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Monitoring (Alerts)

You can now make Option Samurai monitor the market for you and alert you if a new options trade fits your criteria. This is a very powerful tool that saves you time and helps you gain an edge in the market, even if you are not in front of the computer all the time.



Option Samurai Supports the following alerting functions:

Watch a saved scan - notifies you of new additions to a scan you choose. This is useful for finding new stocks to trade.




Watch a Scan




Watch a scan can be activated on any predefined or saved scan. When active, Samurai will send an email on any new stock that appears in the scan. 


How to use:


Start watching:

  1. Make sure the scan is saved.
  2. Click the 'watch' icon. Click 'Confirm' to start watching.
  3. You will receive an email when a new ticker appears on the first page of the scan.


Stop watching:

  1. in the saved scans tab or predefined scans tab, click on a watched scan (you can see a green icon next to the scan)
  2. Click stop watching.
  3. Confirm.


Tips:

  1. It is better to monitor restrictive scans because they provide less noise and more valuable alerts.
  2. Using the monitoring feature with your watchlist (universe) is very powerful and will save you a lot of time in your trading.
  3. If you hit your monitoring limit, every new scan you monitor will replace the oldest monitor.
  4. If you see a red icon next to the scan, there is an error. Click on the watch icon to see details on that error and how to fix it.



Usecases


Using the monitoring features is very intuitive and powerful. Moreover, they work very well with the other components in Samruai. Here are some use-cases examples:

  1. Find new naked put trades on stocks in your watchlist that dropped 5% in the trading session.
  2. Find new Iron condor trades that have an extremely high-profit ratio.
  3. Find new trades on stocks with unusual volume.
  4. Find cheap calls to trades on stocks in your watchlist. 
  5. Get scan results to your email in the morning and mid-day.
  6. Get a weekend report on stocks that have dividends and earnings in the following week.
  7. And much, much more.

Check out an example use case with a step-by-step guide here.



Advance - Monitoring logic


This section describes the logic of the watch feature to provide a better understanding of how it works. You can skip this part.

  1. The watch feature is initialized by taking a scan and using that snapshot to compare changes.
  2. We use only the first page results (first 25 results). So sorting is very valuable. 
  3. We run the scan intraday and compare the results. Every time a new stock appears on the first page of the scan, we send an email.
  4. You will get notified on each stock a maximum of one time a day (this reduces noise in choppy markets)

I Received an Alert, but the Ticker is not Appearing in the Results

Sometimes you might receive an alert for a ticker that doesn’t currently appear in your scan results. This usually happens when the ticker was very close to meeting your scan criteria at the time the alert was generated.

We run scans every few minutes and compare the latest results with previous ones. If a new ticker enters the first page of results, you’ll receive an email alert. However, due to rapid changes in the options market, that ticker might fall just outside your filters by the time you check the platform.

For example, imagine your scan filters for trades with a maximum profit above $50. If a ticker’s trade fluctuates around that threshold (e.g., between $49.99 and $50.01), it might briefly qualify, trigger the alert, and then move out of range before you refresh the scan.

Let’s say that, for a given scan, you receive an alert mentioning SRPT, UPST, HD, BTDR, and XBI. When you open the scan, you might only see two of these results:



However, if you slightly adjust one of your filters (for instance, changing the moneyness setting from “From 5 to 26” to “Above stock price”) you could see all five tickers appear again:



What you can do

  • Slightly loosen one or more filters (for example, lower the profit threshold or adjust moneyness criteria).
  • Refresh or rerun the scan after a few minutes, small price movements can change the output.
  • Remember that flexibility is key: options prices move fast, so quick adjustments often help you rediscover the trade.
This is normal behavior and reflects how dynamic the market is. The monitoring system notifies you as soon as a new opportunity matches your filters, even if that match only lasts for a short time.


Read more:


  1. All unique features (KB Article)
  2. How to create a watchlist (universe)- KB Article
  3. See a use-case using the monitoring system here - KB Article
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