What Is Unusual Whales? A Platform For Options Flow And Congressional Trade Tracking
Unusual Whales was launched in 2020 during an era defined by retail traders holding their own against Wall Street during the GameStop short squeeze. This period highlighted the necessity of institutional-level data and trading tools for main street investors which previously would have been inaccessible due to financial or arbitrary constraints. Unusual Whales, a financial data and analytics platform, now exists to fill this gap by providing access to options flow data, institutional activity and political trading activity.
In this guide, you'll learn how the platform works, the key offerings and constraints of the platform, and whether it's right for you based on your experience level and trading needs.
What Is Unusual Whales?
Unusual Whales is a platform for options flow and congressional trade tracking, founded in 2020 by an anonymous team of traders and data analysts. Their mission is to level the playing field by making market insights available to retail traders, whether they're advanced in their trading ability or beginners. The platform pulls options flow and congressional trades data from exchanges and filings and provides these alongside proprietary tools to democratize informed trading.
How Unusual Whales Works
Unusual Whales works by displaying options activity in real time from exchanges and political trading activity from STOCK Act filings. This platform makes institutional-level data and tools available to retail traders, making it easier for traders to acquire alpha whether they're discerning trends from whale trades, spotting anomalies in trade activity which could indicate future price moves or capitalizing on market sentiment. Traders can make use of advanced screeners and set filters to identify profitable trades.
Unusual Whales has been doubling down on increasing access to congressional trade tracking by making data from the STOCK Act database available and searchable through its platform. Like the Dub app, users can find out how politicians and their associated members are trading, and trade along them to achieve the high returns of the public servants who are potentially trading on insider information. Users can detect trends through politician trade tracking, search for trades by politician or party, or find action in specific sectors or by ticker.
Key Features Of Unusual Whales
Unusual Whales offers a suite of advanced tools and advanced data access for both institutional and retail traders. With these tools and this data, traders can trade on insights whether they're reviewing options flow, block trades or the trades of politicians.
Unusual Whales' Real-Time Data feature delivers a real-time feed of options flow, block trades and trades by institutional players. Users can detect trends immediately as trades occur, and set alerts for trade activity for both their phones, desktops or even Discord servers.
Unusual Whales' stock and options screeners offer traders the ability to search through millions of trades by characteristics like ticker, sector or trade size. Users can scan for unusual activity, big price changes or anomalies within options flow. Users can also set up custom screens and set alerts as well as filter across trades by expiration data or level of institutional activity.
Politician Trade Portfolios is an innovative feature, similar to the Autopilot app, which displays trades by Senators, members of the House and their families and staff. Users can review these trades by sector or time period, and review the success or failures of these trades by individual or party. Politicians Trade Portfolios also enables users to detect trends based on politicians' trade activity.
Whales Activity Monitors is a useful feature which shows institutional-sized trades and large block trades in both equities and options. Users can use this feature to detect trends in specific sectors, for certain stocks, and within filters like trades by market cap or price range. This feature also enables users to set alerts for when large trades occur in general.
Options Flow Scanner offers users a scanner of options trades which are institutional-sized. Users can filter by expiration, sector, price range and more. This feature can be used to review trades within a certain time frame and to detect a breakout or reversal for a particular ticker.
The Congressional Trades Tracker reveals trades by Senators, members of the House and other political actors. This feature enables traders to review transactions by sector or company as well as purchases or sales of equities by party or political position. Traders can use the Tracker to detect patterns which may result in future price movements as well as predict future actions by Congress or the White House by trade action.
Options flow reveals institutional activity by whales across options trades like puts, calls and spreads. Options flow can be used to review market sentiment from large trades and to detect reversals or the breakout of a trend from trading activity. Options flow can also be used by traders to assess risk versus reward for trades.
Criticisms and Concerns To Know
Unusual Whales is a useful platform for advanced traders but the data offered could be overwhelming for beginner investors who don't know how to leverage it for successful trading. Another downside of the platform is that its widespread offering of real-time data could reduce the data's edge for traders. Finally, the platform's price tag of $50+ a month could be a bit pricey for investors who don't fully utilize all of the data offered or who don't trade at the volume of higher-volume traders.
On the congressional trading side, if too many traders are trading on data like a certain congressperson's trades, this could decrease the efficiency of the market while also inflating the politician's positions. Politicians' trades may also not be informed despite their wealth of information access, resulting in losses for investors. Congressional trade filing delays can also result in losses in traders if politicians exit the position before the next filing date.
What Type of Investors May Use Unusual Whales?
Unusual Whales is ideal for experienced retail traders looking for an edge by gaining access to institutional trading activity. For example, an options trader could gain an edge by detecting an early signal of an institutional trading play through Unusual Whales. Day traders also utilize the platform to monitor options flow.
The platform's political and congressional insights are also useful for investors who are trying to detect political trends and leverage this for trading. Through congressional trading data, investors can predict potential geopolitical or legislative moves on the horizon like a military action or change in trade policy.
Bottom Line
Unusual Whales is an excellent platform for retail traders seeking actionable insights from options flow data to political trading activity to leverage for profit. With activity monitors for institutional trades and advanced filtering and alert abilities, sophisticated traders can find the signal necessary to effectively trade along with a community of like-minded investors making waves in the market. Unusual Whales continues to add new tools and data access, increasingly making it an ideal option for retail traders seeking alpha.
Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs)
Is Unusual Whales Free To Use?
Unusual Whales does offer limited free access but for its advanced tools, data and API access, you'll need to pay for subscriptions starting at $50 a month.
How Accurate Is Unusual Whales' Congressional Trade Data?
Unusual Whales' congressional trade data is very accurate as it sources its data from official STOCK Act filings and updates this data in nearly-real time.
Is Unusual Whales Beginner Friendly?
Unusual Whales offers advanced analytics and trading tools which do have a learning curve for beginners but if sufficiently motivated, beginners can learn and utilize the tools and data offered.
Where Does Unusual Whales Get Its Data From?
Unusual Whales gets its options flow data from market exchanges and congressional trade data from STOCK Act filings.
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