Whether you’re new to options trading or an experienced options trader, an options alert service can help you find bigger and more consistent wins. These services offer professionally curated options trade recommendations as well as a range of helpful tools for trading options.
In this guide, we’ll cover everything you need to know about options alerts and highlight our 5 favorite options alert services to use today.
What is an Options Alert Service?
An options alert service is an online trading service that helps you find and act on options trading opportunities. Options trading alert services are typically run by experienced professional traders who spend their days scanning the market so that you don’t have to. These traders may use options analysis platforms, unusual options order flow scanners, or custom algorithms to identify opportunities.
These services can vary, but they typically provide specific options trade recommendations. Recommendations come complete with suggested strategies, entry points, and price targets. Alerts can be delivered to your phone, email, or through a trading chat room.
In addition, many options trading alerts services have research tools to help you do your own research into potential options trades. These tools can add a lot of value to an alerts service.
How to Choose the Best Options Alert Service?
There are dozens of options trading alerts services, each with different approaches to the market, trading tools, success rates, and more. When choosing an options alert service, these are the three primary factors to consider:
Strategy Alignment
It’s essential that whatever options trading alert service you use aligns with your trading strategy and style. Think about the types of options trading strategies you most commonly use and look for services that focus on those strategies.
For example, if you want to trade options around earnings, look for a service that leans into that approach. If you want to trade options on penny stocks, there are services for that, too.
You’ll also want to think carefully about what type of return-to-risk ratio you want in your options trades. The options trading service you choose should operate within a risk level that you’re comfortable with.
Proven Track Record
Options trading services that issue defined trade recommendations typically have logs of their past trades or measurements of their past performance. These records are important because they allow you to see whether a service has been consistently profitable.
In addition to checking a service’s overall performance record, it’s important to look at the size of its average loss and its largest losses. Understanding how much money a service is willing to lose on a single trade can help you determine if it fits your risk tolerance.
Pricing
Options trading alert services can be expensive. That’s especially true for services that offer multiple trade recommendations each week.
It might be worth paying a high subscription prices if you are trading large amounts of money in options. However, it’s important to think about the return you expect from a service based on its track record and compare that to the subscription cost.
Best Options Alert Services
With those considerations in mind, let’s take a closer look at the 5 best options alert services you can start using today.
Motley Fool Options – Best for Long-term Options Traders
Motley Fool Options is a unique options alert service in that it’s designed for long-term investors. Suggested trades focus on stocks that Motley Fool’s analysts view as long-term winners. These options strategies typically target stocks for which a short-term pullback represents a long-term buying opportunity.
Helpfully, The Motley Fool Options offers a training course and some trades are tagged as beginner-friendly. These features make this service more accessible to new options traders.
The Motley Fool Options costs $999 per year and the service claims an 86% profitability rate.
Market Rebellion – Best for Short-Term Options Traders
Market Rebellion is an options trading service founded by Jon and Pete Najarian, who are well-known options traders, CNBC hosts, and fintech entrepreneurs.
Market Rebellion offers a range of different services for options traders, including “Unusual Options Activity” and “Oracle Essential.” Each Market Rebellion service provides 1-2 real-time trade alerts per week, making it ideal for traders who want to try swing trading options over a few days or weeks.
Each service is tagged with the strategy it targets and the experience level traders need. The most affordable services start at $995 per year.
Sky View Trading – Best for Alerts & Education
Sky View Trading is an options alert service that focuses on short-term options trading opportunities. The service issues daily options trade alerts by email and SMS, making it easy to stay on top of new trades. There’s also a portfolio of options trades that’s consistently updated so you can follow along with the service.
Sky View includes educational features like an in-depth training course. The course is designed for beginners, but offers expert advice that even seasoned options traders will find useful. A Discord chat room also adds a community presence to Sky View’s service.
Sky View Trading costs $149 per month. You can try out the service for 14 days for $14.
Benzinga Pro Options – Best Options Trading Community
Benzinga offers one of the most comprehensive options alert services we’ve seen. It comes with a real-time market news scanner and an unusual options activity scanner. The unusual options activity scanner alerts you to large block trades and options sweeps as they happen. So, you can follow what institutional traders are doing and trade accordingly. Benzinga Pro also has an unusual options calendar, which lets you look back at recent block trades and options sweeps to get an idea of what big bets are riding on a stock.
Benzinga Options Mentorship, the top-tier Benzinga Pro subscription, includes an options-picking newsletter edited by trading analyst Nic Chahine. It’s released twice per month and includes highly actionable details like entry prices and expiration dates for recommended trades. The service also includes access to weekly webinars and an online chat room for discussion.
Benzinga Pro Essential costs $224.97 per month with unusual options activity scanning. Benzinga Options Mentorship costs $457 per month.
Optionsonar – Best for Self-directed Options Traders
Optionsonar is an online options scanner and alert service that’s best suited for self-directed traders. This service will highlight potential trade ideas based on unusual options activity, block trades, dark pool activity, and options sweeps. You can sort recommended trades based on a wide range of criteria, including strategy, strike price, moneyness, expiration, and more.
However, it’s up to you to sift through all of the potential trades presented to figure out which ones are worth pursuing. Optionsonar doesn’t offer a ton of trade research features, so it works best when paired with an in-depth options analysis platform.
Optionsonar plans start at $35 per month.
Market Chameleon – Best for Advanced Options Traders
Market Chameleon is a data-rich options screening tool that’s best for advanced options traders. The platform offers a variety of tools, including an options order flow sentiment scanner, a list of top moving stocks by implied volatility, and a backtester to find the best straddle strategies on a weekly basis. An unusual options activity screener and earnings screener round out the platform for traders in search of catalysts.
Market Chameleon offers several features for free, such as a list of stocks with unusual options volume and an implied volatility ranking report. The Options Trader plan, which includes most options screening and analysis rules, costs $69 per month.
Conclusion: Best Options Trading Alert Service
Options alert services can help you find potential options trades and guide you to profitable strategies. When choosing an options alert service, it’s important to make sure that it aligns with your trading style and has a proven track record of success. Check out the top 5 options alert services we reviewed to find more profitable options trading opportunities today.
Options Alert Services FAQs
What does an options alert service do?
An options alert service helps you identify options trading opportunities and recommends trading strategies to use. Some services offer ready-to-trade recommendations complete with what contracts to purchase. Other services highlight opportunities, but leave it up to traders to determine how to approach a trade.
How much money do I need to trade options?
You can trade options with as little as a few hundred dollars. However, options alert services are expensive, so you’ll want to trade with enough capital to make the subscription worthwhile. To justify the cost of an alert service that costs roughly $1,000 per year, you’ll likely want to trade with at least $10,000.
What brokerage can I use to trade options?
Most online stock brokers offer options trading. However, not all brokers support multi-leg options strategies, which is what many options alerts services recommend using to manage risk. Some popular brokers for options trading include Interactive Brokers, Charles Schwab, and Etrade.
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