Best Options Trading Alert Service

Some people are making a lot of money in the options world right now.

But options trading gets complicated, quick. ⚡️

What should you look out for? What strategy is needed? Do you need to be glued to a candlestick chart all day?

This is where options trading alert services come into play. ✅

Expert traders will do the work for you—watching charts, looking for patterns, and notifying you of their moves. It’s almost like having a professional options trader managing your portfolio—except much cheaper.

Investing can be very risky, especially with the volatility of today’s market. Yet this is where options trading becomes especially attractive: it can be used to hedge against losses, as you can profit from a stock that decreases in value.

Options trading alert services are run by professionals who notify you when a good trading opportunity appears. They’re not exactly cheap, and blindly following their advice probably isn’t the best idea. But they are powerful tools that can help you make more profitable trades.

Finding the right alert service isn’t easy—so we’ve reviewed most of them to help you narrow down your search to the top 5.

Most Popular Options Trading Alert Services

1.  The Trading Analyst – Best Overall

Coming in at the top of our list, The Trading Analyst is a well-balanced alert service that offers a great mix of features at an affordable price. The service features a strategy that focuses on swing trading, and the recommendations given are easy to follow without devoting hardly any time to trading.

The Trading Analyst’s record speaks for itself. The service has a profit factor of 2.05, with 52% of trades being profitable. A profit factor of 2.05 indicates that the service’s trades that profit make a little over two times as much as what is lost when the trades are not profitable.

If you had been following the alerts from this service from 2018, you would have seen an IRR of 141% – which beats the returns of the S&P 500 by quite a margin. Options also allow you to profit when the market is falling, as it has recently been doing.

The Trading Analyst will set you back $787 per year (though there are cheaper quarterly and monthly plans as well). Although that may be quite a sum to fork out at once, options trading alert services are expensive – and this price is quite lower than most of the competition.

On average, users will receive anywhere from 2-10 trade alerts per week, with targeted gains ranging from 50% to 100%. Alerts are delivered in real-time via SMS messages, and users also gain access to a real-time portfolio tracker, as well as an educational database. The team is quite vocal that they do not chase trades, so some weeks are slower than others.

The one thing that is lacking with this particular alert service is any sort of screener or thorough research tools. With that being said, this service is aimed at the trader who doesn’t have time to conduct such research, and primarily wants someone else to do that research for them, without paying the hefty cost of a portfolio manager.

It also offers a weekly report that helps keep you up to date on current market events and prepares you for the following week.

Affordable, with a little bit of something for everyone, and with few flaws that can easily be overlooked, The Trading Analyst comes in first in our review.

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2. The Motley Fool Options – Best Runner-Up

Motley Fool’s options service comes in at second place in our review. Launched back in 2009, it is run by one of the most recognizable companies in the world of finance. The Fool’s option alert service functions in a similar way to their renowned stock picking service.

Motley Fool Options is well-suited toward swing-traders and investors who want to take a long-term approach to options. This is a double-edged sword, however – this alert service will only give you a couple of reports each month.

However, the options that this service does recommend have a winning track record. The picks provided by Motley Fool Options have yielded profits 84.6% of the time – and the winning picks far outweigh the few wrong calls.

Perhaps the biggest advantage that this service offers is its educational section. Titled Options U, the Fool’s educational materials are split into three levels and cover everything from the very basics to some quite advanced options trading strategies.

Although few in number, the alerts offered are quite in-depth, explain everything that you should do step-by-step, and include explanations behind the strategy and rationale of the suggestion, as well as alternative strategies.

The service is not without its flaws, however. With the price coming in at a sizable $999 per year, it is hard to recoup what you pay for the subscription if you have a small portfolio. However, when all is said and done, the winning track record of the Fool’s option alert service, along with its fantastic educational offering make it a strong contender.

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3. Optionsonar – Best Research Capabilities

Optionsonar is an options trading service that blurs the boundaries between an alert service and a stock analysis service. Although the research functions that it offers are powerful and extensive, the options alerts from this service can’t quite stand up to those of the competition.

Optionsonar functions as a browser-based platform and the brunt of this service is dedicated to analyzing the activity of the options market. The service’s options activity scanner gives you a detailed overlook of large moves in the market which signify the trading activity of institutional investors.

That gives you quite a leg up on the competition – knowing what the biggest players in the market are anticipating is a big advantage. The service also offers a useful options block trade screener.

Along with this, Optionsonar also provides an order flow screener which uses clear-cut visualization tools and utilizes customizable parameters. The service also comes with a watchlist that allows you to track the options activity tied to certain stocks.

When it comes to alerts, Optionsonar drops the ball somewhat. Alerts that signal unusual trading activity are sent out as push notifications, text messages, and emails, but like with all other tools that Optionsonar offers, they don’t actually offer a plan of action.

Optionsonar does offer customers a wide variety of tools – however, to truly make the information that they give you actionable, you have to know how to interpret the data in front of you. 

Optionsonar isn’t a good fit for beginners – and while seasoned options traders will find the tools at their disposal useful, this is one options service that works best when paired with a dedicated alert service and a broker specializing in options trading. However, at $109 a month, it may be too expensive for most traders.

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4. Market Chameleon – Good for Experienced Traders

Market Chameleon’s options trading service is full of useful analysis tools that can offer you plenty of actionable information. However, it does require experience to use – so while veteran options traders will find great value here, beginners will struggle to make use of this tool.

Although the user interface is quite dated, Market Chameleon does manage to display relevant information rather neatly. The unusual volume scanner tool lets you know which stocks are seeing above-average options activity, and you will also gain access to reports on catalyst-driven market activity. 

Keeping a close eye on volume can shine a light on opportunities you might have otherwise missed, like silver options which have been popularized recently. In much the same way, the order flow screener allows you to gauge market sentiment based on concrete data rather than speculation or gut feeling. The most bullish and bearish stocks with regard to recent options activity will also be displayed.

Market Chameleon’s options screener allows you to customize parameters and backtest 18 different options trading strategies. The service also has a watchlist feature, which allows you to set up customizable alerts that are triggered when a stock that you’re watching behaves a certain way.

However, Market Chameleon suffers from the same drawbacks as Optionsonar – it offers little in the way of education, isn’t particularly user-friendly, and tries to offer so many features that the actual alerts end up being the least impressive ones.

So, what does that leave us with? Market Chameleon has a clunky user interface, and utilizes some rather aggressive upselling techniques – but if you have the necessary experience and can afford the $1188 price tag, you’ll be getting a very well-made platform for researching options.

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5. Sky View Trading – Good Educational Material

Sky View Trading was founded in 2013 by Adam Thomas and Eli Grelecki. The platform has a strong focus on education, while the alerts that the service provides aim to provide consistent returns by utilizing spread-based strategies.

This options service shines when it comes to education. Members get access to over 5 hours of well-made video content that is divided into 8 chapters, complete with quizzes to test your mastery of each subject.

On top of that, Sky View Trading also maintains a trader chatroom and forum, allowing you to easily communicate with other options traders and learn from them as well. The answer database offers plenty of useful information for beginners.

Alerts are received via SMS and email and are sent out each time Thomas and Galecki make a trade. The duo also makes trade review videos that are sent out to customers, and occasionally stream live trading sessions, which allow you to see how they think and operate up close.

The strategies that Thomas and Galecki use are focused on low-risk trades that vary in time frame from a couple of days to up to a week. This methodology is particularly useful for assets with unpredictable prices, such as the growing bitcoin options.

Their particular brand of swing trading doesn’t offer huge returns, but it does have the benefit of being consistently profitable.

However, Sky View Trading is expensive. The elite plan, which offers all of the features we’ve talked about so far will set you back $199 per month. You can subscribe to their alert service for $99 per month, however, that is a high price for just a single feature.

If you can afford the price of this service, the well-produced educational materials they offer can help you become quite an experienced options trader.

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What is an Options Trading Alert Service? 🚨

Options trading alert services are used by traders to make more profitable trades. They do so by notifying you when a group of experts, aided by advanced algorithms and huge sets of analyzed data come to a decision to make a particular trade.

When that happens, you receive a notification detailing the recommended approach to the trade in question. Alert services differ in methodology, frequency of alerts, and the timespan of trades, but they all offer detailed instructions for the trading ideas that they recommend to traders.

Options trading alert services are a great tool for beginners and experts alike. They offer new trading ideas, help retail traders to save precious time, and are a good way to acquire practical experience and actually start trading options while benefiting from the reduced risk that comes with following expert advice.

Not everyone has the time necessary to constantly monitor the market for options trading opportunities. Sure, you can enlist the help of a money manager – but the price tag of those services is far out of reach for most investors. Options trading alert services offer a way to get some of the same benefits at a far more affordable price point.

Options Trading Service Types 🗂

This guide deals with options trading alert services – but it pays to know what other types of options trading services exist, as they exhibit synergy, and using different types of these services together can give you a much broader and better-balanced perspective.

In general, these services fall into one of three categories, although rarely any service will fit neatly into just one category. Options picking services give you trading ideas – some give you recommendations each day, while others offer weekly suggestions. 

Options trading alert services fall into this category. They recommend which options contracts an investor should buy and sell, and they also provide exact entry and exit points. The best of these services have strong records when it comes to returns, and although not every suggestion will be a win, following their advice is a great way to increase your gains and save time.

The second category is options analysis services. They’re geared toward more veteran traders and are used to analyze a trader’s own strategies by looking at the profit and loss potential and the likelihood of success of specific strategies. These services often come with advanced screening tools that allow traders to find new trading opportunities.

The third category is education services. Their focus is on providing educational materials and teaching you how to develop and test options trading strategies. A lot of these services have social components – forums or stock chat rooms that allow you to communicate with other traders.

How Options Trading Alert Services Work ⚙️

Option trading alert services function by notifying you when the team of professionals running the services decides to make a trade. How often these alerts happen depends on the service in question – with some offering alerts each day, while others do so much more sporadically.

So, how do these services know when to send out an alert? It’s simple – they use a mix of algorithms and professional oversight by experts. Using vast quantities of publicly available data and the ever-useful tool of machine learning, these services construct predictive models which are then rigorously tested. 

When the algorithms detect an upcoming movement in price, usually by using a combination of technical and fundamental analysis, the stock alert service’s human element takes a closer look at the surging stocks and then a recommendation is made—for instance, the software would pick up on an overall boom in the markets, as well as a spike in individual stock price.

These alerts are sent out in real-time, and usually entail a recommendation of exactly what options contracts you should buy, when you should buy them, and what the target for selling them is. Although alerts give you an estimation of when you should sell, you will also receive sell alerts in case things don’t go exactly as planned.

How to Use an Options Trading Alert Service ✅

A vast majority of options trading alert services function as web-based platforms. In other words, you log in to their site, and you’ll gain access to their analysis features, watchlists, and educational materials from there.

As far as the alerts themselves go, they are usually delivered by text messages, emails, or push notifications. It goes without saying that the more avenues for alerts a service offers, the better it is for the customer.

So, how do you use a service like this in the most efficient manner? We’d recommend keeping it open at the same time as your stock brokerage’s trading platform. 

This will give you access to the options market and analysis tools at the same time, and allows you to easily switch from watching educational videos and reading guides to the real world, where you can test out your knowledge (that’s one of the reasons some day traders have multiple screens—it isn’t just to show off).

In fact, you should keep both your platform and the alert service open at all times. At the end of the day, when an alert pops up, you’ll want to be able to place trades as soon as possible.

How Trading Alerts Can Help You 🚀

There are numerous ways in which a trading alert service can help you achieve greater returns on your investments. The first and most obvious one is, of course, by following the alerts themselves – all of the services we’ve reviewed have great track records as far as returns are concerned.

But don’t be fooled – there’s much more to it, and the benefits don’t end there. Options are complex – as derivatives generally are. They’re very difficult to understand, sensitive to supply and demand, and trading them requires a lot of technical knowledge that you can only get by diving into difficult-to-understand jargon.

The alert services will give you some ideas on what to trade, which is a welcome advantage even if you’re already an experienced options trader. One of their main benefits is the amount of time and effort that they will save you. This is also a huge boon early-on in your trading journey, as it frees up time while still allowing you to get the benefits of hands-on experience. 

Following their recommendations to a t isn’t ideal, but it should generally net you profits in the beginning. However, if you apply yourself to learning about options, and combine that effort with an alert service, you’re going to start to get the hang of things on a much deeper level.

Sooner or later, you will begin to notice similarities and patterns when it comes to the trades that the service alerts you. In the long-term, this is the biggest benefit of these services – they give you a fast-track to a decent level of knowledge regarding how to research options and successfully execute trades by yourself. 

What to Expect from an Options Trading Alert Service 💡

Before we end this guide, we have to talk about what you can realistically expect from these services. Options trading is a risky business – and nothing will ever change that. Although it is often billed as such, options trading isn’t an easy way to get money – and it definitely isn’t an easy way to get rich quickly

We’ve reviewed 5 good options trading alert services. Each of them is legitimate, has a solid track record, and brings plenty to the table. But they don’t offer straight and narrow paths to success. Yes, following their recommendations can sometimes simply lead to profits – but blindly following anyone’s advice is a recipe for disaster.

Use these services with a healthy dose of reserve. At the end of the day, the only thing that you can absolutely rely on 100% of the time is your own knowledge. These alert services can be a great tool – provided that you take the time out to become a sufficiently skilled trader to use them properly.

As you continue using these alert services, you will notice patterns and get a knack for research. This might be the most valuable thing about options alert services – they offer a pathway to becoming a skilled researcher as far as options are considered. 

Be wary, however. We vouch for the services that we’ve reviewed here – but there are many scams posing as options trading alert services out there. If you’re taking a chance on a service we haven’t reviewed, be extra careful. 

Other services might not be scams, but use unreliable methodologies and offer subpar results – so keep your ear to the ground and pay attention to reviews, as well as customer sentiment. Even good services might make a few customers unhappy, but no good company has negative reviews all the way through.