We believe HIRO is the best system available for viewing the impact options are having on stocks in real-time. There are two unique insights that HIRO provides. The first is the impact over a time period during the live trading day when large options hedging flows may have a cumulative impact on the volatility and direction of a stock or index’s movement. Secondly, there are acute trades which take place that will need to be hedged, and by tracking this activity there may be opportunities to adjust positions.

Knowing the options pressure can help your trading by empowering you to follow trends, or, to identify when options pressure shuts off and a stock is more likely to revert back to a previous price level. To take advantage of such moves, and find the most actionable stocks inside HIRO, this quick three-step checklist can help you identify stocks that may have trading opportunities right now.

While there is no one way to trade using HIRO, the following checklist and trading strategies are intended to help you make use of the signal:

Step One: Select the name you want to trade by typing it in the search field.

• If you are looking for a new stock to trade, check the trending list or names that are moving.
• If you are looking for squeeze potential or expensive premium, check out the Scanners page for names our metrics have identified as interesting.

Step Two: Watch for when HIRO is nearing a Call Wall or Put Wall.

• The Call Wall can reveal a line of resistance, and can mark a top if the HIRO indicator line flattens.
• The Put Wall can reveal a line of support, and this indicates a bottom if the HIRO indicator line flattens. Traders often observe strong changes in HIRO behavior at the Put Wall, meaning price action can reverse sharply.

Step Three: Look to see if the flows are short-term or longer dated .

• Toggle the Next Expiry flow to assess short-term options buying.
• If the flow is primarily next expiry, the stock’s price movement may be less stable and prone to reversal.
• If the flow is primarily longer-dated options, this indicates a higher likelihood of more stable price action.
• When longer dated short puts are added in particular, we often see volatility measurably decrease, providing positive gamma to the market.
• 0DTE positions remain highly volatile as these trades are rapidly opened or closed. Between 2020-2025 0DTE volume grew over 150%.

Step Four: Check for HIRO Flow Alerts, which indicate a net change in delta, meaning options hedging activity is switching providing positive pressure to negative pressure.

• When a flow alert goes off, wait for flows to “shut off” and look for reversals.

Step Five: Examine the HIRO Signal gauge in the Stock Screener table. 

• Check the range of HIRO over the last 30 days for any stock. The gray background represents the entire 30 day range, so look for coloration indicating where buying or selling pressure has been for the last 5 days.
• If the bolded circle is towards either the right or left end of the gauge, that indicates HIRO is showing heightened buying or selling pressure compared to the last 30 days. This could indicate an event taking place.

Tickers like TSLA typically have high options volume each day, but the impact of options hedging pressure on TSLA may shift. The HIRO Signal gauge shows you the impact of options pressure on each name, relative to historical levels.

Statistics: Check out SpotGamma’s Statistics on how our key levels have performed for the SPX using data from 2018 - 2024.

SpotGamma Alpha subscribers can exclusively access the SpotGamma HIRO Indicator inside the SpotGamma Dashboard here.

Additionally, here is a link to the SpotGamma HIRO User Guide.