Inconsistency in Put vs Call ITM chain

Question

I am discovering a discrepancy in the option chains for calls and puts. Often I get more ITM Puts than Calls. Why is that? Also, why are options chain levels jumped ie starts with $0.50 steps ATM but $1 steps up to $5 steps further from the money! For example for AT & T (T) expiry 28/5/2021 there are 8 ITM Calls and 13 ITM Puts.

J Roche · Answer

That does not make any sense at all. If you look at https://www.barchart.com/stocks/quotes/AIMC/options for AIMC there is a full chain yet your chain only brings back 4 items in the chain AND I have a strike for $40 Call and no $40 strike for the PUT. If you look at URI you have Put strikes from $200 - $355 and Call strikes from $280 - $395. Your data makes no sense at all.

If there are no strikes then why does Barchart have strikes for all the ones you are missing?

Sam Johnson · Answer

This could be due to two reasons:

1. There are no contracts for those strikes in the first place because they are never created.
2. There are contracts for those strikes but the API filters them out. The reason for this is because there are only either Call or Puts in the raw data, but not both. The API returns data for a given strike only when both are present.

Hope this helps,

Thanks

Option Chain

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1,457ms

87%

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Inconsistency in Put vs Call ITM chain