Unusualwhales Newsletter
A newsletter about financial markets, equities, derivatives, options, and macro topics. Subscribe to learn how markets work and how to trade them for free every Wednesday, as well as a market update and outlook every Sunday!
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What they write about
An options education series working through strategies from long calls and puts to vertical spreads, backspreads and short positions, with an emphasis on risk and maximum-loss mechanics. Also carries announcements about the Unusual Whales platform and its ETF partnerships.
- options
- derivatives
- options education
- spreads
- risk management
- etfs
Recent examples: The Options Flow That Hit Before $VKTX Exploded · Practicing Patience: Don’t Force the Trade
Written from Unusualwhales Newsletter’s own published post titles and openings in Sep 11, 2026. It describes the subjects the newsletter covers, not its views, and is not investment advice.
Most-mentioned tickers
Symbols named in the headline of a post from the last 30 days, most-covered first. The number is how many of those posts mentioned it.
Read from 2 post headlines in the last 30 days. A newsletter that names a company only in the body of a post will not appear here, and a mention is not a recommendation — it only means the symbol came up.
Growth history
Subscribers (thousands, nightly)
418K on Sep 10, 2026 → 415K on Sep 30, 2026
Followers (thousands, nightly)
Rank in Substack’s finance leaderboard: #7 today · #7 a week ago
Stats worth sharing
Tracked since Sep 10, 2026 — 21 daily snapshots so far. The card below is built from what we track and refreshes nightly.
- Percentile
- Top 2%
- Best rank seen
- #6
- Subscribers added
- −3.0K
- Posts
- 7
- Reactions per post
- 40
- Reactions tracked
- 644
- Tickers covered
- 5
of 525 ranked finance newsletters
on Sep 29, 2026
since tracking began
last 30 days
average, recent posts
across 16 posts
in tracked posts
Most-reacted post we have seen: Options Basics for Beginners: Long Calls and Long Puts — 86 reactions on Aug 20, 2026.
Recent posts
- The Options Flow That Hit Before $VKTX Exploded
Hey all! Nicholas from the Unusual Whales team, here, back to take a look at some uh… well-timed options activity in Viking Therapeutics, $VKTX , that hit the tape the day before positive trial data sent the stock absolutely flying. Back on September 21st during power hour, while $VKTX was trading between roughly $28.60 and $29.17 per share, thousands in volume of the October 16th, 2026 $30 call slammed the tape. These were not that far out of the money at the time, and the overwhelming majority of the volume came through ask-side for an average fill somewhere around $3.38 to $3.45 per…
- Practicing Patience: Don’t Force the Trade
paid partnership with tastytrade Hey all! Nicholas from the Unusual Whales team, here! We’re happy to announce we’re adding another Unusual Whales Newsletter to your week! We’ll bring live trading examples and analysis to you from our live trading show WhaleWatch , demonstrating how my co-host Anthony and I utilize Unusual Whales tools to trade intraday! Before we get started, WhaleWatch Mondays are sponsored by tastytrade ! All charting and tooling we use to trade futures are provided by tastytrade ; more on that below! Patience finally paid off About an hour into the show , we were still…
- The Unusual Whales Hackathon
Hey all, Mr. Whale here. I thought I’d message you personally to let you know the first ever Unusual Whales Hackathon has begun. Build anything you want on the UW API, show it off, and the best builds walk away with cash and credits. Join here: discord.gg/unusualwhales The challenge Build anything on the Unusual Whales API. A dashboard, a custom alert, a backtest, a bot, a thing you cannot quite describe yet. If it runs on our data, it counts. Not much of a coder? Point our MCP server at an AI agent and build it in plain English:unusualwhales.com/public-api/mcp The prizes 1st place: 1,000…
- More Advanced Options Strategies
Hey all! Nicholas from the Unusual Whales team, here! This week is a bit of an extension of last week’s issue on advanced options strategies. This time, we’re covering some VERY high risk strategies (risk of ruin), and should not be attempted by inexperienced traders. I want to preface as well that the strikes utilized in this write-up were chosen for simplicity for explanation; NOT to represent a suggestion for a trade anyone should take. With that said, let’s dive on in. The Short Straddle A trader who wants to speculate on a decrease in volatility and relatively little movement in AAPL can…
- Advanced Options Strategies For Beginners: Backspreads and Shorts
These are strategies that yield a fairly high reward, but come with a heavy increase in risk, with some having the potential to lose it all. (Yes, your entire account; maybe more depending (“risk of ruin”)). These should only be performed by advanced traders, so before you get wide eyed and start slamming the bid/ask, make sure you are ready for this increased risk and know how to manage the trade. Some of these strategies are how derivative trading funds blew up, such as the case with the OptionSellers disaster, or what happened to firms such as Melvin Capital in the 2021 Meme Stock Mania…
- SALE ENDS TODAY - LAST CHANCE!
Hey all! A quick email before this week’s market begins. Unusual Whales is having a LABOR DAY sale until September 8! Get up to 20% off your first year! You can your subscription and more! You read that right; TWENTY PERCENT off . The offer ends today! Join here: sale ends Sept 8! NOTE: This post is not financial advice. The stock market is risky, and any trade or investment is expected to have some, or total, loss. Please do research before any trade. Do not use this information for investment decisions. Check terms on site for full terms. Agree to terms before considering this information.
- Call Credit and Debit Spreads for Options Beginners
Hey all! Nicholas from the Unusual Whales team here, with another package of options strategies you need to know. Before we get started, Unusual Whales is having a LABOR DAY sale until September 8! Get up to 20% off your first year! The Call Credit Spread A trader who wants to speculate on a neutral to slightly-decreasing price with a neutral to slightly-decreasing volatility can sell (write) a Call Credit Spread, also known as a bear call spread. The trader receives a credit for the whole position, called a premium, though this credit is smaller than the credit associated with selling a Call…
- 20% OFF ENTIRE SITE
Hey all! A quick email before this week’s market begins. Unusual Whales is having a LABOR DAY sale until September 8! Get up to 20% off your first year! This is a great time to try out our numerous features. Take our API. You can build your own custom trading tools with the Unusual Whales API, no experience required. These 3 working code examples show you exactly how to: - Track unusual option activity across multiple tickers: Flow Alerts Example - Build a net premium flow dashboard for the tickers in your portfolio: Net Premium Flow Dashboard Example - Visualize option volume with a tree…
- Options Strategies For Beginners: Spreads
Hey all, Hey all! Nicholas from the Unusual Whales team, here! In this issue, we’re going to cover some beginner-friendly options strategies using spreads. Some of these strategies hinge on already holding shares on the stock in question, some secured by cash, and a couple where you sort of “play both sides” to mitigate risk, though they do also cap profitability in their own ways. Option Strategies - Beginner Level We’ve already covered long/short calls/puts, we can gradually work into more complex strategies. Starting with beginner strategies. As a note before we get deeper into this, click…
- Options Basics for Beginners: Long Calls and Long Puts
Options are a bit more complicated and can seem daunting compared to “ Ye Olde Buy Shares and Holde™ ”, but the goal of this article is to showcase the power that options can have with active investing. While they are a bit tricky to understand, the basic functions are quite similar to how shares work, except there’s a few other variables at play. An options contract represents 100 shares of stock, no matter what price the contract is. The upside to options is that you can control a theoretical 100 shares of stock for much cheaper, with a very high exponential profit zone. The downside is…
- IMPORTANT: Unusual Whales and Siebert Financial Announce Strategic Partnership to Launch New Series of ETFs
Siebert Financial Corp. (NASDAQ: SIEB) (“Siebert”), a diversified financial services company, and Unusual Whales, a financial data and market intelligence platform, today announced a strategic partnership to develop and launch a series of exchange-traded funds (ETFs). The partnership brings together two distinct strengths: Unusual Whales provides access to a different layer of market intelligence, including political trading disclosures, options activity, market flows and other forms of “shadow data” that can reveal activity and trends beyond traditional financial research; as well as a…
- IMPORTANT: Unusual Whales No Longer Associated With $NANC and $GOP ETFs
IMPORTANT: Unusual Whales and Subversive have mutually agreed to part ways with respect to Unusual Whales Subversive Democratic Trading ETF ($NANC) and the Unusual Whales Subversive Republican Trading ETF ($KRUZ, now known as $GOP). Unusual Whales will no longer be part of these ETFs. We wish Subversive and its team continued success in their future endeavors.
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