Every kind of signal — with real examples.
Seven signal types, each shown with a real detection from late August 2026 — the exact cards, the exact numbers. Read these once and you will read every alert we send fluently.
Each one shows the card, what the signal means, and what happened next. Our full scored record — including the quiet weeks — is at the bottom of this page.
Date Bet
the one nobody else ships
The market is paying extra for one specific expiration. We detect the bulge, print the date, and check the public calendar for why.
⚡ Greeksmith SignalsAug 27
MRVL — Date Bet
Premium is stacking on one date — heavily.
📅 Fri Aug 28 · +132.4 vol pts vs neighbouring weeks
The steepest single-date bet we have recorded.
What it meant
A +132 bulge is own-event territory — five to ten times what sector sympathy produces. When one date is priced that far above its neighbours, someone expects something specific on it.
What happened next
Marvell reported earnings that night. Our calendar feed hadn't carried the date; the options market had. The bulge was the tell, three sessions early.
Mystery Date
our favourite signal
A date is being paid for — and nothing public explains it. We say so plainly. That's your cue to look.
⚡ Greeksmith Signals2:53 PM
INTC — Mystery Date
The market is pricing a specific date and we could not match a public event.
📅 Fri Aug 28 · +6.1 vol pts vs neighbours
What it meant
Six points on one Thursday, on a day Intel fell 5%. Our calendar had nothing. "Unlisted" never means "there is no event" — it means we couldn't name it, and thirty seconds of looking usually can.
What happened next
Two public events sat on that date — Nvidia's earnings reaction and the Fed chair's Jackson Hole keynote — neither of which any single-name earnings calendar carries. Subscribers who looked knew what they were holding into.
Options Rush
the fast one
Someone is paying up for a name's options — quickly, with nothing visible explaining it.
⚡ Greeksmith Signals12:06 PM
AMZN — Options Rush
Options prices jumped — no news attached. Someone's paying up.
📅 Context: Friday Aug 28 is being paid for fleet-wide
Direction undeclared — no side-lean detected.
What it meant
Implied volatility rising at a record pace for that name and hour, with the stock flat and the market quiet. Someone wanted exposure and paid for it now.
What we did not say
Which way. The instrument that reads direction stayed silent all session, so the alert claimed nothing about it. Most services would have guessed. Ours reported vol was bought and a side was not declared.
Upside Setup
the directional one
An options rush plus a call-side lean — the two instruments agreeing that money is positioning for a move up.
⚡ Greeksmith SignalsJul 29
AMZN — Upside Setup
Options are being bid up and the bid is leaning to calls.
Vol bid: 100th percentile · Call skew: 100th
Chord strength 0.93 — two instruments agreeing.
What it meant
Two separate measurements pointing the same way on the same afternoon: options getting expensive fast, and the expense concentrated on the upside. This is the only signal family that carries a direction — and it says so only when both instruments agree.
What happened next
Amazon reported earnings two days later and gapped from $226 to the $260s. Our own calendar didn't carry that date — the options market did, and the positioning showed it two sessions early. That is the entire idea: money moves before news does.
Another, with no event anywhere near it: BMNR, Aug 19 — same chord, no earnings, no gap. The stock climbed 23% over the next three sessions against a typical move of 8.9%.
Money Flow
where the dollars sat
Unusual money moving into short-dated options — with the strikes and expiries named.
⚡ Greeksmith SignalsAug 26
META — Money Flow
Four and a half hours of unusual flow into this Friday's calls.
💰 $11.3M → 600 calls · Aug 28
$7.1M → 600 calls · Sep 4
$1.9M → 600 calls · Aug 31
(volume, not direction)
What it meant
Eight figures concentrated on one strike across three expiries, on the eve of Nvidia's print. That is a fact about where money sat — visible hours before it was news.
The honest label
"Volume, not direction" is on every flow line we send. Heavy call volume can be buyers positioning or sellers writing premium — we can see the dollars, not the intent, and we don't pretend otherwise.
Protection Wave
defined · never yet fired
The mirror of an Upside Setup: an options rush with the bid leaning to puts — big money buying insurance.
⚡ Greeksmith Signalsthe shape
TICKER — Protection Wave
Options are being bid up and the bid is leaning to puts.
Somebody is paying up to be insured.
Why there's no example here
Because it has never fired. Not once, in the entire record. The detector is built, watched every session, and has found nothing that met its bar.
Why we show it anyway
So you know what we're watching for — and what we won't fake. A signal service with an example for every category has usually loosened a definition to get one. When this fires, you'll know it's the real thing.
Market-wide context
when we decline to name a name
Sometimes the evidence can't carry a single ticker. Then we say so instead of guessing.
⚡ Greeksmith Signals1:41 PM
Market context — event pricing
(not attributed to a name while peer context is thin)
Front-dated volatility is being bid with no calendar event to explain it.
What it meant
The signal fired, but our check for "is this one name or the whole tape?" didn't have enough comparison names calibrated to answer honestly.
Why this matters
We demoted our own alert. Naming a ticker we couldn't stand behind would send you hunting through the wrong chart. A vague alert we can defend beats a specific one we can't.
The Daily Brief
every trading day, ~4:15 PM ET
The day's positioning in five minutes — dates, dollars, and what we could and couldn't verify.
📬 The Daily Positioning BriefTue Aug 26
🎯 THE WEEK'S MAGNET: Friday, Aug 28
13 names are paying up for this Friday — the heaviest date concentration we have recorded.
Named events:
MRVL +132 · CRWD +58 — both report Wed night
AMD +16 · ARM +14 — NVDA reaction, Fed Friday
Unmatched — most likely the same week; go look:
NOW +15 · META +13 · BMNR +9 · TSLA +9 · PLTR +8 …
What it meant
One date owned the week. Rather than thirteen separate alerts, the Brief groups them, names the events we verified, and tells you plainly which ones we couldn't.
What happened next
Nvidia and CrowdStrike reported Wednesday night; the Fed chair spoke Friday morning. Subscribers had the map on Monday.
What's on trial right now
the next signals, still earning their place
Four tape patterns run every session — fake dips, hollow rallies, coiling ranges, and building fuel. None of them sends you anything yet, and here is exactly why.
Patterns under test · counts, not verdicts
Coiling range (cage-crack)23 scored
Failed-break at a wall19 of 30
Fake dip (dip-divergence)15 of 20
Hollow rally10 of 20
Loaded spring (squeeze)0 of 20
A pattern becomes a signal you receive only after it beats its own baseline at an honest sample size. None of these has reached its floor. We publish the counters anyway.
Why show you an empty scoreboard
Because it's the most honest thing on this site. Every one of these could fail its test and be retired — several of our earlier ideas already were, publicly.
The rule
Nothing reaches your phone on a hunch. The signals we send today are the ones that survived this process. The ones on this list haven't yet, and we'd rather show you the queue than pretend the product sprang into being complete.
The Friday Scorecard
every signal, delivered and quiet
We grade ourselves in public every week — and we were doing it long before anyone was paying.
Week of Aug 17–21 · every detection, unfiltered
BMNR Aug 19 → 2.61× its typical moveDELIVERED
COIN Aug 19 → 2.06×DELIVERED
TSLA Aug 18 → 1.58×DELIVERED
COIN Aug 20 → 1.38×DELIVERED
MRVL Aug 18 → 1.25×DELIVERED
DKNG Aug 18 → 0.99×QUIET
…and 48 more that went nowhereQUIET
12 delivered · 53 quiet — 18.5% of detections beat their name's typical move.
One week, every detection, nothing filtered. "Delivered" means the largest move available within three sessions exceeded that name's ordinary day — a high-water mark, not a trade result; there is no buy or sell rule behind it.
Read that number again
Most weeks, most detections go nowhere. We publish that. The alternative — showing you five winners and calling it a track record — is what the rest of this industry does, and it's why nobody believes any of it.
The part that matters
We kept this score for months before we sold anything. Nothing was riding on flattering ourselves — no subscribers, no revenue, no reason to grade generously. That's the record you're buying into, and it keeps publishing every Friday whether the week was good or not.
That's the whole vocabulary.
Nine signal types, one honest label on each, and a public record every Friday. That is the entire vocabulary — you will be reading these fluently by the end of your first week.