■ put-side pain■ call-side painTotal payout option writers would owe at each settle price (both sides, all open interest, ×100 shares) — low settles hurt put writers, high settles hurt call writers. The minimum — 15 — is the max pain price.
Open interest by strike · Fri, Aug 21
■ calls (up)■ puts (down)MSDL open contracts per strike for Fri, Aug 21.
Open-interest change — building vs unwinding
Needs two observed snapshot days for this expiration — the comparison appears automatically once the next weekday snapshot lands. We diff real observations only; nothing is estimated.
Volume by strike · Fri, Aug 21
■ calls (up)■ puts (down)Today's traded contracts per strike (delayed).
Implied volatility by strike · Fri, Aug 21
— call IV— put IVATM ≈ 50.8% · Quoted strikes only; illiquid wings with junk fits are dropped, not smoothed.
Gamma exposure by strike · Fri, Aug 21
Net dealer gamma per strike, in dollars per 1% move, assuming the standard convention (dealers long calls, short puts) — an assumption, not an observation. Above the amber flip level hedging tends to dampen moves; below it, to amplify them.
Greeks by strike · Fri, Aug 21
Call Δ
Call Θ
Strike
Γ
Vega
Put Θ
Put Δ
1.00
-0.00
12
0.0006
—
—
0.00
1.00
-0.00
14
0.0091
0.00
-0.00
-0.01
0.89
-0.01
15
0.3889
0.00
-0.01
-0.11
0.17
-0.01
16
0.5995
0.01
-0.01
-0.83
0.01
-0.00
17
0.0360
0.00
0.00
-0.99
0.00
0.00
18
0.0032
0.00
—
-1.00
—
—
21
—
—
—
-1.00
Quoted contract greeks from the delayed feed (not modeled here); the highlighted row is nearest to spot. Δ per $1 of underlying · Θ per day · vega per IV point.
Stacked — layer the expirations
Call open interest per strike, stacked across the checked expirations — each color is one expiry. Strikes are pruned to the liquid center of each chain.
Max pain is arithmetic, not prophecy: the settle price that would minimize what option writers pay out at expiration, computed from open interest alone. Prices sometimes gravitate toward heavy strikes into expiry — dealer hedging is a real flow — but the evidence that max pain predicts settlement better than chance is mixed, and we are not going to pretend otherwise. Use it as a map of where positioning is stacked, next to the fundamentals and the earnings calendar, not as a target.
Data: Cboe delayed public feed (~15 minutes), refreshed here about every 15 minutes. Open interest itself updates once daily, before the open. Educational information, not investment advice.