Ralph Linson
Ralph Linson is the founder of Profit Builders, an institutional options flow analytics platform built on OPRA-direct data from all 17 US options exchanges. He built it after finding that off-the-shelf flow scanners surfaced thousands of prints a day without grading any of them for conviction. Profit Builders does the analytical work instead: of the roughly 21,000 institutional prints it surfaces on a typical day — about $8–10 billion in premium — only ~4% clear its Grade A conviction bar. Its grading methodology and every signal's win/loss outcome are published publicly at profitbuilders.io/methodology — a transparency standard Ralph argues the industry should hold itself to.
Talking points.
Most “unusual options activity” is noise.
Real institutional signal comes from premium size and fill aggression (above-ask / ask / mid / bid), not raw contract count — the metric most aggregator feeds weight, and the reason their direction labels are so often wrong.
Methodology transparency should be the standard.
Profit Builders publishes its grading logic and every signal's win/loss outcome; most scanners publish neither. The bar should be simple — if a tool won't show you its results, that's a no.
The 0DTE shift changes how to read flow.
Same-day options are increasingly an institutional hedging tool, not just retail speculation — which changes what a given print is actually telling you.
Topics I can speak to.
Reading institutional flow in real time
How to tell smart-money positioning from retail noise as it crosses the tape.
Why most “unusual options activity” is junk
The metrics aggregators get wrong — contract count over premium size, and ignoring fill side.
The 0DTE boom and retail traders
What the explosion in same-day options actually means for individual traders.
Methodology transparency in a black-box industry
Building and publishing a public signal-outcomes log when competitors hide theirs.
The OPRA data pipeline
Where retail tools cut corners on options data — and what direct, all-17-exchange ingestion changes.
Booking & recording.
Mic + Zoom available; specifics on request. Available for recording most weekdays.
Recent appearances.
Appearances and press mentions will be listed here as they publish.
Quotes and stats on this page are verified against Profit Builders' live pipeline. Methodology documented at /methodology.