Legal Definitions - OPRA

OPRA stands for the Options Price Reporting Authority.

OPRA is a vital organization within the financial markets responsible for collecting and distributing real-time price and volume information for options contracts traded on various U.S. exchanges. Its primary function is to consolidate all the current trading data for options from different marketplaces and then make that comprehensive information available to the public and market participants. This ensures transparency and helps maintain fair and orderly markets by providing everyone with access to the most up-to-date pricing across all relevant exchanges.

Here are some examples of how OPRA's role is demonstrated:

• Imagine an individual investor, David, who wants to check the current market price of a put option on a specific company's stock before deciding whether to sell it. When David logs into his online brokerage platform, the real-time bid and ask prices he sees for that option are aggregated and disseminated through the data provided by OPRA. This ensures David receives a consolidated view of the best available prices from all U.S. options exchanges, allowing him to make an informed decision efficiently.

• A financial news website provides a live ticker of options prices for popular stocks and indices. To ensure the accuracy and timeliness of this information, the website subscribes to a data feed that receives its consolidated options data directly from OPRA. This allows the website to display a unified, real-time view of the options market to its millions of readers, regardless of which specific exchange an option is trading on.

• A quantitative analyst at a hedge fund is developing a complex trading model that requires historical and real-time data for all options contracts to identify arbitrage opportunities. The analyst relies on a comprehensive database that sources its raw options data, including prices, volumes, and open interest, from the consolidated feed provided by OPRA. This ensures the model has access to a complete and accurate picture of the entire U.S. options market, which is critical for its performance and validity.