Insider Trading Hidden in Unusual Options Flow

Insider trading is supposed to be rare, hard to detect, and aggressively policed.

In reality, it shows up more often than you would think:

Not as press releases or filings but as sudden, highly unusual options activity appearing right before major news or major breakouts.

Below are four real examples we recently watched play out in real time.

Important Filters to Know

Before diving into the trades, two Bullflow filters are important to understand.

🦄 Unicorn Filter

A ticker that has seen zero notable options flow for 7 or more days.

Why this matters:

• Insider trading is often done on smaller cap stocks, not $NVDA or $TSLA for example. The unicorn filter helps remove tickers that see large amounts of unusual options activity.
• When a small cap ticker suddenly lights up with a large options trade, something may have changed

This filter helps surface trades that truly stand out from normal market noise, typically smaller cap stocks.

📊 SigScore

A statistical measure of how unusual a trade is according to Bullflow’s algorithm.

• Ranges from 0 to 1
• A SigScore near 1.0 means the trade is extremely rare for that ticker, strike, and expiration

Case Study 1: $GLUE

The Trade

• $180,000 spent on out-of-the-money call options
• SigScore: 1.0
• Qualified as a Unicorn since there wasn’t any unusual options activity in the past week.

What Happened Next

• The very next day, the company announced positive Phase 1 clinical trial results for MRT-8102
• Read the full announcement here

The Result

• Stock surged more than 50%
• Calls peaked around 788% returns
• $180,000 turned into approximately $1.6 million in two days

This wasn’t luck.
Someone clearly knew the trial results before they were announced.

Case Study 2: $NSA

The Trade

• $665,000 in premium on call options
• SigScore: 0.99

Two Trading Days Later

• Calls were up 365%
• $665,000 turned into roughly $3.1 million

Case Study 3: $QNCX

• Unusual Call Flow of Quince Therapeutics was posted in Bullflow’s Swing-Flow Discord channel

• The ticker had been relatively quiet before the activity appeared

Just Four Days Later

• Stock surged +23%
• Calls gained roughly 130%

Case Study 4: $SERV

• Unusual $SERV call options were flagged in Bullflow’s #weekly-flow Discord channel

• Aggressive call buying stood out immediately

Two Days Later

• Calls exploded +1233%

While this move may not have been driven by insider trading directly, it’s another clear example of why monitoring unusual options flow matters.

The Bigger Picture

These examples aren’t isolated incidents. They happen more often than most traders realize.

Most retail traders never see them because they don’t know what to look for. When you learn what type of unusual options flow stands out and you filter out the noise, patterns begin to emerge.

The Key Takeaway

You don’t need to know the news.

You need to know where informed money is positioning before the news hits.

Bullflow gives you that edge.