GEX and DEX, explained. In plain English.

What is gamma exposure (GEX)?

So let's take this apart. Gamma exposure is the dollar amount of stock or futures that dealers must trade to stay hedged when the underlying moves 1%. Real dollars, live from the options chain, refreshed every 15 minutes.

Here's the trap this saves you from. Say it's 3:40pm ET on 2 Jul 2026 and SPX has pressed into 7,500 three times. Every push stalls. If you're short that stall you feel like a genius. If you're long the breakout you feel picked on. Both takes are wrong for the same reason. On the /gex dashboard, 7,500 shows +$4.4B of gamma exposure. Translation: dealers holding those calls must sell about $4.4B of SPX futures for every 1% SPX rallies into that strike. Every push walks them into the same forced sell. That is not luck. It's a wall you can measure.

Stay with me, this next bit is the whole game. Positive GEX makes dealers act like brakes. They sell rallies, buy dips, and the day chops. Negative GEX makes them act like an accelerator. Small moves grow into big moves, and gaps happen.

Who are these "dealers" and why do they move the market?

Dealers are the market makers on the other side of every options trade. Big banks and specialist firms. Their job is quoting bids and offers, not directional trading, so they hedge every position that lands in inventory to stay flat.

Let's walk the loop. You buy one SPX call from a dealer. The dealer is now short that call, which means the dealer is short delta on the way up. To be flat, the dealer buys some SPX futures. When SPX rallies, the dealer's short-call loss grows faster than the futures gain, because gamma. So the dealer buys more futures. When SPX drops, the dealer sells the futures back. Constant re-hedging. Gamma controls how much re-hedging is required per 1% move.

Here's a small worked number so this stops feeling abstract.

1,000 SPX calls
x 0.02 gamma            (delta change per $1 move)
x 74.83 points          (a 1% SPX move)
x 100                   (contract multiplier)
= about $150M           (forced dealer buying per 1% rally)

Multiply that loop by every position in dealer inventory across every strike and every expiry, and you get GEX. That's the whole model, and it's why the number lives on the dashboard in real dollars, not vibes.

What is DEX and how is it different from GEX?

OK, GEX told us what forced trading happens per 1% move. DEX tells us the standing weight dealers already carry today.

Delta exposure is the dollar amount of underlying dealers must currently hold to be flat. Not the change per 1% move, the current position. If dealers are short 50,000 puts at 7,400 SPX, they carry a lot of positive DEX at that strike, because shorting puts is bullish exposure they have to offset by shorting stock or futures.

Think of the book as a see-saw. DEX tells you which side is heavier right now. On 2 Jul 2026, SPX DEX is call-tilted overhead of 7,483 spot. Meaning dealer inventory leans long stock in the strikes above spot. If price rallies into those strikes, dealers already own the exposure, so re-hedging pressure is lighter above than a naive open-interest read would suggest.

GEX is what happens when the see-saw tips. Positive GEX pushes back on any tilt; negative GEX runs with it. GEX is the regime, DEX is the lean.

What's the "ball and bowl" thing?

Positive gamma is a bowl. Negative gamma is a hill. Price is a marble. Stay with me on this, it's the picture that will make every other section click.

Roll a marble around inside a bowl. It settles toward the bottom. Anywhere you push it, gravity brings it back. That's positive GEX. Dealers dampen. Ranges tighten. Big moves fade before they finish.

Now roll the same marble down a hill. Any push accelerates. It runs. That's negative GEX. Dealers amplify. Small moves become big moves. Gaps happen.

Now imagine a bowl balanced on top of a hill. Above a specific price, gravity pulls the marble in. Below that price, gravity throws it out. That flip point is the gamma flip level. On 4 Aug 2026, SPX's flip sits at 7,485. Above it, the day feels like a bowl. Below it, it feels like a hill. Same book, two personalities, one line between them.

Is this a signal service? Will it tell me when to buy?

No. EasyBear.ai maps structure. It does not tell you what to trade. Let's talk about why that's the honest answer, not the humble one.

Predicting price is a losing game against everyone else trying to do the same thing. Mapping structure is not. The gamma structure sits there in dealer hedging obligations, denominated in real dollars per 1% move, refreshed every 15 minutes from the live options chain. That map does not tell you what will happen. It tells you what dealers will have to do if it does.

When SPX taps the call wall, the dealers holding those calls must sell futures. That is not a prediction. That is arithmetic. What you do with that knowledge is your call.

The edge here is knowing the field, not being handed a play. Traders who read structure well take fewer trades with more conviction, because they know why a level should hold before it does, and they know what would break the thesis before they enter.

GEX is +$4.9B. Is that a lot? What is high, what is low?

Honest answer: not yet. The "is that a lot" question wants a percentile ("this GEX is bigger than 80% of recent sessions") and we can't publish one until our snapshot history has a denominator behind it. R2 baseline: no invented ranges here.

What IS knowable today are the dated live values on the dashboard and two structural checks you can run on them.

Check 1 is the offset ratio: absolute net divided by gross. A low ratio means the regime label is doing little of the work; the book has large positive and negative pockets that cancel out. A high ratio means net positioning genuinely dominates the book. As of the 4 Aug 2026 close, SPX shows +$49.3B net against $72.8B gross, ratio about 0.68. Read the levels; the ratio tells you how much weight to put on the headline versus the strikes themselves.

Check 2 is concentration. The Peak Gamma card shows what percentage of net dealer gamma sits at the dominant expiry. Above 40% is a heavy pin-risk read into that expiry's date; below 20% is a distributed book. When the dominant expiry aligns with monthly OPEX, pin risk is at its highest.

We publish typical ranges once our own tracked history is deep enough to state them with a denominator, and not before.

net GEX / gross GEX = offset ratio   (how much of the book cancels itself out; near 1 means little offset, near 0 means the label is doing all the work)

Positive vs negative GEX. What actually happens to price?

Positive GEX pulls price back toward its recent range. Negative GEX pushes it further out. That's the whole day-to-day read in one sentence.

Under positive GEX, rallies get sold and dips get bought, because dealers hedging their long-gamma book must trade against the move to stay flat. Ranges compress. Big candles reverse. Overnight gaps often fade at the open. It's the market's most boring regime, and its most fadeable.

Under negative GEX, dealers hedge in the same direction as the move, so trends continue. Small moves become big moves. Volatility expands. A morning gap that would fade in long gamma extends in short gamma. This is where a gamma squeeze lives: a sharp move up forces dealers to buy more, which pushes price higher, which forces more buying. It's not a magic event. It's one regime's mechanics doing exactly what they're defined to do.

One line of orientation for beginners, then Category E owns the trading detail. A positive-GEX book with spot above the flip line leans supportive. A negative-GEX book with spot below the flip line leans heavy. That's a lean, not a signal, and real news can break it at any time.

What does "Long Gamma · Offsetting" mean? Net vs gross?

Long Gamma · Offsetting means net GEX is positive, but positive and negative pockets in the book largely cancel out. On 4 Aug 2026, SPX shows +$49.3B net against $72.8B gross. The net says positive, the gross says the book is enormous, and the ratio says most of the weight offsets.

When offsetting is high, the headline label is honest but misleading if you use it alone. The book is not evenly positive-gamma. It's a mix that happens to sum positive. In that state, read the levels, not the headline. The call wall and put wall matter more than the net number.

You'll also see these regime labels on the card:

Short Gamma · Offsetting   (net negative, gross large, most of the book cancels)
Neutral                    (net roughly zero, book is small, quiet drift and low conviction)
Regime Transition          (spot is right at the flip line; volatility can pick up either way)

Why per 1% move? What do the units mean?

GEX is denominated in dollars of stock or futures that dealers must trade per 1% move in the underlying. So +$4.4B at 7,500 means: if SPX rallies 1% into 7,500, dealers hedging their positions at that strike must sell about $4.4B of SPX futures to stay flat.

The math is direct. Here's the formula and a worked example.

gamma
x open interest
x 100                   (contract multiplier)
x spot
x 1%                    (the priced move)
= GEX per strike        (dollars dealers must trade per 1% move at that strike)

Plug it in. Suppose dealers are net short 100,000 SPX calls at 7,500 with a per-contract gamma of 0.005, and SPX spot is 7,483. A 1% move is 74.83 index points. Their combined delta shifts by:

100,000                 (net short SPX calls at 7,500)
x 0.005                 (gamma per contract)
x 74.83 points          (a 1% SPX move)
x 100                   (contract multiplier)
= about $37.4M          (per-contract-group per 1% move)

Sum that across all strikes and all expiries, and you get the GEX headline you see on the dashboard. DEX uses the same idea, but for delta itself, not delta change. DEX at a strike is dollars of underlying dealers currently hold to be flat, given the options they carry.

High DEX at a strike. What does it tell me?

High DEX at a strike means dealers must currently hold a lot of stock or futures against options concentrated there. Not gamma; standing weight. A strike with 100,000 puts held short by dealers has heavy negative DEX at that strike whether or not price moves.

Position matters. Call-tilted DEX above spot suggests dealers are short calls up there, which they hedge by owning underlying. Put-tilted DEX below spot suggests dealers are short puts down there, hedged by shorting underlying.

Here's the 2x2 quick read you'll use every day:

That grid is why the /gex dashboard shows GEX and DEX side by side in the GEX vs DEX view. Reading them apart is guessing at half the picture.

Why doesn't EasyBear.ai say "whales" or "institutional flow"?

Because trade-side attribution needs data the feed doesn't tell anyone at a normal price. To know whether a print hit the ask or the bid, you'd need last-trade tape with aggressor flags. Even with it, the flag only tells you which side crossed the spread. It never tells you who traded. Naming a print as "whale buying" without that data is guessing dressed up as fact.

The honesty moat: EasyBear.ai shows only what is knowable from open interest, greeks, and price. Dealer positioning is inferred from the industry-standard sign convention (dealers long calls, short puts against the public). That inference sits on the footer TRANSPARENCY row in plain sight. Aggressor, sweep, and institutional labels are refused by design, not by omission.

Two consequences of doing it this way. First: EasyBear.ai's numbers can be verified by any options trader with a chain of their own. Nothing hides behind vendor magic. Second: when another service claims aggressor context they cannot know, that is not a feature. It is a lie of confidence, and the difference between our number and theirs is the confidence, not the data.

What is a call wall? Why did SPX stall at 7,500?

A call wall is the strike above spot where positive dealer gamma piles up. Dealers hedging those calls are long delta on the way up, so when SPX rallies toward the strike, they have to sell futures to stay flat. That selling is mechanical, size-scaled to gamma at the strike, and it stacks up every time price presses in.

Let's make it concrete. As of the 4 Aug 2026 close, SPX's call wall sits at 7,750. A rally 1% into that strike meets a mechanically-priced supply of futures. That's not a chart pattern; it's arithmetic.

Where retail sees resistance, the map sees a hedging obligation. The number is the difference. A $4.4B wall behaves nothing like a $0.4B wall, even if both look the same on a chart.

What happens when price breaks the call wall?

When SPX breaks a call wall, the dampening flow doesn't stop cold. It fades over the next few dollars. Options that were near-the-money at the strike are now in-the-money, and deep-ITM calls carry very little gamma. Dealers no longer need to hedge as sharply. The brake fades.

What replaces the brake depends on what the book does next. If overnight open interest adds sit above the breach strike, the wall rolls higher; the market has layered new resistance on top. If open interest doesn't add, the breach was a clean extension into thin book. Both look identical on a chart in the moment, and they behave differently over the next two sessions.

What is a put wall? Does price bounce there or break?

A put wall is the negative-gamma twin below spot. It's the strike where dealers hold the largest short-put exposure, so their hedge is short underlying. As SPX drops toward it, gamma works against them; they have to sell into the drop to stay flat. That amplifies the selloff into the wall.

The reaction at the wall is where the mirror ends. At the strike, the short puts flip into deep-ITM territory. Dealer gamma there collapses, and the hedging that fueled the drop stops. If the reversal sticks, the book flips positive-gamma at that strike and dealers start buying dips.

The asymmetry with call walls is important. Call walls break orderly because the brake fades. Put walls break violently because the accelerator often continues below the strike into the next put wall or the flip line.

What is the gamma flip and what happens when we cross it?

The gamma flip is the level where net dealer gamma crosses zero. Above it, dealers hold a net long-gamma book: they dampen moves. Below it, they hold a net short-gamma book: they amplify them. Crossing the flip mid-session flips the whole day's character.

Distance-to-flip is a safety margin. As of the 4 Aug 2026 close, SPX's flip sits at 7,485, with spot at 7,737. That distance is the cushion between spot and the regime line; a wide cushion is a durable regime and a narrow one is fragile. Same sign, very different behavior.

When spot lands close to the flip, the dashboard names the state REGIME TRANSITION and colors it amber. Not green, not red. Amber is the honest color: the book is undecided, and volatility can pick up either way. Treat it as neither risk-on nor risk-off; the mechanical read has no strong signal until price commits.

What are shelves, GEX peaks (★) and DEX peaks (◇)?

Between the call wall and the put wall, price rarely runs in a straight line. It staircases between smaller strikes with meaningful gamma. Those steps are shelves. Each shelf is a smaller version of a wall: enough gamma to slow the move, not enough to stop it.

The dashboard marks the two peak types on the map. A star (★) marks a GEX peak: the strike with the highest dealer gamma in the visible book, wall or not. A diamond (◇) marks a DEX peak: the strike with the heaviest standing delta weight. Peaks and walls often coincide. When they don't, the mismatch is a signal in itself.

Shelves earn their name on trending days, when the book unspools one step at a time. On chop days, they compress and the walls do all the work.

What is the Book Anchor?

The Book Anchor is the heaviest strike at the next monthly OPEX expiry. It's not always near spot. It's the month's magnet: the strike that concentrates the most dealer inventory at the biggest scheduled unwind of the calendar. As price drifts through the month, that anchor exerts a slow pull that is different from the day-to-day wall pull.

The dashboard names the anchor with a bare BOOK ANCHOR chip, no glyph. That's deliberate. The gamma structure vocabulary (▲ call wall, ▼ put wall, △▽ shelves, ★ GEX peak, ◇ DEX peak) is reserved for what dealers must trade per 1% move. The anchor is a different animal: monthly-OPEX concentration, not per-1% flow. Giving it its own chip prevents mixing the two reads.

When spot converges toward the anchor into the last week of a monthly cycle, expect chop. When it diverges, the wall matters more.

Do these levels actually work as support and resistance?

Sometimes yes, sometimes no. The honest read.

Gamma levels mark strikes where dealer hedging flow concentrates. That flow often looks like support and resistance from the outside: rallies stall at heavy positive-gamma strikes above spot, dips reverse at heavy strikes below. It looks like S/R because it acts like S/R in aggregate. It is not the same thing.

Levels hold when three conditions cooperate: regime sign at the strike stays put through the test, open interest doesn't collapse between refreshes, and no real news catalyst hits mid-test. Levels fail when any of those move. A regime flip mid-session flips the read entirely. A strike rolling off after expiry deletes the level from the book. Real news is the honest override.

The dashboard refuses to call these support and resistance because those words promise causation that mechanical flow doesn't carry. Flow is why the shape appears. Flow is not why price is at a level.

What is OPEX and why does everyone talk about it?

OPEX is short for options expiration, the day contracts settle and the open interest at the expired strikes rolls off the book. It happens every Friday for weekly options, on the third Friday of each month for monthlies, and quarterly for the biggest ones (March, June, September, December).

Monthly OPEX is the one that matters most for the map. Monthlies carry more open interest than weeklies at the same strike, so the gamma piled at a monthly strike is bigger and the dealer positioning tied to it is heavier. When those monthlies roll off, a lot of dealer inventory disappears at once, and the book redraws.

Post-OPEX, walls can move, the flip can shift, and yesterday's read stops being today's read. Treat OPEX Friday as a scheduled discontinuity, not a normal session close.

What is gamma pinning? Why does the market pin on expiry days?

Gamma pinning is a mechanical drift toward the strike carrying the most dealer gamma as expiry approaches. Positive dealer gamma at a heavy strike forces market makers to sell rallies away from it and buy dips back toward it, which tightens price around that strike into the close.

The effect is strongest when a single strike holds a large share of the day's open interest and the book is net long gamma there. As DTE shrinks toward zero, gamma spikes at strikes near spot, so the mechanical grip gets tighter in the final hours.

Pins fail predictably. When the book flips to short gamma at the pin strike, dealers start selling into the drop and buying rallies, breaking the drift. When a big customer hedges through the pin (a real block trade forcing dealer flow the other way), the mechanical read gets overridden by the flow.

What changes after OPEX?

Post-OPEX, the book redraws overnight. Open interest at the expired strikes disappears. Positions rolled or opened for the next monthly cycle become active. The walls, the flip, and the Book Anchor all shift.

The first session after a monthly OPEX is a rebuild session. Traders reading Friday's map into Monday's tape end up trading yesterday's book, not today's. Wall migration is normal; the flip line can move 20 or 30 points on SPX just from the calendar roll. A regime that read positive on Friday can read negative on Monday, with no market news between.

The honest read is to open the map on Monday morning without carry-over. Look at where the walls now sit, where the flip now is, and what the anchor now names. The mechanism refreshes weekly; the trader who refreshes with it wins the first hour.

0DTE gamma exposure. Why do 0DTE levels change during the day?

0DTE gamma is the dealer gamma exposure from options expiring the same day. Because gamma is largest right before expiry, 0DTE strikes carry the sharpest hedging response per point of price movement. That's why intraday levels move faster on the 0DTE view than on the multi-day view.

The 0DTE book also reprices continuously through the session as new 0DTE contracts trade. The map at 10 AM ET is not the map at 2 PM ET. Levels appear, migrate, and disappear inside the session.

Use each view for what it's built for. 0DTE is the intraday microscope: the fast-reacting levels for the current session. Multi-Day is the wide-angle: the day's regime, the walls that anchor multiple sessions, and the Book Anchor for the month. Reading only one is reading half the map.

What is Peak Gamma? Why does one expiry hold 46% of the gamma?

The Peak Gamma card names the expiry that holds the largest slice of today's gamma. It shows the expiry date and the concentration percentage: what fraction of net dealer gamma sits at that single expiry.

Concentration matters because gamma effects are per-expiry-plus-per-strike. A book that holds 46% of its gamma at a single expiry behaves nothing like a book that holds 12% at the same expiry, even if the net headline is identical. Concentrated books pin harder into their heavy expiry; distributed books drift.

The threshold worth knowing is roughly 40%. Above that, the pin risk near that expiry's date grows sharply. Below 20%, the book is genuinely distributed and no single expiry drives the tape.

Read Peak Gamma alongside the Book Anchor. When the Peak Gamma expiry equals the current monthly OPEX, the pin risk into that Friday is at its highest.

Does gamma get stronger near expiry?

Gamma at a strike is largest when that strike is at-the-money and expiry is near. It's a curve, not a step: as DTE shrinks toward zero, gamma at ATM strikes rises sharply. Beyond 20 or so DTE, gamma flattens out and behaves more like a long-term exposure.

That's why 0DTE strikes feel sharper than weekly strikes and weekly sharper than monthly. Same strike, same OI, different gamma just because of time-to-expiry. Dealer hedging response tracks that curve exactly: sharper reactions at the ATM near-expiry strikes, softer reactions at ATM far-expiry strikes.

The whole gamma-vs-DTE curve steepens as OPEX approaches, and resets after the calendar roll. That's the underlying reason 0DTE and Multi-Day disagree more into an OPEX Friday: the near-expiry side of the book is dominant.

What makes the read bullish or bearish?

The read is structural lean, not a signal. What you're doing is checking which side of the map has more forced-flow support behind it. Bullish lean shows when net GEX is positive above the flip, DEX is call-tilted overhead in a way that dealers hedge by owning underlying, and the put wall is holding recent tests. That combination means dealers dampen moves down and buy into dips.

Bearish lean shows when net GEX is negative and expanding, spot sits below the flip, DEX is put-tilted below, and rallies reject at the call wall. Dealers amplify drops and cap rallies mechanically.

The honest caveat every time: lean is not a signal. Real news can override any structural read on any day. Use lean to size positions and pick playbooks (E2-E6), not to decide whether to trade.

It's a long-gamma day. What trades fit?

On a long-gamma day, dealers dampen. The playbook is fade the edges: sell rallies into the call wall, buy dips at shelves or the put wall. Premium-selling structures fit because range compresses through the session; iron condors and credit spreads anchored to the visible walls give you defined risk and let time work for you.

Position sizing can be normal because moves are constrained. Wider stops aren't needed; if anything, tighter is better because reversals come fast.

What invalidates the read is precise. A wall breach with the wall rolling higher on the next refresh flips the map for that side. A flip loss (spot crossing below the gamma flip) flips the entire day's character. Both are visible on the dashboard the moment they happen; the trade off-ramp is not vague.

It's a short-gamma day. What changes?

On a short-gamma day, dealers amplify. The playbook is the opposite of long-gamma: trade with the move, not against it. Wider stops because moves extend, smaller size because gaps happen, long-options structures because IV tends to run.

Debit spreads and straddles fit the regime because they benefit from the same trend expansion that hurts premium sellers. Fading a move against the trend is the losing trade of the day; the same dealer hedging that drove the move continues to drive it until the flip is reclaimed.

The invalidator is spot reclaiming the flip. Once above the flip line, the book flips regime and dampening resumes. Until then, the map is telling you to run with what you have.

How do traders play the flip itself?

The flip trade is playing the regime change itself. Reclaim and loss are two different trades at the same line, and running them the same way is a common way to lose money on both.

Reclaim (spot crosses from below the flip to above): the regime flips from short-gamma to long-gamma. The trade is fading the next pullback back into the flip line, because dampening flow now defends the crossing. Position for compressed range going forward.

Loss (spot crosses from above the flip to below): the regime flips from long-gamma to short-gamma. Do not fade. Treat the loss as a regime-change signal and switch to short-gamma playbook (E3) immediately. Wider stops, smaller size, longer strikes. What was a bowl is now a hill.

How do traders play OPEX pins?

The OPEX pin trade takes advantage of the mechanical drift that pinning creates. Pin candidates are strikes with three ingredients present: heavy OI concentration at that strike, short DTE (0-3 typically), and a net long-gamma dealer read at the strike.

Structures fit the mechanic. Butterflies and iron flies at the pin strike give you defined risk and pay if price finishes near the magnet. Short straddles at the strike are the higher-payoff, higher-tail-risk cousin; only run them if you can define the tails somehow.

The last hours are where the pin either lands or fails. Watch the GEX drift at the strike in the last hour of trading. If the sign is stable and net long gamma is holding, the pin is on. If GEX starts drifting toward zero or flips, the pin is failing and price will drift away from the strike.

How should I trade 0DTE with this?

0DTE is a different rhythm. The near walls in the 0DTE view are the intraday levels for today. Treat them as day-trade markers, not swing levels; they will change through the session.

Because 0DTE gamma is sharpest, hedging flow reacts faster. Size down from normal, widen mental stops, and expect walls to move on you mid-session. A wall that showed up at 10 AM ET can be gone by 2 PM ET.

The workflow that fits is checkpoint-based, not continuous. Pre-open: read Peak Gamma, the walls in Multi-Day, the flip, then flip to 0DTE view. First hour: mark the intraday levels and pick a playbook. Midday: re-check the 0DTE view for level migration. Power hour: watch the pin candidates. The dashboard rewards checkpoints; watching it tick doesn't.

When does this NOT work?

Every honest map has an out-of-scope zone. Here's when the gamma map is out of scope.

Real news overrides flow, most of the time. Fed emergency, geopolitical shock, large-cap earnings miss: these events don't respect dealer hedging. When news is the driver, the map shows the mechanical response but does not call the direction. Reduce size or step aside.

Thin books misrepresent structure. Low-OI sessions have less mechanical inertia; a wall that would matter with $50B gross behind it behaves like paper at $5B. The dashboard's coverage stats on the footer are your check.

Regime transitions (amber) are the honest "we don't know" zone. Push conviction into an amber read at your own risk; the mechanism itself is undecided.

Post-OPEX Mondays are book-redraw sessions; the whole map is being reprinted underneath you. Take fresh reads.

Heavy offsetting books hide meaning behind the headline. When the offset ratio is near 0.05, the labeled regime is nominally there but the levels do all the work.

What's a realistic workflow? Walk me through a morning.

A five-minute routine that lands you at 09:30 ET with a picked playbook.

0-2 min: regime card and distance-to-flip. Which map are we on today: bowl, hill, or amber transition. This is the whole rest of the day's posture; no other check overrides this one.

2-4 min: walls and Book Anchor. Where does flow concentrate above and below spot. Note the dollar sizes, not just the levels; a $4B wall and a $0.4B wall are different trades even at the same strike.

4-5 min: DEX tilt at spot and Peak Gamma concentration. Which way does the book lean, and how concentrated is it at a single expiry.

By 09:30 ET: pick the playbook. Long-gamma day gets E2. Short-gamma day gets E3. OPEX pin candidate gets E5. Heavy 0DTE concentration gets E6.

What do seasoned traders check before taking the trade?

Seasoned traders don't take every trade the map suggests. They run through a five-check confidence checklist first, and the number of checks that pass decides the size and the conviction.

Each check is short. Regime agrees with the trade direction. The level has real size in dollars (not just position on the chart). Distance-to-flip gives you a durable regime cushion. Peak Gamma concentration is on your side of the tape. Invalidation is defined before entry, in a specific number.

The tally is what you actually trade. All five agree, take size. Four, take normal. Three, take light. Two or fewer, pass the trade. The checklist is not a rule; it's the discipline that converts the map into decisions.

• Regime agreesThe regime card matches your trade direction. Bullish trades want positive GEX above the flip; bearish trades want negative GEX below the flip. Amber transition is neither.
• Level has real sizeThe wall or shelf you're trading has meaningful dollar weight per 1% move. A $4B wall beats a $0.4B wall at the same strike.
• Distance-to-flip is meaningfulThe cushion between spot and the flip line is wide enough that the regime is durable through your holding period. Narrow cushion is a fragile setup.
• Expiry concentration is on your sidePeak Gamma expiry aligns with your holding horizon. A near-expiry concentrated book helps intraday trades; a distributed book helps swings.
• Invalidation is definedBefore entry, you know which specific dashboard signal exits you: wall breach with roll, flip loss, GEX drift at the strike. Not a vague price stop, a mechanism.

What do the six cards at the top tell me?

The six hero cards are the fastest read on the page. Left to right you get the regime label (LONG GAMMA / SHORT GAMMA / OFFSETTING / NEUTRAL / TRANSITION), current spot with distance-to-flip, the flip level, the call wall strike, the put wall strike (with a Book Anchor sub-line if applicable), and the Peak Gamma expiry with concentration percentage.

Each card has three tiers of information. Big number on top for scan-reading. Teaching sub-line in muted text underneath for a one-sentence read of what the number means. Facts row below that for the numbers the read is derived from (net vs gross for regime, gross exposure for walls, and so on).

The card teaching lines are written for beginners; the facts rows are for the seasoned trader who wants the derivation.

1 2 3 4 5 6

1. 1 Regime · the sign and offset state of the book
2. 2 Spot · the underlying's price with distance to flip
3. 3 Flip · the level where net dealer gamma changes sign
4. 4 Call Wall · the heaviest positive-gamma strike near spot
5. 5 Put Wall · the heaviest negative-gamma strike near spot (with Book Anchor sub-line when applicable)
6. 6 Peak Gamma · the expiry holding the largest share, with concentration %

What am I looking at in the structure map?

The structure map is the heatmap that shows how gamma or delta exposure lives across strikes and expiries. Rows are strikes ordered by price; columns are expiries ordered left to right by date. Each cell colors the exposure at the row's strike, in the column's expiry.

Cell color intensity is scaled to its own column's max. That is deliberate: a bright cell in a small-book expiry does not mean the same absolute dollars as a bright cell in a heavy expiry. Read within a column, not across.

Color meaning swaps by view. Under GEX view, emerald means positive gamma and coral means negative. Under DEX view, the scale switches to cyan for delta weight. The scale strip beneath the map names the color meaning explicitly.

How do I read the GEX vs DEX view?

The GEX vs DEX view is the reference table that most seasoned traders live in. Every visible strike is one row. Two bar columns show that strike's GEX and DEX, each scaled to its own column's max. The DEALER BEHAVIOR column decodes the mechanical response in a short phrase (Dampen, Amplify, Standing weight, Regime pivot, and so on).

The glyph on the left of each row names the strike role. ▲ call wall (heaviest positive GEX above spot), ▼ put wall (heaviest negative below), △▽ secondary shelves, ★ GEX peak (heaviest gamma in view, wall or not), ◇ DEX peak (heaviest standing delta). The Book Anchor uses a bare BOOK ANCHOR chip with no glyph, on purpose: ▲▼△▽★◇ are reserved for gamma structure; the anchor is a monthly-OPEX magnet and gets its own vocabulary.

The legend text changes with the view. Under GEX it reads call-heavy / put-heavy; under DEX it swaps to call-tilted / put-tilted, because gamma at a strike is about forced trading per 1% move while delta is about standing weight. Two different mechanisms, two different words. When bars in one column pass roughly two-thirds of column-max, the DEALER BEHAVIOR column reads Strong; between one-third and two-thirds it reads Moderate; below that it goes silent for that row. The Regime pivot row appears at the flip level and, on narrow phone screens, wraps to three lines by design. The YOU ARE HERE divider marks spot; strikes above sit overhead and strikes below sit under. Fold bands (marked with [+]) collapse rows with light exposure so the important levels stay visible on one screen.

1. 1 Glyph column · ▲▼△▽★◇ and the bare BOOK ANCHOR chip
2. 2 Strike price
3. 3 GEX bar (own-column scaling)
4. 4 DEX bar (own-column scaling; cyan under DEX view)
5. 5 DEALER BEHAVIOR (Strong / Moderate benchmark applied per column)
6. 6 YOU ARE HERE divider · splits overhead from below-spot

What are Key Levels, Expanded, and Full?

The three density modes trade information density for scannability. Key Levels is the fastest read: just the strikes that carry a role (walls, shelves, peaks, spot). Expanded fills in the strikes near spot so you can see how price sits in the local structure. Full is the whole visible book, with fold bands hiding silent rows.

Use Key Levels for the whole-day read and the morning routine. Use Expanded for intraday scalping and pin-day tape reading. Use Full when you're diagnosing an unusual print or verifying a specific strike.

What's the curve chart?

The profile curve chart shows what the regime would be at each possible spot price. The X axis is price; the Y axis is net dealer gamma at that price. As price moves along X, the curve traces the exposure the book would carry.

The chart shades zones. Emerald above zero is the bowl (dampening / positive gamma). Coral below is the hill (amplifying / negative gamma). The flip line is where the curve crosses zero. Distance from spot to the flip line is your safety margin; the curvature near spot tells you how fragile that margin is.

What's in the right rail?

The right rail carries four stacked panels. Key Levels lists the strike roles in one column with their dollar sizes, so you can pick a wall or shelf at a glance without scanning the Combined table. GEX by Strike is a compact horizontal-bar chart of net GEX at each visible strike; it's the fastest read on strike-by-strike concentration.

Market Structure Read is a short narrative paragraph that summarizes the regime in plain English (positive regime with 31-point cushion above flip, and so on). Exposure by Expiry breaks Peak Gamma out into a bar chart across all visible expiries so you can see the concentration shape rather than just the top number.

What do the toggles do?

The toggles are how you steer the map. Today · 0DTE narrows every panel to same-day expiries; Multi-Day aggregates the next ten. GEX vs DEX switches the metric across every panel (heatmap, Combined table, curve, rail); the color scale swaps to cyan under DEX. The Structure Map vs GEX vs DEX view toggle switches the middle panel between the by-expiry heatmap and the strike-by-strike Combined table.

Panels grey out combinations they don't support. A ticker without per-strike delta will disable the DEX toggle with an honest tooltip; a market-closed session will disable the 0DTE toggle when there is no same-day book. Grey buttons are honest disabled states, not bugs.

What do the footer flags mean?

The TRANSPARENCY row is the footer strip below the panels. It states the methodology choices this build makes. SIGN · INDUSTRY-STD means dealers are modeled as long calls and short puts against the public. FLIP · CONTINUOUS means the flip is computed with a continuous-solver at zero-gamma rather than snapped to a strike. REGIME · SPOT-VS-FLIP means the labeled regime is spot's position relative to the flip line, not a compound score. GREEKS · % LIVE names the percentage of visible strikes carrying live per-strike greeks (with the remainder priced from the Black-Scholes fallback). COVERAGE names how many contracts and expiries feed the visible view. SRC names the underlying's chain source.

Can I export this?

The Combined view offers CSV and PNG export. CSV includes one row per visible strike with columns for strike, GEX, DEX, glyph role, and the DEALER BEHAVIOR decoder text. PNG captures the panel as it looks on screen, freshness stamp and all.

Both exports embed the timestamp of the underlying data snapshot in the filename, so a CSV downloaded at 10:14 ET and one downloaded at 10:31 ET cannot be confused. The freshness stamp inside the PNG is the same 15-minute refresh cycle used everywhere else on the page.

How fresh is the data?

The dashboard refreshes every 15 minutes during US options market hours. When the market is closed, the panel shows the last session's close snapshot with a market-closed notice in the topbar. All panels share the one cycle; there are no split freshness stamps to confuse.

When a ticker temporarily has no data (rare, temporary, usually a chain-source hiccup) the panel shows "No GEX data available for {T} right now" instead of blank cards or stale numbers. The message is explicit; wait for the next refresh.

Where do EasyBear.ai's numbers come from, and how accurate are they?

Three categories of number live on the dashboard: measured, modeled, and not-knowable. Measured numbers come directly from the options chain snapshot: strike, expiry, open interest, spot, timestamp. Modeled numbers come from a well-defined formula applied to the measured inputs: net dealer gamma per strike, delta exposure, the continuous-solver flip level, and the Black-Scholes fallback pricing for the strikes without live per-strike greeks. The footer's GREEKS · % LIVE flag names the percentage that is measured versus modeled.

Not-knowable numbers are refused. Trade-side attribution (who crossed the spread, whether a print was a buy or a sell, "whale" or "institutional" labels) requires last-trade tape with aggressor flags that the feed does not carry at a usable price. Rather than dress those inferences up as fact, EasyBear.ai names them as not-knowable on the footer TRANSPARENCY row.

When a ticker's snapshot is missing per-strike delta, the DEX metric is disabled with the tooltip "delta exposure unavailable in this data snapshot". The number does not fall back to zero, and the toggle is not left enabled with silent nulls. Wait for the next refresh.