Home » Service Reviews » LiveVol Review

LiveVol Review – Is This Platform Worth Using?

By Dave

Last Updated

LiveVol Review

Advertising Disclosure

LiveVol Review

  • Quality
  • Value
  • Ease of Use
  • Analysis Tools
  • Customizability
4.2

Summary

If you’re in search of a new options analysis platform, you may have come across LiveVol. Made by exchange operator CBOE, this options analysis platform aims to offer a thorough and complete overview of the market. LiveVol includes additional tools for planning trades, calculating options values, monitoring options stock activity, and more. Is this the platform you’ve been looking for? Before you dive in, read our complete LiveVol review to learn more.

About LiveVol

LiveVol is an advanced options analysis platform from exchange operator CBOE. It offers an in-depth overview of the stock market as well as tools for calculating options values and planning trades.

In our LiveVol review, we’ll show you some of the key features that make this platform stand out.

LiveVol Homepage

LiveVol Pricing Options

LiveVol is available in either Core or Pro versions. LiveVol Core costs $95 per month or $948 per year and includes all of the platform’s features except for the position builder, which is mainly used for executing live trades with Lightspeed. LiveVol Pro adds this feature and costs $300 per month or $3,600 per year.

You can try out LiveVol Pro for 15 days using delayed market data.

LiveVol Features

Stock Summary & Options Chain

The best place to start with analysis in LiveVol is the summary module. This dashboard displays an overview of a stock’s trading volume, VWAP, historical volatility, and implied volatility. It also breaks down the current distribution of put and call options and open interest for those options.

LiveVol Stock Summary

You can then dive into the options chain to see all available options contracts for any US stock. You can sort by expiration date and by strike price relative to the current stock price. The options chain display is highly customizable, enabling you to add columns for options Greeks, open interest, current options volume, and open, low, and high prices. Simply clicking on any option in the table will add it to the position builder if you have LiveVol Pro.

LiveVol Options Chain

Trade Tape & Ticker

The trade tape and ticker within LiveVol make it easy to stay on top of options trading activity throughout the day. The trade tape shows all options trades for a particular stock by default. However, you can customize it to include all stocks in a custom watchlist and filter by strike price, expiration date, trade volume, and more. So, it’s a very useful tool for keeping an eye on activity around a specific set of stocks or a specific contract that you’re interested in.

LiveVol Trade Tape

The ticker operates similarly to the trade tape, but its purview is market-wide. The ticker displays a running list of block trades as well as new 52-week highs and lows in price or 30-day implied volatility.

Time and Sales Analysis

Another useful tool is the time and sales analysis module. This lets you go back in time to see all options trades made for any symbol going back to 2011. You can step through time using a slider as well as filter trades based on a variety of parameters like strike price and trade size.

🏆 Top Rated Services 🏆

Our team has reviewed over 300 services. These are our favorites:
📈  Best Day Trading Service
Investors Underground
🎯  Best Stock Scanner
Trade Ideas
📉 Best Stock Charts
TradingView
💰  Best Stock Picking Service
Motley Fool
📱  Best Mobile Broker
Webull
📊   Best for Stock Research
Seeking Alpha

Interestingly, you can also use this module to look at the best bid and ask quotes at the time a trade was executed. While this is somewhat in the weeds, it can be helpful for advanced traders trying to figure out what exchange to use or when to trade to get the best possible execution price.

LiveVol Time and Sales

Pro Scanner

Despite its name, the Pro Scanner is available in both LiveVol Core and LiveVol Pro. This options scanner offers a powerful way to search for trade opportunities. You can choose from more than 100 scanning parameters around implied and historical volatility, as well as differences in volatility over different timeframes. You can also scan according to order flow characteristics like the average number of puts bought at the asking price, changes in open interest over time, and trade volume over multiple recent days. All custom scans can be saved, and you can set up folders to organize them.

LiveVol Pro Scanner

Like other options services, such as OptionVue and OptionsPlay, LiveVol also comes with a handful of pre-made scans to help you get started. Some of these are scans for popular strategies, such as stocks with unusual options volume or extremely high implied volatility. 

Trade Optimizer

The trade optimizer is another useful feature for analyzing options trades. This module enables you to enter a target price and date for any stock and then returns details about potential options strategies you could use. What’s especially neat about this tool is that it doesn’t just give you the top strategy result. Rather, you can see the top 100 trades by expected return using a variety of options combinations.

LiveVol Trade Optimizer

Customization and Layout

LiveVol is highly customizable both in overall layout and within individual modules. You can choose from a dark, grey, or light theme for the software, as well as set any layout you create as your default. Modules can be opened as panes on your screen or as full-screen windows in tabs. Within most modules, you can customize table columns, choose text coloring for put and call options, and choose whether to show or hide advanced filters.

LiveVol Layout

It’s worth noting that LiveVol also supports an unlimited number of watchlists and alerts. Watchlists can be incorporated into the Pro Scanner to narrow your search space. Alerts can be set based on any combination of conditions, including price, implied volatility, volume, and more.

LiveVol Compatible Brokers

LiveVol only offers options trade execution for Lightspeed accounts. You must use LiveVol Pro to execute trades.

Platform Differentiators

LiveVol is a very advanced options trading platform that includes virtually all the tools you could need to monitor options activity and develop trades. The platform’s flexibility is hard to beat and goes a long way towards making LiveVol so powerful. There are tons of options for sorting and filtering options data, and the platform makes it possible to keep an eye on the entire market even as you dive deep into analyzing a single stock or options contract. There are also no limits on the number of custom scans, alerts, and watchlists you can have, which makes the platform all the more useful for traders employing several different strategies in concert. 

The only major downside to LiveVol is that it has a steep learning curve. Even experienced options traders will need to take some time to organize the platform’s modules and set up a library of scanners.

What Type of Trader is LiveVol Best For?

LiveVol is best for experienced options traders who are looking to take their analysis to the next level. This platform offers a high degree of customizability so that you can bring your own options trading strategies to bear and use historical data to get the best possible execution prices.

LiveVol does have some built-in support for popular options strategies like covered puts and calls. However, the platform is much better suited for traders who want to go beyond these strategies than for those who simply want to find opportunities to apply these basic strategies.

🏆 Top Rated Services 🏆

Our team has reviewed over 300 services. These are our favorites:
📈  Best Day Trading Service
Investors Underground
🎯  Best Stock Scanner
Trade Ideas
📉 Best Stock Charts
TradingView
💰  Best Stock Picking Service
Motley Fool
📱  Best Mobile Broker
Webull
📊   Best for Stock Research
Seeking Alpha

Pros

  • Highly customizable layout
  • Advanced options scanning tools
  • Trade optimizer for popular strategies
  • Analyze historical options trades as far back as 2011
  • Free trial with delayed data

Cons

  • Only compatible with Lightspeed for trade execution
  • Steep learning curve
Day Trade Review

Dave

Dave has been a part-time day trader and swing trader since 2011 when he first became obsessed with the markets. He focuses primarily on technical setups and will hold positions anywhere from a few minutes to a few days. Over his trading career, Dave has tried numerous day trading products, brokers, services, and courses. He continues to test and review new day trading services to this day.

Leave a Comment