Using the Research Feature to Analyze a Stock

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When a well known stock falls a long way from its highs, the question is always the same: is this a bargain or a falling knife? And if there's a trade here, is it better to buy directional exposure or sell premium into the fear? The Research feature in Option Samurai is built to help you work through that decision in one place.

Let us show you how I'd use it, with Nike (NKE) as the example. As I'm writing this, NKE is at $43.95, well below its 3 year high above $139.

Step 1: Start with the Price Chart

The first tab in Stock Analysis is the Price Chart, and with NKE the picture is clear right away: a long downtrend, more than 68% off the peak. But look closer and the selling looks like it's running out of steam.

The MACD (24/50/50) below the chart has flattened out near zero and looks close to a bullish crossover, which is a classic early reversal signal. The Stochastic has been sitting in oversold territory for a while. Two indicators are telling you the same story: NKE is oversold.

The analyst side backs it up: the average price target is above $60, which is more than 35% upside from here. That's a meaningful gap.

Step 2: Check the IV / OI / Volume section

Scroll down (or jump to IV / OI / Volume in the left menu) to see what the options market thinks of the same stock:

IV Rank: 48.81%. Current IV sits about halfway through its 1 year range. Not cheap, not expensive. This is the spot you want: you can sell premium without worrying that volatility is already crushed, and the skew still leans your way.
OI Put/Call Ratio: 0.75. Under 1.0, which leans bullish. More open interest in calls than puts means positioning is already pointing up.
Volume Put/Call Ratio: 0.67. Today's flow is call heavy too, which lines up with the OI reading.

Step 3: Look at the relevant scans

Near the bottom of the Stock Analysis page there's a section called "NKE appears in these scans." This is where the platform gives you extra value. What we are doing here is that we're checking the stock against every active strategy scan in real time, so you don't have to.

NKE shows up in a handful of bullish leaning strategies, such as these 2 predefined scans:

Jade Lizard on Good Oversold Companies [Advanced]
Double Risk Reversal on Oversold Stocks with Good Profit on +2ATR Move [Advanced]

The Jade Lizard scan is the one you could look at first. Click into it and the screener opens already filtered to NKE, with RSI in oversold territory and IV Rank at 48.81%. The scan pulls up several Jade Lizard combinations expiring in the next 14 to 28 days, with very good potential annualized returns:

Step 4: Dig deeper with Implied Volatility Analysis

If you want more context before placing the trade, click Implied Volatility Analysis in the left menu for a full IV breakdown:

The IV vs HV chart shows current IV is below historical volatility. In plain terms, the options market is pricing in less movement than the stock has actually been making. The IV/HV gap here is −20.43, which the platform rates as "Low."
The Skew Analysis section reads as bullish: call skew (+0.66) is higher than put skew (+0.38), meaning the market is paying more for upside than for downside protection.

Step 5: Place the trade

At this point the setup is clear. You have:

A deeply oversold stock with solid analyst upside
Moderate IV, good for selling premium with a bullish structure
Bullish OI and volume skew
A Jade Lizard scan that's already given you a ready to use trade

From here you can click straight into a trade from the scan results, or hit the + New Trade button in the top right to open the analyzer and build your position from scratch. The Jade Lizard (sell a put plus sell a call spread) brings in premium right away while leaving full upside if NKE works its way back toward analyst targets.

Why this setup makes sense

Oversold conditions tend to bounce back, especially in large, fundamentally sound names like Nike.
Moderate IV lets you sell premium at a fair price without being short volatility after it's already been crushed.
Bullish positioning (put-call ratio under 1, bullish skew) tells you the trade isn't contrarian. The options market is leaning the same way.
A wide gap to analyst targets gives you a fundamental reason to be bullish, not just a technical one.

Wrapping up

In a few minutes, starting from a single ticker on the Research page, you went from "this stock looks interesting" to a specific options trade with defined risk and multiple signals pointing the same way. That's the Research feature doing its job.

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