How to use Moomoo's Unusual Option Trades to identify institutional trades.
As promised in my earlier posts, this post will be talking about the feature on Moomoo and how I utilize it to get an early overview of big institutional plays.
Afterall, if someone's betting a gazillion dollars that the market's going down, you best believe they're doing everything in their power to make that happen.
(Not financial advice, all unusual trades shown may have been hedged.)
Alright, to start off we'll be using $Invesco QQQ Trust (QQQ.US)$ and $SPDR S&P 500 ETF (SPY.US)$ as examples as they have some of the most liquid options markets in the world, and due to their per share value of ~500+, it means that each options contract bought is worth a whopping 50,000 USD.
The screener shown can be found on Moomoo NX via Options> Unusual Activity.
As an example, let's take a look at the most recent trade (I have filtered it to above 1k contracts only.)
This trade occured within the same time and it has the same size (quantity of contracts traded).
This means that it's likely to be a connected trade as part of a multi-legged strategy.
You don't need to bother with the exchange or whatever, just bother with identifying first which unusual contract orders are connected with each other, then figure out the strategy behind them.
But to put into perspective, this trade has a size of 10k contracts, worth approximately 10,000 * 440 * 100 = 440,000,000 USD per contract.
Of course, this strategy definitely does not cost that much, it's simply the value of the contracts itself if exercised.
Due to this large amount, its clear that whoever's placing trades like these will most definitely have some sort of bias or definitive plan.
Now if you're trying to figure out what exactly this strategy does, you can either replicate it on Moomoo without placing an order, or the easiest way is to simply ask an AI to analyze for you.
I like using Microsoft's Copilot as it's free and can analyze screenshots.
However, it's not easy for Microsoft Copilot to read the very small text, so it's best if you setup an alert for the unusual options trades so that it's formatted in bigger text.
To set an alert, click the bell icon in the Unusual options trade panel.
These are the settings I use for screening the $Invesco QQQ Trust (QQQ.US)$ for Unusual trades, you may want to look into different minimum sizes depending on how big you think "big" is.
Unfortunately there is no way to seperate multi-legged with single-legged orders. (ofc single-legged orders wont have any associated orders).
You will then get an alert like this whenever an Unusual trade is detected, it's much easier to read and for AI to recognize.
As you can see, this is a very Bearish strategy on the $Invesco QQQ Trust (QQQ.US)$ , which means that someone, possibly an institutional trader, was Extremely Bearish on $Invesco QQQ Trust (QQQ.US)$ .
On optionstrat.com, the closest strategy that can be found is the short synthetic future, but essentially it works like a regular short position.
Due to the nature of this strategy, its possible that it could simply just be a hedge to an existing position, or it's really a strategy on itself to short the $Invesco QQQ Trust (QQQ.US)$ .
That is the only risk of looking at Unusual trades, we have no idea if long/short stock are included in these trades or not.
But more often than not, nobody will waste money like this if they didn't think something would happen.
Also just out of curiosity, i replicated this trade on Moomoo and it would give a credit of 6 million and cost 142 million in margin.
Suffice to say there's many trades like this one, some in the large debits and some in the large credits.
I would say the most useful strategies to look out for are vertical spreads as it's not usually used as a hedge (so we know existing stock positions probs aren't being used), and we know that verticals are directional bets, so there's no reason a gazillionaire would waste millions on a direction if they didn't know the directional bias.
Anyway's thats all for the Unusual options trade feature, its p fun to look at and get a notification whenever big institutions make a play, but as usual, its not 100% proven to help, nothing is guarenteed.
My next post will likely be another review talking abt updates to features on Moomoo NX (and more pleas for cheaper option comms)
Disclaimer: Community is offered by Moomoo Technologies Inc. and is for educational purposes only.
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Finance diploma w 2 yrs Forex, 1 year Options & Moo Earnings Hub enjoyer. Yes, I like anime, No, I'm a guy.
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noob_tradee : wow! I still catch no balls
gonna slowly re-read and understand
thx
217 : You are so knowledgeable.
怕辣的四川人527728 : A very detailed Share.
AMRAN BP0075322 : babuamran86@gmail.com
101676347 : my wires shorted after reading it…
Sadrick OP 101676347 : I can clarify things you don't get
101676347 Sadrick OP : Thanks for your reply.. will read again and seek help when needed.. thanks all again.. cheers!
Hedging the Edge : Looks like a conversion strategy (long put and short call at the same strike) with long stock
102147305瓶 : After seeing so many things, I've gained some knowledge, and I plan to give up trading Stocks haha
Just buy it, one is enough. Can you recommend a relatively good stock? I want to earn a bit of pocket money, thank you 
Sadrick OP 102147305瓶 : Which stock someone wants to buy is always dependant on their personal risk tolerance, capital that they have and their preference. If you are singaporean and prefer not to risk currency exchange, most people go with the 3 big banks, REITs such as mapletree/capitaland, or they just dump into the general market index etf, STI ETF. For US exposure, SPY, QQQ, Berkshire Hathaway are all good for general market exposure. But it always depends from person to person.
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