Overview of our historical option prices data

HistoricalOptionData.com carries end of day quotes for all stock options for the U.S. Equities markets. This includes every stock, index and ETF, for every strike and expiration. Our historical options prices are available for immediate download after purchase. Our daily updates of historical option prices are available within an hour of the market close.

How many symbols do you carry?

Currently the number of stocks, indexes and ETFs that are optionable is approximately 5,700. We carry all listed options for these symbols, for all strikes and all expiration dates. On a typical trading day, this is around 1,400,000 distinct option contracts. Each underlying symbol has an average of 240 contracts listed at any given time.

Do you carry intraday data?

No. All of our data is end of day data.

Is your data clean?

Our data comes from OPRA, the Options Pricing and Reporting Authority. The data is called the NBBO, or National Best Bid Offer. OPRA is responsible for consolidating the prices from all the individual option exchanges and publishing the NBBO. So the first line of responsibility for accurate pricing lies in OPRA.

Our primary goal is to preserve the data “as it was” the day it traded, as it was listed. Then we check for several specific categories of errors, and mark each suspect row of data with a notation. Primarily our customers are traders who are scanning for trades, or are backtesting their option strategies. For these users of our data, the main issue is to be able to quickly identify standard options. We do not publish non-standard, or binary options.

There are certain types of options which we carry in the database, but do not distribute because it causes more confusion than most people care to deal with. You can get these included by request only, and only in the SQL version of our data. These types include: “Mini” and “Jumbo” options (10 or 1000 shares per contract), SRO options (SPX range options), Binary options, Non-Standard options. Our goal is that you should only have one option for a given option type, strike and expiration.

Our data includes the traditional monthly options, weekly options and quarterly options. It also includes the VIX options which expire on Wednesday, 30 days before the standard expiration date.

Our data has also been used by hundreds of universities, hedge funds and individual traders. We investigate each instance reported and either correct the error, or mark it appropriately. So this dataset has been “well travelled”. The vast majority of the time, the user of the data just needed an explanation of what non-standard and binary options are. Given that we get 1,400,000 rows of new data every day, there are bound to be occassional glitches. Please report them and we will fix them.

Our products in brief.

CSV Historical Data – The most popular product is our CSV Historical Data. This is bulk data, containing every stock symbol, every expiration date (including LEAPSs), every strike and is sold in yearly increments. You can purchase one year, or multiple years.
End of Day Service – In order to quickly download option data after the market closes each day, we have the end of day service. You can use this service to keep your data up to date.
SQL Database – For many users, having the data in a database is preferred. The SQL Database product is a Microsoft SQL 2005 database containing the same data as the CSV Historical Data product. You can purchase one or multiple years. If you require non-standard options, minis, jumbo, range options or binaries you will need to request the SQL 2012 version.
Stock History – For technical analysis of stock prices, they need to be split and dividend adjusted. This service will fit this requirement for you nicely.
Special Orders – If you just want option history for a few symbols, such as options on SPX for one year, you can request this as a special order. Look in the catalog for Single Symbol items.Any additional requirements for restricting the data (such as only LEAPs, only calls, only Fridays, etc…), will have an added labor fee and will be in addition to the data fee. The standard delivery is one month of data with all strikes and all expirations. Send your request for special orders via email to support@deltaneutral.com. We will return a quoted price to you.

What is the format of your CSV Historical Data?

Our CSV Historical Data and our End of Day Service use the same column struture. The historical data is sold in yearly packages. The data is contained in one compressed (zip) file per month, and each file contains the option, stock and statistics files for each day. Please see our information on the exact structure of our CSV data.

What is the structure of the SQL Data?

The SQL Database contains the same data as the CSV Historical Data. Due to size limitations, each month of data is contained in a separate database, with one table in each database. Please view our SQL Catalog for more details and samples.

Does your data include the high low of the option price?

No. Our data contains the last traded price, and the bid and ask at the close. We do not feel that OHLC of the option prices is useful for back testing. Read More

How do you handle splits?

We do not go back and adjust our option data for splits. Look at our stock history service to fill this need.

How is the Data delivered?

Immediately after your purchase, you will receive download instructions via email which contain the details of how/where to download the data. The primary way to receive your data is to download this via ftp. We recommend trying FlashFXP software if you are using Windows. The vast majority of people purchasing CSV Historical data download the data directly from our servers. If you would like a “hard copy” of the data, you can can it delivered to you, for an added fee, on a USB flash drive. Most people who purchase the SQL database version of the data also want a hard copy of the data, because the size of the data. We will send the whole database to you on an external hard drive, for an added fee.

Describe the End of Day service.

Content – The end of day download service allows you to quickly download all of the options that were listed at the end of each trading day. Currently this is 4,850 stocks, indices and ETFs. This is over 620,000 rows of data per day. There is one row of data per option.

Payment – This service is available as a monthly subscription or as an annual prepay. If you prefer month-to-month, you must have or create a PayPal account, having a credit card on file with them. Most individual traders choose this method. The annual prepay option gives you two advantages. You do not have to create a PayPal account and you receive a two month discount off the price. Most universities and businesses use the annual prepay method.

Delivery – The data is available normally within 75 minutes after the normal market closing (around 5:15PM Eastern). There is one zip file per day. Except for the bare bones product, the zip file contains the option data, stock data and statistics file. We keep at least five weeks of data on the server. So you can go on vacation, come back and download all of your missing data. We recommend that you use software to automate your daily download.

Do you have Stock Split and Dividend data?

Yes. We have a service which maintains stock split history and dividends. You will find the details of this service by viewing our catalog.