Most of your frequent readers know that we’re in the middle of development for FirstradeNEXT, and the mobile offering that will come with it. If you peek a little bit further down our roadmap, and in fact the roadmap of everyone in the financial industry, there’s a little change called OSI that is looming in February.

Okay, it’s not really little. In fact this is going to change how investors deal with options trading on a daily basis. Currently, options symbols are somewhat cryptic, one cannot know the strike price and expiration date just by looking at symbols. With the new setup, all the options will be descriptive, VERY descriptive. Option symbols are going from the current 3-5 character setup to 21 charaters!

We’ll provide more details regarding OSI and how Firstrade plans to adapt to the new standard. In the meantime, please take a look at details of this change by visiting http://www.optionsclearing.com/initiatives/symbology/