GEX vs DEX, explained one step at a time.

What is gamma exposure (GEX)?

Gamma exposure combines option gamma, open interest, the contract multiplier and spot. EasyBear.ai assigns positive gamma to calls and negative gamma to puts under its disclosed long-call / short-put dealer model. Public open interest does not identify who holds either side.

A strike’s GEX is the model contribution from its contracts, evaluated at the snapshot spot. A small 1% rally implies a hedge sale of that dollar notional under the model. It is not a measured sale or evidence that price stalled there.

Gamma describes a change in delta. A long-gamma position gains delta as spot rises, so restoring a delta-neutral hedge requires selling underlying; a short-gamma position requires buying. The opposite hedge adjustments apply when spot falls.

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

Dealers quote options and manage portfolio risk. The chain snapshot supplies contract-level open interest and greeks, not each dealer's position or hedge. The calculations on this page therefore require an explicit positioning model.

For an isolated hypothetical short call, the option position has negative delta and negative gamma. A delta-neutral hedge starts with positive underlying exposure. As spot rises, the option delta becomes more negative and the hedge must buy additional underlying; as spot falls, it sells. This example explains a short-call position, not the dashboard's assumed long-call inventory.

Here is an illustrative fixed-gamma calculation at SPX spot 7,483. The first product is delta-equivalent underlying units; multiplying by spot converts it to dollar notional.

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)
= 149,660               (delta-equivalent underlying units)
x 7,483                 (spot: dollars per underlying unit)
= $1,119,905,780         (illustrative hedge buying for the short-call position)

The dashboard aggregates exposures across its selected contracts and expiries. Its call-positive / put-negative GEX sign convention is an assumption about positions, not a conclusion from OI.

What is DEX and how is it different from GEX?

DEX measures delta-weighted open interest in dollar notional. The formula is signed raw delta x open interest x 100 x spot, summed over the selected contracts.

Calls have positive raw delta and puts have negative raw delta. Positive net DEX means call-delta notional exceeds put-delta notional in magnitude; negative net DEX means the reverse. Each open contract has a long and a short holder. This calculation does not identify dealer inventory or the underlying used to hedge it.

The see-saw represents call and put delta contributions above and below spot. It is a schematic of exposure distribution, not a reconstruction of dealer holdings.

GEX and DEX answer different questions. GEX is modeled hedge sensitivity to a spot move. DEX is raw delta notional. Combining them does not establish support, resistance or the strength of future hedging flows.

What's the "ball and bowl" thing?

The bowl and hill illustrations describe the direction of a delta-neutral hedge adjustment. They are memory aids, not equations for the motion of price.

With positive modeled gamma, a delta-neutral hedge sells when spot rises and buys when spot falls. This is the dampening mechanism represented by the bowl. It does not require price to return to the middle.

With negative modeled gamma, the hedge buys when spot rises and sells when spot falls. This is the amplifying mechanism represented by the hill. It does not tell you which direction the next move will take.

A flip is a zero crossing of the modeled gamma profile. Read the actual sign on each side: a crossing can run in either direction, and a book can have more than one crossing.

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

EasyBear.ai does not determine when to buy or sell. It shows an OI-based exposure model and the source data used to calculate it.

The gamma map expresses hedge sensitivity under the stated dealer-position model. Actual dealer holdings, hedge execution and other market flows are not measured by this calculation.

A positive gamma contribution implies selling underlying into a rally if that modeled position is delta hedged. The existence of the contribution does not prove that dealers executed the trade or that price stopped at that strike.

Read the map alongside its timestamps, expiry coverage and assumptions. These checks establish what the numbers describe; they do not validate a trading strategy.

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

There is no universal high-GEX threshold. Compare the same ticker, units, expiry scope and model version. This dashboard does not publish a historical percentile benchmark.

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 opposing net-at-strike contributions largely cancel. A high ratio means less cancellation. Neither ratio verifies dealer positions or predicts price behavior. Use the strike map to see contributions hidden by the net total.

Check 2 is concentration. Peak Expiry uses the sum of absolute net GEX across strike-expiry cells. An expiry's percentage is its share of that total. This identifies where calculated exposure sits; no pinning probability or validated 20%/40% outcome threshold follows from the percentage.

Any future benchmark would need a defined sample, compatible model versions and a published method.

absolute net GEX / gross GEX = offset ratio   (how much of the book cancels itself out; near 1 means little cancellation; near 0 means substantial cancellation)

Positive vs negative GEX. What actually happens to price?

Positive and negative GEX describe different hedge responses under the stated position model. They do not specify the shape of the next price path.

For a delta-neutral long-gamma book, rising spot increases option delta, requiring an underlying sale to restore the hedge. Falling spot requires an underlying purchase. This is the dampening mechanism.

For a delta-neutral short-gamma book, rising spot requires buying underlying and falling spot requires selling. This is the amplifying mechanism. A gamma squeeze refers to a feedback process involving short-gamma hedging, but this OI-based dashboard does not establish that such a process occurred.

Gamma sign alone is not bullish or bearish. Descriptions such as 'leans supportive' or 'leans heavy' are not a signal and do not follow from gamma sign as a return forecast. Both positive and negative gamma can coexist with either rising or falling prices.

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

Long Gamma · Offsetting means net GEX is positive while positive and negative contributions largely cancel. Short Gamma · Offsetting is the negative-net counterpart. The offset ratio measures cancellation; it is not a probability or confidence score.

When offsetting is high, a small net can conceal large positive and negative contributions. Inspect the strike map alongside the headline. This applies to either net sign.

Low GEX takes precedence when gross exposure is below its existing threshold; next comes the existing transition band, then offsetting, then the current net sign. These rules are unchanged. The separate simulated profile does not replace current net GEX as the sign source.

Short Gamma · Offsetting   (net negative, gross large, most of the book cancels)
Neutral                    (net exactly zero after the magnitude and transition checks)
Regime Transition          (spot is within the configured distance of the modeled flip)

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

The GEX formula uses gamma as delta change per one-point spot move. Multiplying by 1% of spot gives delta change; multiplying by OI and the contract multiplier gives underlying-equivalent units; multiplying by spot again gives dollar notional.

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

gamma
x open interest
x 100                   (contract multiplier)
x spot2               (spot squared: move size and dollar conversion)
x 1%                    (the priced move)
= GEX per strike        (dollar hedge sensitivity before the assumed position sign)

For an illustrative group of 100,000 calls at strike 7,500, let gamma be 0.005 and spot 7,483. Holding gamma fixed for the local calculation, a 1% move is 74.83 points:

100,000                 (illustrative call OI at 7,500)
x 0.005                 (gamma per contract)
x 74.83 points          (a 1% SPX move)
x 100                   (contract multiplier)
= 3,741,500             (delta-equivalent underlying units)
x 7,483                 (spot: dollars per unit)
= $27,997,644,500        (dollar notional per 1% move)

The unsigned result is $27,997,644,500, about $28.0B per 1% move. The dashboard's assumed long-call position assigns positive GEX to these calls. A hypothetical short-call position would instead have negative GEX. DEX uses raw delta x OI x 100 x spot without that position multiplier.

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

High absolute DEX means large raw delta notional. A put contribution is negative because a long put has negative delta, irrespective of which participant holds the long or short side.

Call-tilted DEX overhead identifies call-delta dominance at strikes above spot. Put-tilted DEX below identifies put-delta dominance below. Neither observation identifies dealer positions or the underlying hedge.

The grid separates the conditional GEX mechanism from the raw DEX tilt. No cell adds a price forecast.

The GEX vs DEX view places both values on the same row so that their inputs and units can be compared without treating delta inventory as a second measured hedging force.

Why does this dashboard show exposure rather than trade flow?

Its GEX and DEX inputs are option-chain snapshots, open interest, Greeks and spot. They do not identify who owns the contracts or who initiated a particular trade.

The call-positive / put-negative GEX convention is an assumption, not evidence of dealer holdings. Other providers may use different data and methods; compare their disclosures rather than assuming their figures measure the same thing.

What is a call wall, and what should I watch?

A call wall is a strike selected for positive modeled gamma near spot. Under the long-gamma assumption, a delta-neutral hedge sells into a rise and buys into a decline. Those hedge adjustments are conditional model mechanics, not evidence of actual transactions.

The wall’s strike is a price level. Its exposure value measures modeled hedge sensitivity for a 1% spot move. It does not establish that dealers will sell that amount of futures at the strike.

A wall's exposure changes as spot, volatility, time and the included book change. Compare the exposure values and scope when a wall moves; the move does not by itself identify new positions or a price breakout.

What happens when price breaks the call wall?

Crossing the strike changes moneyness continuously. A call just through its strike is only slightly in the money, not deep in the money. Its gamma does not disappear at the crossing.

For fixed expiry and volatility, gamma is concentrated near the money. Moving far from that region reduces gamma. Time, volatility and other contracts can change the result, so inspect the actual updated book rather than assigning a fixed breakout pattern.

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

The put wall is a strike selected for negative modeled gamma near spot. Under the short-put assumption, the option position has positive delta and negative gamma; its delta-neutral hedge is short underlying. A decline requires additional hedge selling, and a rise requires hedge buying.

At the strike the option is at-the-money. Gamma is largest near the money for a given expiry and volatility, especially close to expiry. It falls as the option moves sufficiently far into or out of the money; touching the strike is not a gamma-collapse event.

A single short put retains negative position gamma on both sides of its strike. A whole book can change sign as the relative call and put contributions change, but a put-wall touch alone does not establish that change or a price reversal.

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

Current net GEX determines the displayed regime sign. It sums the active book's exposure using provider greeks where available and the existing fallback otherwise. Low-GEX, offsetting and transition labels retain their existing display rules.

The continuous flip comes from a separate spot simulation using Black-Scholes gamma and smoothed IV. It is a zero crossing of that simulation. Reaching the simulated flip does not imply that current net GEX is zero or must change sign at that price.

The distance compares the current spot with a model reference. The existing transition band uses that proximity, but the band does not make the two gamma calculations identical.

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

Shelves are secondary gamma concentrations selected by the dashboard's magnitude rules. Their signs identify the modeled hedge response, not whether price will pause at each strike.

The star (★) identifies a GEX concentration. The diamond (◇) identifies a DEX concentration. A compound glyph means the strike was selected under both rules; it does not prove stronger support or resistance.

Read the dollar values alongside the role labels. A role describes how a strike was selected from the book, not what happened in the market.

What is the Book Anchor?

The monthly column supplies two possible anchors: the largest positive net GEX at or above spot, and the most negative net GEX at or below spot. Either can be absent. An anchor matching the displayed wall is not repeated.

The dashboard uses a bare BOOK ANCHOR chip with no glyph to distinguish this monthly-expiry selection from near-window walls and ranked peaks.

Compare the anchor's expiry, strike and signed exposure with the active scope. The difference between it and a nearby wall comes from the selection rules; it does not predict convergence.

Do these levels actually work as support and resistance?

A concentration in GEX does not establish that a level will hold or break.

The model describes gamma exposure and conditional hedging flow. It does not measure all orders, actual dealer inventories or the price impact of hedge trades.

Stable OI or a stable gamma sign is not proof of future support or resistance. Expiry removes contracts from the modeled book, while spot, time and volatility change its greeks.

Treat a price reaction as a separate observation. The dashboard does not report a tested hit rate or probability of reversal at its levels.

What is OPEX and why does everyone talk about it?

OPEX means options expiration. Contract expiries include daily, weekly, monthly and quarterly schedules depending on the product. Calendar holidays and settlement conventions also matter.

SPX timing: standard SPX and SPXW series have different settlement and last-trading conventions. A date alone does not identify the cutoff. Read the contract series and Cboe’s SPX specifications; the dashboard’s methodology explains its inclusion rules.

The dashboard's monthly anchor selects a monthly expiry and ranks its net-gamma concentrations. A monthly expiry is not assumed to have more open interest or gamma than every other expiry; inspect the supplied values.

Once contracts expire they leave the eligible book. Remaining expiries already exist in the book; they do not first become active after OPEX. Removing an expiry changes the aggregate without proving that new positions were opened.

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

Pinning is the name for price finishing near a strike around expiration. Positive-gamma hedging is one proposed mechanism associated with such behavior, but an OI-based gamma map does not identify the cause of a particular close.

Long-gamma hedge adjustments oppose spot moves. They do not contain an instruction to return price to a specific strike. A large gamma concentration and a short time to expiry therefore do not prove that price will finish there.

Read the expiry concentration and sign as model facts. A pin outcome must be recorded separately after the session, using a defined price tolerance and timestamp.

What changes after OPEX?

Expiration removes the expired contracts from the modeled book. Later expiries remain. An updated aggregate can therefore change even with unchanged positions in those remaining contracts.

The resulting change depends on the signed contributions that expired and the inputs for the remaining book. There is no fixed point shift in the flip or required wall migration.

Compare snapshots with their timestamps and expiry sets. A change caused by expiry is different from a measured opening or closing trade.

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

0DTE gamma exposure comes from options expiring on the current ET date. Near-the-money gamma becomes concentrated close to expiry. Away from the money, gamma instead tends toward zero as expiry approaches.

The calculation uses overnight OI. Snapshot spot and greeks and fallback time inputs change during the session. This is not an intraday measurement of which options dealers bought or sold.

Compare the two scopes to separate today's expiring contribution from the tracked multi-expiry book. Neither scope determines which level will control price.

What does an expiry’s share of absolute GEX mean?

For each expiry, add the absolute value of net GEX at each strike. Peak Expiry selects the expiry with the largest sum of absolute net GEX and shows its share of the same sum over all tracked expiries.

This calculation takes absolute values after call and put contributions have been netted within each strike-expiry cell. It is not the signed net-GEX headline and is not the sum of absolute contract-level gamma.

For example, expiry A with cell values +30 and -10 has absolute exposure 40. Expiry B with +15 and -5 has 20. A carries 40 / 60 = 66.7% of this measure even though the book's signed net is 30.

The selection describes expiry concentration only. There is no validated 20% or 40% pin-risk threshold, and coincidence with monthly OPEX adds no forecast.

Does gamma get stronger near expiry?

In the Black-Scholes model, gamma is concentrated near the money. Holding other inputs fixed, near-the-money gamma rises as time approaches expiry; sufficiently far in or out of the money, gamma tends toward zero.

This is why an ATM contract and a deep-ITM contract at the same expiry can have very different gamma. DTE alone does not determine exposure: OI, volatility, spot and strike also enter the calculation.

The diagram illustrates the near-ATM fixed-input relationship. It is not a calibrated curve for a particular session, and the displayed zones are not universal magnitude thresholds.

What makes the read bullish or bearish?

The exposure read has no bullish or bearish verdict. Positive gamma describes counter-move hedging and negative gamma describes with-move hedging under the position model. Either state can accompany rising or falling prices.

DEX reports call or put raw-delta dominance, not whether dealers own or are short those contracts. A positive DEX bar cannot establish that dealers hedge by owning underlying.

Inspect gamma sign, net versus gross, expiry coverage and the timestamp independently. None of these creates a trade-direction rule or a position-size instruction.

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

A positive-GEX book implies hedge adjustments against spot moves under the disclosed model. It does not establish that rallies reverse, dips recover or implied volatility is expensive.

A credit spread or condor has a payoff determined by its strikes, premiums and settlement. Gamma sign alone does not supply an expected return or justify a position size.

Recheck the modeled sign, scope and timestamp when the book changes. An exposure update is context, not an automatic trade instruction.

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

In a delta-neutral short-gamma book, rising spot requires buying underlying and falling spot requires selling. This describes a conditional hedge adjustment in either direction.

Long options and debit spreads have costs and nonlinear payoffs. Negative GEX alone does not establish that realized movement will exceed their prices or that a trend will continue.

Read current net GEX for the displayed regime sign. Crossing direction belongs to the separate simulation and does not establish a universal above/below rule for current exposure.

How do traders play the flip itself?

A spot crossing of the simulated flip compares a current price with a separate model reference. Check source age, current net GEX and the simulation before interpreting that comparison.

Moving upward through a negative-to-positive simulation crossing changes the simulation sign from negative to positive. A positive-to-negative crossing does the reverse. This describes the fixed-input curve, not a required sign change in current provider-greek exposure.

Current snapshots also change with time, volatility and the contract set. The current-net estimator and the smoothed-IV profile can disagree. Neither a new flip value nor a price crossing establishes a future reversal or trend.

How do traders play OPEX pins?

An expiry trade must be evaluated from its own payoff and cost. The dashboard supplies exposure concentration and expiry context; it does not estimate where settlement will occur.

A butterfly or iron fly pays according to its strikes, initial debit or credit, and settlement price. It can lose even when settlement is near the middle strike. An uncovered short straddle has substantial tail risk. None of these structures is selected or priced by the gamma map.

Watching GEX change records changes in a model. Stable positive GEX does not establish that a pin is in progress, and a change toward zero does not forecast departure from the strike.

How should I trade 0DTE with this?

The 0DTE view isolates today's expiry for its scoped exposure values and levels. It is not a prediction of the path price takes before settlement.

Gamma depends on moneyness, time and volatility. Near-the-money gamma can be high shortly before expiry, while far-from-money gamma tends toward zero. A delayed OI-based snapshot is not a record of current intraday dealer inventory.

A useful reading sequence is to check the timestamp, compare the 0DTE and Multi-Day scopes, inspect net versus gross, and identify which expiries and strikes contribute to the result.

When does this NOT work?

The model's limits exist in every market state, not just on days with major news.

Other market flows and liquidity are outside this calculation. It does not measure the price impact of dealer hedging or establish when that impact dominates.

The public OI count does not identify dealer long and short positions. Low or high gross exposure does not validate the sign assumption.

A transition label is a configured distance check near a model crossing. It is not a measured confidence or probability.

Expiry changes the included contracts. Compare snapshots using their timestamps and coverage.

Opposing contributions can cancel in net GEX. Inspect gross and per-strike values instead of treating a small net as proof that every strike has little exposure.

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

Start with the source timestamp and market status. Pre-open data can describe a prior session rather than current positioning.

Then inspect the active scope and current net versus gross. Read the simulated profile separately. Distance to a flip is a price comparison, not a safe trading range.

Next inspect wall and anchor concentrations with their expiry coverage. Finally compare raw DEX tilt and absolute exposure by expiry.

This sequence documents the book being viewed. It does not select a strategy before the open or eliminate alternative market outcomes.

Use the sections below to understand the relevant mechanics. The regime does not choose a trade for you.

What do seasoned traders check before taking the trade?

Before interpreting a snapshot, verify that its source time and contract scope match the question being asked. Then inspect the signed model exposure and its denominator.

Gamma sign describes conditional hedge response. Net versus gross describes cancellation. Distance to a flip compares prices. Expiry concentration describes where absolute exposure sits. None of these alone specifies future returns.

The checks below are a reading discipline. Counting them does not produce an edge, an expected return or a position size.

• Sign is understoodDistinguish the model hedge response from a forecast of return direction.
• Magnitude has unitsCompare dollar exposures within the same metric, scope and timestamp.
• Profile is checkedSeparate the simulation sign from current net GEX. Distance to its crossing is not a safety margin.
• Expiry scope is checkedIdentify the included expiries and the denominator used for Peak Expiry.
• Data age is checkedUse the source timestamp and market state to establish what session the values describe.

Read the current summary

Gamma regime summarizes current net GEX under the model’s display rules. Net GEX, Gross GEX and Net DEX describe the selected scope; DEX does not set gamma regime. Spot, flip and walls are distinct references.

Read the current dashboard guide

Read the structure map

Rows are option strikes and columns depend on Breakdown. By Expiry shows tracked expiries; the NET column follows the selected scope. Read each number’s units and use shading to compare values within its scale.

Read the current dashboard guide

Compare GEX and DEX

GEX is dollars per 1% spot move; DEX is raw dollar delta notional. Compare concentrations and signs within each metric, not the dollar sizes or bar lengths across metrics.

Read the current dashboard guide

Choose how many rows to see

Full shows the display ladder, Expanded adds more context around selected levels, and Key Levels emphasizes selected references. These controls change row visibility, not calculations. Go to spot moves to the spot reference.

Read the current dashboard guide

Use the profile as a scenario view

The GEX profile recalculates modeled gamma at hypothetical spot prices. Its zero crossing is the simulated flip. It is separate from the current-net estimator and stays a GEX chart when you select DEX.

Read the current dashboard guide

Use the supporting panels

Key Levels summarizes selected references; expiry shares show where absolute GEX is concentrated. By-strike and individual-expiry charts follow the selected GEX/DEX metric. Each panel states its own scope.

Read the current dashboard guide

Keep scope and metric separate

Ticker changes the underlying. Today / Multi-Day changes the selected book. GEX / DEX changes the metric. Session history starts with 0DTE and follows later dashboard scope changes; its own scope control can be changed independently. Compare shows spot, GEX and DEX on separate scales.

Read the current dashboard guide

Check the model details

Use the data and methodology section for input sources, assumptions, units, missing-data handling and expiry timing. Read the labels attached to the current chart rather than relying on an older screenshot.

Read the current dashboard guide

Export the selected data

CSV preserves data values and PNG uses a dedicated chart layout. Check ticker, scope, metric and the Collected and Generated timestamps. Exported row selection can differ from Matrix Detail.

Read the current dashboard guide

Distinguish snapshot and history times

The feed is 15 minutes delayed. Snapshot collected is a collection time, not the timestamp of every input. History’s slider selects a saved capture in that panel only; other charts keep their latest snapshot.

Read the current dashboard guide

Know where the figures come from

EasyBear uses options snapshots from Massive (formerly Polygon), overnight open interest, provider Greeks where valid and model fallbacks. Calls are positive and puts negative in GEX; DEX uses signed option delta. These assumptions do not establish actual dealer inventory.

Read the current dashboard guide