|VS3D™ · Charm|VS3D™ · CharmEvery SPX option market makers hold gains or loses delta as the clock runs. Add that up across the whole position at every index level and you get the charm profile: the futures they have to trade purely because time passed. This page walks through today's profile element by element, the way it is taught in the onboarding session.
VS3D Live Education: Charm, live in the dashboard, 2:00 PM ET today. About 15 to 30 minutes, no registration, bring your questions and we'll answer them live during the session.
Join on Zoom Start the free 7-day trialThe trial gives you the live dashboard, so you can hover the same field while we go through it. Reading for before or after: The Annotated Guide and the community onboarding guide.
The Gradient Chart on Charm, captured at 10:44 AM ET. Hover or tap any part of the figure, or a row in the list, and the callout explains what that element is and what today's value means.
The Gradient Chart simulates one greek of the whole market maker position at every index level, for every 10 minutes of the session. The dropdown picks the greek. This capture is Charm: how the position's delta changes as time passes, and therefore which way the hedge leans.
SPX at the moment of capture: 7,671.80 (-5.40, -0.07%). Every level on the y-axis is read relative to this. The dashed white line across the field marks the same level.
The front at-the-money straddle was $16.80 at capture. That is what the options market charged for today's move, so the chart scales its boundaries by it. Small straddle, tight boundaries, more of the field inside them.
RTH clips the field to the regular session, 9:30 to 4:00 ET. The zoom controls change the price range on the y-axis. Zoom out on a big-range day, zoom in on a pinned one.
Candles are the session's SPX path up to capture: a push to about 7,690 near 10:00, then a fade back to 7,672 by 10:40. Everything to the right of the last candle is the simulated future: the field is drawn for the rest of the day at every level.
Blue is positive charm: as time passes, the position gains delta at these levels, so market makers sell futures to stay flat. The band hugs spot all day, roughly 7,655 to 7,690, and widens into the afternoon.
Gold is negative charm: at these levels, time passing takes delta out of the position, so market makers buy futures. Above about 7,700 the lean flips from selling to buying, and the gold thickens from 1:00 PM onward.
The mirror image below spot. Under about 7,640 the passive flow turns to buying. Note the shape: this lobe is wide and stable from the open, the upper one only forms in the afternoon. Same greek, different structure of strikes on each side.
The dotted lines trace the boundary between positive and negative charm, the flip levels. They are not static: they drift through the session as the day's expiry decays. Read them as a zone, not a line.
The same zero-crossing on the downside. Between the two dotted contours the position sells futures as time passes; outside them it buys.
Spot plus the at-the-money straddle. Inside the two pink dashed lines is the range the options market priced for today. Here the entire straddle range sits inside the blue band: the market's own expected range is a selling zone all day.
Spot minus the straddle. Price closing outside a boundary means the day moved more than the options priced. Price stuck between them with a heavy charm lean is the setup where passive hedging matters most.
The solid lines ride the local maximum and minimum of the field: orange traces the peak of the selling band, blue the peak of the buying lobes. Where the orange line sits is the level of heaviest passive selling at that time of day.
Inside each gold lobe a blue curve marks where the buying flow is largest. The afternoon lobes below 7,640 and above 7,700 both develop one. They are the levels where a fade or a rally would meet the most passive support or resistance from hedging.
The dashed white line at 7,671.80 is where price was at capture. Hover the field on either side of it and the tooltip repriced the hedge for that level.
The same position produces stronger charm as expiration approaches, which is why the colors saturate and the lobes fatten from about 1:00 PM. Early in the day, discount the paths; late in the day, respect them.
Left to right is the session clock, 9:30 AM to 4:00 PM ET in 12-minute steps. The chart is not a price chart with a color overlay: every column is a fresh simulation of the position at that time of day.
SPX levels. The visible range here is about 7,611 to 7,734, roughly 60 points either side of spot, or three and a half straddles.
The strip at the bottom shows the whole session with the visible time window highlighted. Drag it to scroll the field when you are zoomed in.
Drag to move the visible price window up or down the y-axis without changing the zoom level.
Hover the figure or the list to reveal an element · click to pin · Esc to unpin
Hover any node on the field and the tooltip converts the greek into the trade market makers face over the next five minutes at that level. This is the 10:44 readout at SPX 7,672.
The tooltip reads the column under the cursor. Aug 26, 2026, 10:44:00 AM is the capture column, so the numbers below describe the next five minutes from 10:44 at the hovered level.
The simulated index level, not necessarily where price is. Hover 20 points above spot and you read what the position would do if SPX were there at that time.
The greek itself at that node: the Black-Scholes implied delta change over the following five minutes, in units of the underlying. 32.48 here. Positive exposure = market maker selling pressure ahead; negative = buying pressure.
The same reading in notional: -$24.9mm of SPX-equivalent futures to trade over the next five minutes at this level. Negative = market makers sell. Multiply by the 78 five-minute steps in a session and this pace, if it held, would be a multi-billion dollar day.
Dollars converted into the instrument that actually gets traded: -64.96 ES contracts (one ES is $50 x the index, about $384k here). Negative = sell. This is the number to carry into your own read of the tape.
Charm is not a market opinion. It is a property of the positions market makers are holding, and it comes from three things.
VS3D tracks every SPX option the market makers are long or short, by strike and expiry, built from the flows since the book opened. The position is the input; the greeks are read off it.
Each option's delta drifts as time passes. An out-of-the-money put market makers are long loses its short delta as it goes out worthless; a short call they hedged with long futures sheds delta as the call decays. Both make the position longer delta.
Market makers keep delta flat. A position that gets longer as time passes has to be sold against, so the charm reading at a level is the futures they sell (or buy) there over the next interval, with no move in the index at all.
Sign convention. Positive charm (blue) = the position gains delta as time passes = market makers sell futures. Negative charm (gold) = they buy. On the tooltip, negative Hedge Product to Trade = sell.
It is a rate. Charm is dollars of delta per unit of time. Dollars are the size of the position; ES contracts are what has to hit the futures ladder to keep delta flat. One ES is $50 x the index, about $384k at 7,672.
It is frozen-time. The field is the position simulated at every level and time of day. The flips are not intraday support and resistance; charm reprices as spot moves and as the day's expiry decays.
The value of charm is not a forecast. It is knowing, before the session, which way the passive hedging leans at each level and how hard, so the tape's drifts and pins stop looking random.
Open the Gradient Chart on Charm before the open. Note where the selling band sits relative to spot and where the dotted contours cross. Today the whole straddle range (7,654.94 to 7,688.54) sat inside the selling band.
Hover the current column at spot and read Hedge Product to Trade. 64.96 ES every five minutes at 10:44 is a lean, not a wall; it tells you what a quiet tape drifts against.
The same position produces stronger charm into expiry. When the lobes fatten after 1:00 PM, a rally into gold above 7,700 meets buying; a fade into gold below 7,640 meets buying too. That is where afternoon pins and V-shapes come from.
Gamma is the hedge per point of movement; charm is the hedge per minute of time. Read them together: long gamma plus positive charm is the calm-tape, drift-lower archetype; the day's expiry usually carries most of both.
The free 7-day trial opens the same dashboard this page was captured from: Gradient Chart on every greek, Positions by Strike and Expiry, the flows behind them. Join the 2:00 PM ET today session and we'll go through today's charm profile together, questions included.
Start the free 7-day trial Join today's session on Zoom Read the Annotated Guide (free)Data via Cboe, VS3D/VolSignals · Modeling via VS3D/VolSignals · Capture Aug 26, 2026 10:44 AM ET. Educational content, not financial advice.