What Is Discovery?
Discovery runs five independent scanners across a universe of 128 pre-computed gamma names and returns only what cleared a bar, rescanning every 60 seconds during market hours. Each scanner asks a different question and keeps its own qualifying rules, so the five tabs are genuinely five tools sharing one surface rather than five views of the same data.
They are Noteworthy Flow, GEX Setups, Charm Setups, Breaking News, and Unusual Darkpool. You do not need all five at once. Most sessions you will live on one or two and glance at the others for confirmation.
The Single Most Important Thing to Understand
Discovery drops a name that matches nothing. It does not rank it last, grey it out, or push it to page four. If a ticker fails a scanner's conditions, that ticker is not on the list at all.
This changes how you read the screen. The number of rows on a tab is the number of real setups, not the size of the universe. Six rows on GEX Setups means six names in the whole universe currently satisfy a setup definition. Zero rows means none do. A quiet tab is a real answer about the market, not a broken scan, and treating it as an answer is most of the skill in using the module well. If you find yourself wishing the list were longer, the honest move is to check a different scanner, not to loosen your standards until something appears.
When to Use It
Open Discovery at the bell to see which handful of names the scanners actually flagged, then again mid-morning once the opening auction has settled. Treat it as a triage step ahead of your deeper tools: Discovery narrows the board, then DealerEdge, OptionFlow, and your charts do the analysis on the two or three names that survived.
Your First Discovery Scan
- Start on Noteworthy Flow. Leave the filters at their defaults on the first pass so you can see what the scanner considers noteworthy before you constrain it.
- Check the data basis. During market hours the module rescans every 60 seconds. Outside market hours it falls back to the last trading session's close and labels that basis. A setup computed on Friday's close is a study aid on Sunday, not a live signal.
- Switch between Top picks and All today. Noteworthy Flow has two views. Top picks is the shortlist, All today is the full day ledger. Look at both once so you understand what the shortlist is selecting from.
- Move through the other four tabs and note the row count on each. That count is your first read on what kind of session this is.
- Use the session date picker. Every tab has one. Roll back to a session you remember well and see what the scanners flagged that morning. Reviewing a day whose outcome you already know is the fastest way to calibrate the qualifying bars.
Noteworthy Flow
Noteworthy Flow surfaces large options prints that have been confirmed against open interest, the check that separates a genuinely new position from a print that merely looks large. If you are new to reading prints, What Is Options Flow covers the mechanics.
Its important structural feature is the day ledger. When a print clears the bar it is written down and it stays, so a pick from the 9:45 window is still there at lunch instead of having scrolled off a live tape. The most common way traders lose a good flow signal is not missing it, it is seeing it, getting pulled away, and never finding it again.
Four filters shape the list:
- Premium floor - the minimum total dollar premium a print must carry to appear. Raise it to see only the heaviest activity.
- Minimum score - the bar the scanner's own ranking must clear. Raise it to shorten the list to the strongest candidates.
- Side - calls, puts, or both. Useful when you already have a thesis and want to see only what agrees, or only what disagrees.
- Max fill price - a per-contract price ceiling.
Max fill price is the one that trips people up. The value is the per-contract price, so 2.50 means the contract costs $250 once you apply the standard 100 multiplier. The filter is strictly under, so 2.50 shows fills at 2.49 and below and excludes a fill printed at exactly 2.50. Setting the value to 0 means no cap at all, not a cap of zero. Traders working a small account use this to see only what they could realistically buy.
GEX Setups and Charm Setups
These two scanners work on dealer positioning rather than on prints. GEX Setups looks for names sitting in a meaningful relationship to their gamma structure; Charm Setups looks for a specific confluence between price, the anchor, and stacked positive charm above it.
Both are regime-gated: the setup a name can qualify for depends on the volatility regime it is in. That gating is the whole reason the tabs are useful, and it gets a dedicated article in Discovery Setup Scanners. Before reading it, be solid on the GEX Rating system, because the rating gates every one of these setups and it is never a directional score.
One detail to internalize now: each row shows the distance to the level its own setup is about. A flip setup shows distance to the flip; an anchor setup shows distance to the Anchor. Two rows on one tab can measure against completely different prices, so read the setup type before the number.
Breaking News
Breaking News is gated on the editorial channels that carry genuine urgency, and it ranks what survives by how hard the catalyst is. A confirmed regulatory decision is a harder catalyst than forward-looking commentary, and the ranking reflects that.
Not everything tagged to a ticker qualifies as breaking. If you want the broader tagged feed with impact tiers and presets, that is NewsEdge. Discovery's Breaking News tab is the short list, not the full feed.
Unusual Darkpool
Unusual Darkpool weighs off-exchange prints against the name's own trailing baseline rather than a flat dollar threshold. That is what makes "unusual" mean something: a $40M print is routine in one name and remarkable in another, and a fixed threshold would fill the list with mega-caps every session while never surfacing anything smaller.
The scanner calls out magnet and accumulation patterns where it finds them. Index ETFs face a far higher bar than single names, because end-of-day index crosses are enormous, routine, and not remotely unusual. Without that adjustment the tab would be an index-rebalance monitor. For the underlying concepts, see What Is Dark Pool Activity.
For Example
For example, suppose you open Discovery at 9:50 AM. Top picks on Noteworthy Flow has four names, GEX Setups has two, Charm Setups is empty, Breaking News has one headline, and Unusual Darkpool has three.
The empty Charm Setups tab is information: no name currently has price at its anchor with positive charm stacked above, so you are not hunting a charm trade today. Instead you notice one ticker appearing on both Noteworthy Flow and Unusual Darkpool, meaning the scanners found confirmed options premium and an off-baseline equity print on the same name. That overlap is where you spend your analysis time, and you take it into DealerEdge and OptionFlow to decide whether there is actually a trade there. Discovery got you from 128 names to one candidate. It did not tell you to buy anything, and it never will. This is an illustrative walkthrough of the workflow, not a prediction or a recommendation.
Common Mistakes
- Reading an empty tab as a malfunction. Discovery drops non-qualifying names, so zero rows means zero qualifying setups. Refreshing until a list appears does not change the market.
- Ignoring the data basis outside market hours. The module tells you when it is showing the last session's close. Weekend scans are for study, not for planning a Monday entry as though the numbers were live.
- Misreading max fill price. It is per contract, so 2.50 is a $250 contract, and it is strictly under, so 2.50 excludes a 2.50 fill. Use 0 for no cap.
- Treating a Discovery row as a trade. A row means a name cleared a scanner's bar. It is a reason to look, not a reason to enter. Direction, level, size, and risk are still entirely your decisions.
Where to Go Next
Go deep on the two setup scanners in Discovery Setup Scanners: How GEX and Charm Qualify a Name, then configure the signals you want to reach you with Discovery Alerts. For the dealer-positioning background the setup tabs assume, read The GEX Rating System and Positive vs. Negative Gamma. The Discovery feature page has the full module overview.