Here’s Help for Spotting Potentially
Profitable Market Anomalies
By MARK JORDAN
Derivatives
{NI RTOPTBAI <GO>} Real-Time Options Surges: Publishes a
real-time alert when trading in options on a U.S. or European
company’s stock is more than three times the 20-day
average volume.
{NI SVELBAI <GO>} Social Velocity Alerts: Generates an alert
when there is a significant increase in social media postings
about a company. In some cases, also shows a reading on
whether sentiment is positive or negative.
{NI IMPVOLBAI <GO>} Implied Volatility Changes: Creates an alert
when there is a significant change in one-month, at-the-
money volatility for options on a company’s shares.
{NI TRACEBAI <GO>} Trace Volume Spikes: Notifies you when
trading in a company’s bonds is at least double the average
for that time of day based on data from the U.S. Financial
Industry Regulatory Authority’s Trade Reporting and Com-
pliance Engine, or Trace.
{NI 13DBAI <GO>} Individual 13D Filings: Publishes an alert when
a 13D filing shows that an activist investor has disclosed a
stake of more than 5% in a company.IN THE EQUITY DERIVATIVES WORLD, there are no coincidences. At
least that’s the way it seems to skeptical options traders: Events
happen for a reason, whether it’s causation or correlation.
Market anomalies offer opportunities if you’re of that sta-
tistically oriented mindset. A weird “coincidence” must have some
explanation, even if you don’t know what it is yet. What’s more, it
might be a signal you could profit from.
The difficulty, of course, is that it takes a lot of bandwidth
to scan all of the relevant market information to uncover and
analyze such signals. That’s where Bloomberg Automated Intelli-
gence can help. BAI identifies anomalies in Bloomberg’s vast data
sets and analytics and then alerts you with automated, actionable
news stories. For more on BAI, type HELP BAI in the command
line and hit
There are many different types of BAI stories. Coded to the
companies they concern, the stories show up in regular news flow
and include a button that lets you subscribe. Here’s a cheat sheet
for some of the key varieties of BAI stories:
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