Where are the best options chains?

Question

Morningstar has the best I've found so far. Is there anything better? (examples below). Also, if there are any I could download to a spreadsheet, I'd be forever grateful.

Note that morningstar erases their data so to only keep it on the same trading day, but they mark changes in deltas, volatilities, etc. Chains would have to be better than Yahoo Finance's too.

Morningstar - http://quote.morningstar.com/Option/Options.aspx?Ticker=msft

Yahoo Finance - http://finance.yahoo.com/q/op?s=MSFT

Thanks for your help!

Answer 1

<<<Morningstar has the best I've found so far. Is there anything better?>>>

What is best depends upon what you want/need. If the ability to choose a lot of different data columns, such as the greeks, is important to you I doubt if you will do better than morningstar.

There are times I lke to see the different exchanges. For that purpose I use the CBOE.

http://www.cboe.com/DelayedQuote/QuoteTa...

<<<Also, if there are any I could download to a spreadsheet, I'd be forever grateful.>>>

On the CBOE quote site above you can click on "Download Text File" to create a create a ".dat" file which can be read directly my most spreadsheet programs.

If you want the additional data columns available from Morningstar the easiest technique to get them to a spreadsheet is probably copy and past.

You may very well already be familiar with the copy and paste functions, but if you are not here are the steps.

(1) Select the data to copy to the spreadsheet. This is done be placing the cursor just to the left of the first field to select, in this case the "s" in the word "strike". Then, while holding down the left mouse button, move the cursor just to the right of the last data field to to select. then relese the left mouse button. The selected area should be highlighted.

(2) Copy the selected data to the clipboard by pressing control-C.

(3) Switch to the spreadsheet window. Click on the cell in which you want the table to begin, such as cell "A1" in Excel.

(4) Paste the data into the spreadsheet by pressing control-V.

This works with most software, such as Windows, Internet Explorer and Excel. I am sure there are some other software combinations where it will not work, but I don't know which offhand.