OpScoutOpScout Methodology & Data Disclosure
Version 1.2 · Effective date: October 17, 2026
This document describes how the OpScout service currently obtains data, evaluates Monitors, and produces the values shown with Alerts and in your own records. It describes the Service as it operates on the effective date above. When the methodology changes, we will update this document and its version.
This document forms part of the OpScout Terms of Use. Please read it together with the Financial Data & Alert Risk Disclosure. Nothing here is investment advice or a recommendation.
1. Where values come from
Every value OpScout uses falls into one of four groups. This document labels each value accordingly.
| Label | Meaning |
|---|---|
| Sourced | A value reported directly by a third-party market data provider or other licensed data source, such as a price, bid, ask, volume or days to expiration. |
| Provider-calculated | A value that the data source calculates and supplies, such as an option's implied volatility, its out-of-the-money percentage or a probability. OpScout receives these values as supplied. OpScout does not independently reconstruct, verify or warrant the data source's calculation method. |
| OpScout-computed | A value or decision that OpScout's own software produces, such as an option's return at its bid, whether a condition is met, or which contract ranks first among your matches. |
| User-entered | A value you enter yourself, such as a trade, a fee or the value of an asset in your Portfolio. OpScout does not check it. |
OpScout does not publicly identify its market data providers, except where law, regulation, contract or a mandatory license attribution requires it.
2. When Monitors are evaluated
- On a schedule, not continuously. OpScout evaluates Monitors in recurring cycles. Under the current configuration, a cycle runs approximately every 15 minutes during the U.S. regular trading session described in Section 3: the first at the 9:30 a.m. Eastern Time open, the last at 3:45 p.m. Eastern Time (12:45 p.m. on early-close days). No cycles run outside the regular session. A Monitor is normally evaluated in the first cycle after it becomes due. When many options Monitors are due at once, or an evaluation fails, some are evaluated in a later cycle. A condition that is met briefly between cycles, or only after the last cycle of a session, may never be detected.
- Not when you save. Creating, editing, resuming or turning on a Monitor does not evaluate it, whether you do it in the app or through a connected app. After you create a Monitor, change its condition or frequency, resume it or turn it back on, it is first evaluated in the next cycle or, while the regular session is closed, in the first cycle after the session next opens. The app shows when that first check is due.
- Once and Repeat. A Monitor set to Once is evaluated in every cycle until its condition is met. A Monitor set to Repeat becomes due again when its Repeat interval has passed, and is then evaluated in the first cycle after that: the interval sets both how often the Monitor is checked and how often you can be notified while its condition remains met. The intervals offered are shown in the app. If a Repeat interval ends while the regular session is closed, the Monitor is next evaluated in the first cycle after the session opens.
- Delivery comes later. A Notification is attempted after its Alert is recorded. Failed delivery attempts may be retried over a period of hours, and may still fail, so a Notification for an Alert recorded during the session may arrive after the session has closed. Delivery time also depends on the delivery channel, the network, your device and the limits in Section 11.
The schedule may change, and timing is not guaranteed.
3. Market sessions
OpScout evaluates Monitors only during the U.S. regular trading session: 9:30 a.m. to 4:00 p.m. Eastern Time on days the U.S. stock exchanges are open, ending at 1:00 p.m. Eastern Time on scheduled early-close days. OpScout takes these days and hours from the exchanges' published holiday and early-close calendar. During those hours it also checks the market status reported by its data source, and it does not evaluate Monitors in a cycle in which that status shows the market closed, for example during an unscheduled closure, or cannot be read.
Outside the regular session, OpScout does not evaluate Monitors and does not produce Alerts. This includes pre-market, after-hours and overnight trading, weekends and exchange holidays. In particular:
- A condition that is met only during pre-market, after-hours or overnight trading does not produce an Alert. If it is still met when the session opens, it may produce an Alert in the first cycle of that session.
- Price Monitors are evaluated against the regular-session price reported by the data source. Pre-market, after-hours and overnight prices are not used.
- Options screens for Monitors, and the one-off check in Section 8.1, run only during the regular session.
- A Notification for an Alert recorded during the session may still be delivered after the session closes (Section 2).
Some brokers and trading venues offer extended-hours and overnight trading. OpScout's monitoring does not cover those sessions. Prices and other values that the Service displays outside the regular session may come from an earlier session and may be stale.
4. Price Monitors
| Item | Method |
|---|---|
| Value monitored | The latest regular-session price the data source reports for the security (Section 3). Sourced. |
| Condition | Above is met when the price is at or above your threshold. Below is met when the price is at or below your threshold. Equality counts as met. OpScout-computed. |
| Timing | The data source's own update time can differ from when OpScout reads the price, and from when the Alert is recorded. |
5. Market-Cap Monitors
| Item | Method |
|---|---|
| Value monitored | The market capitalization as reported by the data source. Sourced. OpScout does not calculate market capitalization. The share count and price behind it are the data source's own and may not be current. |
| Condition | The same inclusive comparison as for price: at or above, or at or below, your threshold. OpScout-computed. |
6. Options Monitors: Covered Call and Cash-Secured Put
6.1 What these Monitors do
A Covered Call Monitor screens call options on the underlying security you select. A Cash-Secured Put Monitor screens put options on it.
OpScout sends your criteria to an options-screening service operated by a licensed data source. That service returns the contracts that match. OpScout then reads each returned contract's current bid and ask from the data source, calculates each contract's premium and returns itself at the bid, applies further checks of its own and ranks the results.
These Monitors cover U.S.-listed options. The strategy names describe the screening rule you selected. They do not mean the strategy is suitable for you.
6.2 Your criteria
| Criterion | How it is applied |
|---|---|
| Expiration: day range | Contracts whose days to expiration fall within your minimum and maximum, inclusive. Days to expiration are Sourced, as reported by the data source. |
| Expiration: specific dates | Only contracts expiring on exactly the dates you choose. OpScout-computed. |
| Strike: relative | An out-of-the-money distance, either a minimum percentage or a preset range (from 1% to 50% for a Covered Call and from 1% to 99% for a Cash-Secured Put), compared with the contract's out-of-the-money percentage. That percentage is Provider-calculated. Only contracts that are out of the money for the strategy are considered. |
| Strike: absolute | A strike-price condition you enter, compared with each contract's listed strike. OpScout-computed. |
| Minimum annualized return | The screening service first applies it to its own annualized figure, to narrow the contracts it returns. OpScout then applies it again to its own annualized return at the bid (Section 6.3), and only contracts that meet it there match. OpScout-computed. |
| Implied volatility range | The contract's implied volatility as reported. Provider-calculated. |
| Maximum in-the-money probability | Applied using the data source's probability that the contract expires out of the money. A maximum in-the-money probability of X% is applied as an out-of-the-money probability of at least 100 − X%. Provider-calculated. These probabilities come from the data source's models. They are estimates, not the actual likelihood of any outcome. |
| Underlying filter | An optional range for the underlying security's price or market capitalization, in U.S. dollars, applied by the screening service to its own figures. Sourced. |
| Quote floors | Every screen requires a bid and an ask of at least $0.01. Sourced. |
Percentages are stated in percentage points throughout. For example, 15 means 15%.
Minimum open interest, minimum option volume and a minimum bid can no longer be set in the app. A Monitor created before they were withdrawn may still be screened with them.
Some options-screening services apply default restrictions of their own, such as a minimum company size or share price. Unless you set an underlying filter, OpScout instructs the screening service not to apply its default restrictions on market capitalization or share price, so those restrictions do not narrow your rule.
6.3 Returns and premium: OpScout-computed at the bid
OpScout calculates every return and premium it matches, ranks or reports on itself, from the contract's bid, the price at which a sold option is valued. It does not use the screening service's own returns, premium or option price for these values.
| Value | Method |
|---|---|
| Bid and ask | Read from the data source for each returned contract. Sourced. A contract without a positive bid is excluded. |
| Capital | Covered Call: the underlying price that the screening service reports with the contract, less the bid. Cash-Secured Put: the strike, less the bid. OpScout-computed. |
| Interval return | The bid divided by the capital. OpScout-computed. |
| Annualized return | The interval return × 365 ÷ the number of days to expiration, counted in fractions of a day from the evaluation to 4:00 p.m. Eastern Time on the expiration date. Simple, not compounded. OpScout-computed. |
| Annualized return if the shares are called away (Covered Call only) | (bid + strike − underlying price) ÷ capital, annualized in the same way. OpScout-computed. |
| Premium per contract | The bid × the contract's multiplier, rounded to the cent. OpScout works out the multiplier from the figures the screening service supplies. OpScout-computed. |
Returns are rounded to 0.001 percentage points. The day count uses 4:00 p.m. Eastern Time even on early-close days, which makes the annualized return slightly lower on those days. When few days remain to expiration, including on the expiration date itself, annualized returns can be very large and very sensitive to small changes.
Treat these values as estimates. Verify any value with your broker before acting.
6.4 Quotes recorded with an Alert
When an Alert names a contract, OpScout records the bid and ask it used for that contract. Sourced. If OpScout cannot read the bids and asks for a screen, for example because a request to the data source fails or times out, the Monitor is not evaluated in that cycle: OpScout never falls back to the screening service's prices.
6.5 Result limits and partial option chains
- Row limit. A single screen returns at most 1,000 contracts, and the screening service provides no further pages. The screening service orders its results by its own annualized figure, highest first, so contracts beyond the limit, which are never seen, are those with the lowest figures. A screen can cover only part of an option chain.
- Missing data. Contracts that lack data a calculation requires are excluded, for example a contract without a positive bid, or, for a Covered Call, without an underlying price.
- Match count. The number of matches reported is the number of matching contracts among those returned.
6.6 Ranking and the named contract
When several contracts match, OpScout names one and reports the rest as a count. The order is OpScout-computed:
- higher annualized return at the bid first (Section 6.3);
- narrower bid/ask spread first, where available;
- higher open interest first, where the data source supplies it;
- fewer days to expiration first;
- then expiration date, strike and contract identifier, to keep the order stable.
A contract missing a spread or open-interest value sorts behind contracts that have one. The named contract is simply the first in this order. It is not a recommendation, and the ranking does not consider risk, liquidity beyond the factors listed, or suitability.
7. Target Entry Monitors
7.1 What a Target Entry Monitor does
A Target Entry Monitor looks for a way to own the underlying security at or below a price you set, while earning at least a return you set. You give two thresholds:
- a target entry price (X), in the security's currency;
- a minimum annualized return (Y), in percentage points.
You may also limit expiration (a day range or specific dates) and implied volatility, as in Section 6.2. Strike, the underlying filter and the other criteria of Section 6.2 are not available for Target Entry: OpScout considers the out-of-the-money contracts that the screens return and finds the ones that meet X and Y.
7.2 Two screens and one set of quotes
In each evaluation, OpScout runs two screens on the underlying security: one for calls and one for puts, each limited to contracts that are out of the money and to your expiration and volatility rules, with the quote floors of Section 6.2. The put screen also asks the screening service to apply Y to its own annualized figure first; the call screen does not.
OpScout then reads, in one request, the current bid and ask of every contract returned and the ask of the underlying security. If any of these reads fails, or the underlying security has no ask, the Monitor is not evaluated in that cycle. Nothing stands in for the ask.
7.3 The two ways to enter
| Way to enter | Effective entry price | Return | Qualifies when |
|---|---|---|---|
| Cash-Secured Put (sell a put) | Strike − put bid | Put bid ÷ (strike − put bid), annualized | Entry ≤ X and return ≥ Y |
| Buy-Write (buy the shares at the ask and sell a call) | Stock ask − call bid | Static return: call bid ÷ (stock ask − call bid), annualized. If called away: (call bid + strike − stock ask) ÷ (stock ask − call bid), annualized | Entry ≤ X and static return ≥ Y and return if called away ≥ Y |
All values are OpScout-computed from Sourced bids and asks, and are annualized as in Section 6.3. Both comparisons include equality. Nothing is weighted by the probability of assignment or of the shares being called away.
7.4 The contracts named
OpScout names at most two qualifying contracts:
- Best Entry: the lowest effective entry price. Ties go to the higher return (a put's return, or a Buy-Write's static return), then the narrower spread as a share of the midpoint, then fewer days to expiration, then expiration date, strike and contract identifier.
- Best Return: among the other qualifying contracts, the highest return, measured in the same way. Ties go to the lower effective entry price, then the same order.
The same contract is never both. If only one contract qualifies, only one is named. The match count is the number of distinct qualifying contracts. The Alert records the Best Entry contract's quote. "Best Entry" and "Best Return" describe these ordering rules only. They are not recommendations.
7.5 Limits
Each screen returns at most 1,000 contracts, ordered by the screening service's own annualized figure (Section 6.5). Because the call screen has no return floor, calls that would qualify can fall beyond the limit and never be seen. OpScout does not tell you when this happens. Target Entry Monitors are evaluated only on the schedule in Sections 2 and 3.
8. Checks and data outside the schedule
8.1 One-off Target Entry checks through a connected app
An app you connect to OpScout (Terms of Use, Section 29A) can ask for a one-off Target Entry check. It is the only evaluation that OpScout runs on request rather than on the schedule:
- it runs only while the regular session is open, judged by the clock and by the market status that the data source reports at that moment. If the session is closed, or the status cannot be read, the check is refused;
- each account can make up to 10 checks an hour. A check counts once it has started, even if the screens then fail. A check may also be refused while the screening service is busy;
- it applies the method of Section 7 to the data at that moment, and returns the qualifying contracts and their values to the app;
- it saves nothing: it does not create a Monitor, record an Alert or send a Notification.
Monitors that a connected app creates or changes are ordinary Monitors. They are evaluated exactly as Monitors created in the app, on the schedule in Sections 2 and 3, never at the moment the app creates or changes them.
8.2 Reference data in the editors
When you create or edit a Monitor, the app shows reference data, not live prices: the expiration dates available, refreshed once a day and kept until the next weekday's 9:30 a.m. Eastern Time; and the last close and the market capitalization at that close, kept until the next weekday's 4:05 p.m. Eastern Time. During the session, the "last close" is the previous trading day's close.
8.3 Your records
The Journal and the Portfolio read market data when you use them, not on the Monitor schedule:
- recording a trade can read the contract's current quote, and entering a trade by hand reads the option chain (kept for 15 minutes) and the contract's bid and ask (kept for 1 minute);
- Roll Analysis runs an options screen when you ask for it, at any hour. Outside the regular session its quotes may be stale;
- the Portfolio reads current quotes, kept until the next 15-minute boundary during the session and never past 4:05 p.m. Eastern Time; outside the session they are kept until the next 9:30 a.m. Eastern Time.
8.4 Closing prices
After each regular session, starting at 4:05 p.m. Eastern Time and until 9:30 a.m. Eastern Time on the next weekday, OpScout records each security's official daily close, unadjusted for later splits or dividends, and the closing bid and ask of the options it needs. Sourced. A value, once recorded, is not corrected. A day on which the exchanges did not trade is recorded as having no session. Anything still missing when that period ends leaves the day incomplete; OpScout does not fill it in from other prices.
9. Your records: Journal, Portfolio, Virtual Performance and Strategy Review
9.1 How positions are priced
- Trades are the prices you enter. User-entered.
- Estimates of a trade assume that you sell at the bid and buy at the ask.
- Open options are valued at the price that would close them: a short option at the ask, a long option at the bid, never the midpoint.
- Shares are valued at the last trade during the day and at the official close for history.
9.2 Journal
- Fees are entered by you for each trade; enter 0 when there were none. They are included in each position's cash flows, in Strategy Review and in your Portfolio's cash. They are not part of the average cost of a holding, so an unrealized profit or loss does not include them.
- Roll Analysis estimates rolling an open option: buying the current contract back at its ask and selling a new one at its bid, before fees. It lists up to 10 candidate contracts that meet the rule recorded with the Alert you traded, in the order of Section 6.6.
- When you record a trade from a Target Entry Alert, you say whether you traded the Best Entry or the Best Return contract. A Buy-Write is recorded as a Covered Call, with the shares at the price you enter.
9.3 Portfolio
| Item | Method |
|---|---|
| Unrealized profit or loss | Market value (Section 9.1) − quantity × average trade price. OpScout-computed. |
| Currencies | Converted through the euro, at the euro foreign exchange reference rates published by the European Central Bank. Live values use the latest publication no more than 7 days old; daily history uses the latest publication on or before the day, no more than 3 days old. Without such a rate, the day is incomplete. Sourced. |
| Daily history | The last 12 weeks of trading days, rebuilt from your records: shares at the official close, options at the closing bid or ask (Section 8.4), other assets as below, plus cash, all in your base currency. A day for which any price or rate is missing is incomplete. OpScout-computed. |
| Bills, notes, bonds and certificates of deposit | Amortized cost: the price you paid, accreted at a constant yield to its value at maturity. A value you set restarts the accretion. These are not market prices. OpScout-computed. |
| Money-market funds | $1.00 per share unless you set a value. Other assets: the latest value or trade price you entered. User-entered. |
| External flows | Opening cash and positions, deposits, withdrawals, transfers, cash reconciliations and position adjustments, valued on their day. Dividends, interest, coupons, fees, taxes and currency conversions are results, not flows. |
| Time-weighted return | Each complete day's result is its value, less the previous complete day's value, less the external flows since then. The index is multiplied by one plus that result divided by the previous complete day's value; flows are treated as happening at the end of the day; incomplete days are bridged. The return shown is the change in the index over the period shown. OpScout-computed. |
| Allocation returns | Profit or loss divided by cost, annualized as a simple rate over the whole calendar days held. For a Cash-Secured Put, the cost is the cash secured less the premium. OpScout-computed. |
| Expiring options | An option is treated as expired worthless only if it is out of the money at the regular close on its expiration date. Otherwise OpScout asks you what happened. After-hours moves and exercise decisions are not modelled. |
9.4 Virtual Performance
Virtual Performance simulates what an Alert would have done, from the facts recorded with the Alert, from the moment it was detected:
- Price and Market-Cap Monitors: one share at the price recorded with the Alert.
- Covered Call: shares at the underlying price recorded with the Alert, and one call sold at its recorded bid. Cash-Secured Put: one put sold at its recorded bid, with capital of strike − bid per share.
- Target Entry: the Best Entry contract only; a Buy-Write uses the recorded stock ask.
Shares are then valued at each official close, and a short option at the closing ask recorded after each session (Section 8.4); a day without a recorded ask has no value, and nothing is filled in. At expiration, a Cash-Secured Put whose underlying closed at or above the strike expires worthless, and is otherwise treated as assigned; a Covered Call whose underlying closed above the strike is treated as called away, and is otherwise closed at expiration. Returns are annualized from the Alert to 4:00 p.m. Eastern Time on each day valued. Virtual Performance excludes fees, dividends, interest on collateral, early exercise or assignment, margin and slippage, and does not adjust for splits. An Alert recorded before OpScout kept the bid with it cannot be simulated. It is a simulation, not a result anyone achieved.
9.5 Strategy Review
Strategy Review looks back at the positions in your Journal, using official closes and the closing ask of open short options as of the last session settled at 4:30 p.m. Eastern Time. It compares each position with fixed alternatives applied to the same past prices: for a Covered Call, holding the shares alone, holding to expiration without rolling, and buying the shares back when they were called away; for a Cash-Secured Put, holding cash at the rate you recorded, buying the shares outright when the put was sold, and not rolling. Capital is the strike × multiplier for a put and the cost of the covered shares for a call; returns are annualized over the capital and days actually committed. Dividends count only as you recorded them. A missing price is shown as missing; nothing is substituted. The alternatives are comparisons, not recommendations.
10. Explore's Top lists
Explore's Top Today and Top This Week rank posts that everyone signed in can see by their engagement: the number of different accounts, other than the author's, that liked the post, plus those that commented on it, plus those that forwarded it to a Club. Dislikes and saves do not count. "Today" is the current calendar day and "This Week" the current week from Monday, both in Coordinated Universal Time (UTC); a post counts in a list if it was published in that period, with all its engagement so far. Ties go to the newer post. A list holds at most 50 posts with some engagement and is recalculated every 15 minutes. The lists are the same for everyone, except that posts from people you blocked and posts you marked "Not interested" are left out of yours. OpScout-computed. The lists rank community engagement. They are not investment recommendations.
11. Notification limits
Under the current configuration:
- Monthly allowances. Each account can receive up to 300 WhatsApp messages and 1,000 Discord messages a month. The month starts on the day your subscription period starts, or on the first day of the calendar month (UTC) if you have no subscription. When an allowance is used up, OpScout stops sending on that channel until the next month and records those deliveries as failed. Settings shows how much of each allowance is used.
- Weekly plan. On the weekly plan, WhatsApp's allowance is up to 30 messages for each paid week instead, from the start of the week you paid for until the next one; when it is used up, OpScout stops sending WhatsApp messages until the next paid week. Discord keeps its 1,000 a month, and on the weekly plan its month starts on the day your subscription began, so weekly renewals do not reset it. The weekly plan's offer shows the WhatsApp allowance before you subscribe.
- Hourly pause. If 30 Alerts are queued for Notification for your account within 60 minutes (one Alert sent to several channels counts once), the 30th Notification says that your Alerts are now paused, and OpScout then sends no Notification on any channel, push included, until you resume them in the app, which lists the Monitors that fired.
Alerts are still recorded while a limit is reached or your Notifications are paused.
12. What calculations do not include
OpScout's calculations for Monitors and checks do not include the following, and OpScout makes no adjustment for them to provider-calculated values. You should not assume that any value shown includes:
- commissions;
- exchange, regulatory or other fees;
- taxes;
- bid/ask spread effects, beyond the use of the bid and ask described above;
- slippage, partial fills or market impact;
- financing, margin or borrowing costs;
- dividends;
- early exercise or early assignment;
- any other execution or transaction effect not described in this document.
In your Journal, Portfolio and Strategy Review, fees, dividends and other amounts are included only as you record them (Section 9).
Annualized values scale a short-period figure to a one-year basis. They assume that the same result could be repeated, which is not guaranteed and often not possible. They are not forecasts.
13. Timing and data limitations
- Delays. Data may be delayed relative to the exchanges. The data source may correct it after OpScout has used it.
- Asynchronous fields. Values are not all captured at the same moment. Screening results, the bids and asks OpScout reads after a screen, the underlying price, the market cap and the out-of-the-money percentage can each reflect different times, a few seconds or more apart.
- Stale values. A value can remain unchanged while the market is closed, or when no trades occur.
- Unchanged Monitors and records. Corporate actions such as splits, mergers, symbol changes and option adjustments can make data, thresholds, contract references and your records inconsistent. OpScout does not guarantee that Monitors or records are adjusted for them, and closing prices are not adjusted for later splits. Review your Monitors and records after such events.
- Outages. If a data source or OpScout is unavailable, Monitors may not be evaluated, and an Alert may never be produced for that period.
14. Executable-price limitations
No price, bid, ask, premium or return shown by OpScout is a quote that you can trade on. Market prices change continuously, and liquidity may be limited. A displayed value may not be available when you place an order, or at the size you want, or may not be available at all.
OpScout does not reserve liquidity, lock a quote or execute trades. Always confirm prices and contract terms with your broker before trading.
15. Changes
We may change data sources, schedules, criteria or calculations as the Service evolves. When a change affects how values are produced or labeled in this document, we will update this document and its version.
Version 1.1 limited Monitor evaluation to the U.S. regular trading session, with no evaluation and no Alerts outside it (Sections 2 and 3), and used only the regular-session price for Price Monitors (Section 4). It also explained that creating or changing a Monitor does not evaluate it, and when it is first evaluated (Section 2).
Version 1.2 explains that OpScout calculates option returns and premium itself at the bid (Section 6.3), describes the underlying filter and the criteria withdrawn from the app (Section 6.2), how Once and Repeat set how often a Monitor is checked (Section 2), Target Entry Monitors (Section 7), one-off checks through a connected app and the data read outside the schedule (Section 8), the Journal, Portfolio, Virtual Performance and Strategy Review (Section 9), Explore's Top lists (Section 10) and notification limits (Section 11).
Version 1.2 was amended on 2026-10-18: Section 11 adds the weekly plan's WhatsApp allowance of 30 messages for each paid week, and (2026-10-19) that Discord's month on the weekly plan starts on the day the subscription began.