Reading Options Symbol

It is not difficult to understand how options symbol is constructed. You have underlying stock symbol, expiration month, expiration date, strike price and type of an options coded in an options symbol. As and example "QQQ NOV13 75 PUT" would state for QQQ put options that expire on the third Friday of 2013 with $75 strike price. It is quite clear and straightforward and there should not be any confusion. However, prior to 2010 old symbol methodology was in place. Since history of our signals goes back to 2005 you may find in our history old options symbols which are not as straightforward and not very clear as it is now. As an example "QQQCQ" or "QAVQV" or "SZCQC" will not give you a lot of information if you do not not know the structure of old options symbols.

before 2010 in order to trade options, you had to look up its symbol. To better understand how options symbols were structured at that time, we have set a hypothetical example below:

Lets say our hypothetical option is traded under the "ABCDE" symbol.

• Each option symbol is build of three parts joined together - five letters in total.
• The first part of a symbol has three letters which reveal the symbol (name) of the underlying stock. In most cases it is the ticker symbol of the underlying stock.
• The second (middle) part of an option symbol has one letters which show (a) the expiration month and (b) identify whether it is a put or a call option (in the table below we show this specification).
• The third (last) part (one letter) of an option symbol reveals the strike price. In our example, the letter "F" points to a strike price ending with 30.

Table 1: Specification of option's type and expiration month

By coming back to our example, the "ABCDEF" option symbol would represent options on ABC stock and this is call option that expire in May with $30 strike price.