Dots Upgrade

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We only introduced OptionDots yesterday, but we’ve already made some important improvements.

  • We’ve given you the choice to have just black dots or have color dots to designate in-the-money (green) or out-of-the-money options (red);
  • As you mouse over any dot, it shows you the strike price and expiration;
  • We’ve also added a new option in Preferences that let you control whether or not the SlopeLinks icons are displayed.

Here is a recap of this feature:

SlopeCharts has a one-of-a-kind way to represent the options contracts that exist for a given financial instrument, and we call them OptionDots. To use them, just click on the Delta symbol (that is, the triangle) on the row of SlopeLinks:

When you do, the color of the triangle will change from black to blue, indicating you are in OptionDots mode. Henceforth, any symbol you look at will show its options (if any) on the chart itself.

Here, for example, is a portion of the SPY chart. Each dot represents a specific strike and expiration. Naturally, there will tend to be far more dots closer to the present time and present price. The farther in-the-money or out-of-the-money you get, or the farther out in time you get, the more sparse the dots become.

As with SlopeCharts in general, you can zoom in to any particular portion of the chart for more detail.

Clicking on any specific dot will bring up the quote for the Call and Put, and the information about the expiration and strike will be shown in the title bar.

You can control whether the dots are black or color by way of the Preferences dialog box. If you choose to have the OptionDots in color, the out-of-the-money ones will be red and the in-the-money ones will be green.

Here is what the color dots look like, as opposed to just the black ones shown above.

For the sake of convenience and accuracy, when you point at any given dot, the strike price and expiration date of that specific option will be shown. This will save you wasted time, since you want to be sure of the correct dot before you click it to get a quote.
