradytics' own research found that the direction of whale lines, like net flow direction, doesn't predict the next move on its own. Use it to see where money is concentrated, then check the trades behind it. Is a big options trade a hedge? covers the main trap.
Where do you see whales positioning on Tradytics?
On every research options page, in the Whales positioning card; for example TSLA options. Switch between Lines and Ladder at the top of the card, and use the expiry menu to look at every expiry within 120 days or a single one. The card needs more than five sessions of trading in the stock to draw its lines.
Common questions
What does whales positioning mean in options?
Where the heaviest options buying in a stock sits by strike, and how it built up over the last week: call premium bought minus put premium bought on the 10 busiest strikes, added up day by day.
Why does Tradytics use the 10 busiest strikes?
The busiest strikes by number of prints are where repeated buying shows up. Ten keeps the chart readable while covering the strikes that matter.
Is a rising whales line bullish?
It means call buying has outpaced put buying at that strike, session after session. Some of that buying may be hedges or stock replacement, so it describes positioning, not a forecast.
Does whales positioning include options that were sold?
No. It counts premium bought only, calls minus puts, so it shows where buyers committed money.
Sources
- FINRA: Options: calls, puts, premium and the definition of open interest.
- Options Price Reporting Authority (OPRA): the consolidated last sale and quotation feed from the US options exchanges.
- Most bullish options flow on 2026-11-04: MU ($87.12M net), TSLA ($43.22M net), MSFT ($41.67M net), GOOGL ($31.56M net), RCL ($28.06M net).
- Most bearish options flow on 2026-11-04: KLAC ($136.10M net), ORCL ($36.27M net), FSLR ($24.61M net), NVDA ($24.35M net), UAL ($16.57M net).
Updated 2026-11-05 07:45 UTC