Institutional options positioning, published every market day at 9:00 AM ET — after it survives all three gates.
Anyone can read the tape. We publish only what survives all three gates.
After the close, we screen the day's options tape for institutional-scale positions — trades big enough that someone with real information could be behind them. Retail noise never enters the pipeline.
The next morning, every candidate is checked against settled open interest. If the position didn't actually open, it's out. No speculation on phantom trades.
Then the company itself gets a vote: we run the fundamentals and the technicals. If the flow tells a story the business and the chart don't back — it's dropped, no matter how big the trade was. Flow that survives has size, proof, and a reason.
What passes lands in your inbox at 9:00 AM ET — and is tracked from entry to exit.
Anyone can show you a big options trade. We track every flagged position from the moment it opens — through every add, trim, and exit — and tell you each morning, before the bell, whether the smart money is still in the trade or has cashed out. You're never left guessing what happened after the alert.
Every whale, tracked end to end
A real sample of an Applied Research daily email — commentary and cards, exactly as sent.
The Applied Analyst · Daily Flow
The morning read · Wednesday, July 15, 2026 · 7:42 AM ET
Yesterday brought three prints that cleared our bar and held into this morning's confirmation. Here they are, in the order we'd rank them by conviction.
A $3.3M sweep lifted the $205 calls above the ask into Tuesday's close — modest size for NVDA but aggressive fill on a strike sitting only a hair above spot. It confirmed cleanly this morning, so we're treating it as a real add rather than intraday noise. Not a lottery ticket: near-the-money delta and a two-week window mean the buyer wants the move soon, not eventually.
The Applied Analyst$30.4M through the $1900 calls, swept above the ask on a name that rarely sees this kind of premium go through in a single session. The strike is out-of-the-money and the vol is rich, so this is a directional bet with real conviction and real risk of decay — but the position held into this morning, which is what makes it worth flagging rather than just cataloguing.
The Applied AnalystA $24M block into December 2027 $600 calls — well out of the money, but with 18 months of runway. That structure trades near-term theta for cleaner exposure to a sustained move higher; it's positioning, not an earnings bet. It's still live this morning, which is why it earns the third spot.
The Applied AnalystThat's the read for this morning. We'll be back tomorrow with fresh prints and any updates on the three above — including whether the whales stay in or step out.
— The Applied Analyst desk
Research and education, not financial advice.