Something I'd find really useful but can't figure out how to do: I monitor an option chain that's somewhat thinly traded -- perhaps 100 contracts traded / day -- with bid/ask spreads that are almost always in the $0.30 - $0.40 range for every contract, I assume because those quotes are the MM's. Though a few times per day, the bid/ask spread on a contract will go down to 5 or 10 cents, indicating that an actual human being (or at least someone other than the MM) is involved on one side or the other. I want to be notified when a spread narrows to $0.10 or less like the above, indicating that a contract is 'in play'. But IB's software only lets me link their alarms to BID / ASK / LAST / VOLUME. Wondering if other brokerage's software has this functionality.
MM software developers provide SQL based APIs which can query a price and volatility database. A brokerage based solution would be nice.