A GEX chart looks busy the first time you open it. Bars left and right of a dotted line. A purple smear. Seven rows of numbers next to the picture. People zoom in, screenshot the call wall, and skip the rest. That’s how you misread it.
The chart is a gamma exposure profile by strike. Cyan bars are +Gamma. Red bars are −Gamma. The purple line is ABS GEX — density without the sign. The dotted line is spot. The seven rows are summaries of that same pile: Max −Gamma, ABS GEX, Max OI Put, Max OI Call, Max +Gamma, Max OI C+P, Gamma flip.
You are not looking at orders. You are looking at a model of hedging pressure built from listed open interest. Guests on this site get a delayed snapshot. None of it is a trade.
If you want the live picture, open Gamma. This page is how to look at that picture without kidding yourself.
What the bars are doing
Each bar is a strike. Height is how much gamma the model puts there, not how many contracts. Contracts are open interest. Gamma is how hard those contracts shove a dealer’s hedge when price ticks. We unpacked that split in GEX vs open interest. Short version: a fat OI bar can be a parking lot. A fat GEX bar is shove.
+Gamma (cyan on our chart) is the side where the model says dealers are net long gamma. In the usual story they buy dips and sell rips to stay delta-neutral. That can slow a move. People call this a positive-gamma neighborhood.
−Gamma (red) is the other sign. Dealers net short gamma. The hedge sells weakness and buys strength. Moves can run. That’s the negative-gamma neighborhood.
The sign can flip from strike to strike. A call-heavy cluster above spot often prints as +Gamma. A put-heavy cluster below often prints as −Gamma. Not a law. Covered-call overwriting, a quiet tape, a thin name — the “dealers are short what the crowd is long” guess can be garbage. Treat the colors as a weather map.
ABS GEX ignores the sign on purpose. It answers “how loud is this strike,” not “which way does the hedge lean.” The peak of that purple line is the densest strike on the chart. Price often reacts nearby. Often it doesn’t. Density is not an entry.
Spot is the dotted line because the whole picture is “relative to here.” A call wall two percent above the market is a different map than a call wall already in the rear-view.
The seven key levels, without worshipping them
On the Gamma tab the levels sit in a list. Tap a row. You get the sentence under the number. That’s the whole UI trick. The numbers are not a ranking of “best trades.”
Max −Gamma — the strike where negative gamma is fattest. In the usual story, that’s where acceleration is most plausible if price is hanging around it.
ABS GEX — densest strike, sign ignored. The volume knob, not the direction knob.
Max OI Put — most put contracts. People nickname this the put wall. OI and GEX can disagree. Huge put OI with sleepy gamma is a crowd, not a floor.
Max OI Call — most call contracts. The usual call wall nickname. Same caveat.
Max +Gamma — fattest positive-gamma strike. The model’s “sticky” neighborhood if the long-gamma story holds.
Max OI C+P — most combined call and put open interest. The biggest positioning parking lot on the chain. Sometimes it sits on the call wall. Sometimes it’s a mixed strike nobody tweets.
Gamma flip — where net GEX changes sign. Also called the zero-gamma level. Above it, the model says hedging leans toward damping. Below it, toward amplifying. Regime line. Not a buy stop. The longer version is on the walls page; this page is how it sits on the chart.
I don’t memorize the seven as a shopping list. I use them as captions on the bars I’m already looking at. If the caption and the bars argue, I believe the bars.
Read it in this order
I look at four things. Same four as the short list on the GEX explainer. The chart just makes them visible.
1. Spot versus the gamma flip. Regime first. If you skip this, a call wall “failing” is you applying a positive-gamma story to a negative-gamma tape. The flip can sit above or below spot. On a real chain it moves. The schematic on this page is a cartoon.
2. Nearest wall. Call wall above, put wall below, or both far away. “Nearest” matters more than “famous.” A 650 call wall with spot at 648 is a different afternoon than a 700 call wall you saw on Twitter.
3. Shape of the pile. One enormous bar at a round number is a speed bump. A plateau across five strikes is a neighborhood. ABS GEX tells you which. The eye wants the tallest bar. The tape cares about the smear.
4. Which expiries you’re summing. A 0DTE pile is not a monthly pile. Our Gamma tab lets you pick dates on purpose. GEX, OI, and the seven levels are the sum of those dates. If you leave “all” on, you’re looking at a smoothie. Fine, as long as you know it’s a smoothie.
Then I stop. I don’t need a story about what “the market wants.” If price is sitting on a huge positive cluster, I expect sticky. If it blows through that cluster, I don’t fade it on principle. The hedge that was holding the level is gone.
Two charts on the Gamma tab
The gamma profile is the bar picture this article is about. Strikes on the axis. GEX as height. That’s the map of positioning.
The price levels chart is the same levels drawn on a price path. Useful for “where was this line an hour ago.” Useless if you treat a horizontal as a limit order. Price history can also be temporarily unavailable. The levels still show. Don’t wait for a pretty path to read the profile.
The volatility smile is a different toy: implied vol by strike, one line per expiry. It is not GEX. Don’t mash them into one screenshot and call it a setup.
What people do that wrecks the reading
They screenshot one number. Call wall 650. No flip, no expiries, no shape. That’s a caption without a paragraph.
They mix OI and GEX without looking. Max OI Call and Max +Gamma are often neighbors. When they aren’t, that’s the interesting day. Read GEX vs open interest when they split.
They treat 0DTE like a monthly. The magnet that dies at the close is still a magnet at 11 a.m. It is not a magnet at Monday’s open. The expiry filter exists because “all” lies in a friendly way.
They read a thin single name like SPY. SPY and SPX have the deepest options. NVDA can look loud with a fraction of the liquidity. We still show single stocks. Don’t read them like an index.
They turn the chart into a playbook. Fade the call wall, buy the put wall, size it. That’s a fun tweet. It’s also how people donate money to the tape. The chart tells you where positioning is heavy. It does not tell you to click buy.
A walk-through that isn’t a recap
Imagine spot under a fat cyan cluster, flip below the market, put wall a few percent down, “all” expiries on. I would say: positive-gamma regime on this mix, ceiling neighborhood overhead, some air underneath, and I don’t know how much of that ceiling is same-day until I toggle 0DTE off. I would not say “short here.”
Toggle 0DTE off. If the cyan cluster collapses, the ceiling was a same-day magnet. If it stays, monthlies are in the story. That’s the whole walk-through. No candles. No “we called it.”
If the flip is above spot and the red bars are the loud ones nearby, I switch the weather story: hedge more likely to feed a move than fight it. Walls get easier to punch. Still not “go long.” Still a map.
How this looks on our Gamma tab
Type a ticker. Pick expiries. The profile redraws. The seven rows redraw. Guests get a delayed snapshot. A free account keeps a journal and one full report. Pro is unlimited tickers and the current model portfolio, not a secret better chart.
Tap a level if you want the sentence. Hovering is not required. The hint on the tab says it is an analytical indicator, not a trading signal. That’s not legal wallpaper. That’s the reading.
Single names are noisier than SPY or SPX. We still show them.
A short way to read it without a playbook
- Where is spot versus the gamma flip.
- Where is the nearest call wall or put wall.
- Is the pile one strike or a smear. Check ABS GEX.
- Which expiries am I actually summing.
If those four are boring, good. Boring is the point. You wanted a map. You got a map.
Also in this series: what GEX is, call wall / put wall / gamma flip, positive vs negative gamma, 0DTE and the expiry filter.