Legal Definitions - Options Price Reporting Authority

The Options Price Reporting Authority (OPRA) is a vital system in the U.S. financial markets responsible for collecting and distributing real-time trading information for options. Overseen by the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), OPRA gathers data—such as the most recent prices at which options were traded and the current bids and offers—from all participating options exchanges. This ensures that investors, brokers, and financial professionals have immediate access to comprehensive and standardized pricing information, promoting transparency and fair trading across the entire options market.

Here are a few examples illustrating how OPRA functions:

• For an Individual Investor: Imagine an individual investor, Sarah, is considering buying call options on a specific technology stock. She opens her online brokerage account and navigates to the options chain for that stock. The prices she sees for the "bid" (what buyers are willing to pay), "ask" (what sellers are asking), and the "last traded price" for various strike prices and expiration dates are all consolidated and provided through OPRA. Without OPRA, Sarah might only see prices from one exchange, but because of OPRA, she sees the best available prices from all exchanges, allowing her to make an informed decision and potentially get a better deal.

• For a Professional Trading Firm: A large quantitative trading firm employs sophisticated algorithms to execute complex options strategies, often involving trades across multiple exchanges simultaneously. This firm subscribes to OPRA's data feed, which provides a unified stream of all options quotes and trades from every participating exchange. The firm's algorithms rely on this comprehensive, real-time data to identify fleeting arbitrage opportunities, manage risk, and ensure their orders are routed to the exchange offering the best price at any given millisecond. OPRA's consolidated data is essential for their high-speed, multi-market operations.

• For a Financial News Provider: A popular financial news website wants to display up-to-the-minute options activity for a widely followed company, including the highest trading volume options, significant price movements, and overall market sentiment. To provide this complete picture to its readers, the website integrates data sourced from OPRA. This allows them to present a single, accurate view of the options market, reflecting activity across all exchanges, rather than just fragmented data from individual trading venues. This helps their audience understand the full scope of options trading for that particular stock.