Options Hunter.

The problem

An options trade is more than a direction. Every leg sits at a particular strike and expiration, and each of those points has its own implied volatility. A strategy that looks attractive in a table can sit on a steep change in volatility, close to the current price, or in a place where a small move changes everything.

Most tools show these facts as separate numbers. Options Hunter shows them as a landscape, so a trader can see where a trade sits within the information it depends on, and then test the assumptions behind it.

How it works

Options Hunter reads option chains, expirations and market metrics from Tastytrade, and subscribes to quote, trade, summary and Greeks events over DXLink. Events are merged into a book for each symbol, and chain requests check that quotes and Greeks are fresh enough to use. News from Finnhub and posts from Stocktwits supply context, and a grounded-summary step checks extracted claims against those sources.

Candidate trades come from seven strategy generators, scored against option data, market context and the user's preferences. A recommendation can then be sent to the Volatility Holodeck.

The Volatility Holodeck

The Holodeck builds a 3D implied volatility surface from up to five expirations near a chosen days-to-expiry window and up to 41 sampled strikes per expiration. Across the surface runs moneyness, the distance of each strike from the current price. Depth runs through the expirations. Height is implied volatility. Steep changes in skew are tagged on the surface.

A strategy's legs are placed directly on the surface, and an iron condor's geometry follows it. Legs can be moved with guided risk feedback, and a synchronized two-dimensional slice ties the 3D view back to exact strikes and volatility values.

The decision cockpit

The decision cockpit assesses a placement on several dimensions at once: each leg's implied volatility relative to the median of its expiration, the placement of short legs against skew thresholds derived from the surface, how much of the trade is covered by plotted data, and mechanical review triggers such as proximity to a short strike.

Its verdicts are favorable, mixed, caution or insufficient. One attractive reading does not settle the decision: a short leg on steep skew can override otherwise favorable volatility alignment. The assessment describes evidence quality. It is not a win probability or a profit forecast.

The stress view

The stress view changes the underlying price, implied volatility and elapsed time, then reprices every leg. It reports theoretical position value, model profit and loss, and aggregate delta, gamma, daily theta and vega per volatility point, using a European Black-Scholes approximation without dividends or early exercise. These are theoretical values, not executable fills.

The 3D exhibit on Media Bishop

The interactive exhibit on mediabishop.com tells the product's story in six beats: Incoming, Reveal, Place, Question, Adjust and Stress. Observations arrive as a stream, settle into a smoked-glass volatility surface, and an iron condor is placed on it. The short put at 92.50 is flagged for skew risk. Moving it to 95.00 improves surface alignment but brings it closer to the current price, and the stress controls show how both placements respond to the same shock.

The exhibit uses an authored, synthetic dataset of 65 implied volatility observations across five expirations, labelled as a synthetic demonstration. Its decision and scenario calculations are copied from Options Hunter. It is not a live feed and not a record of trading performance.