|VS3D™ · Positions|VS3D™ · PositionsEvery SPX option has a market maker on one side of it, and their hedging of that position is where the mechanical flows in the index come from. This page goes through the Positions by Strike view on today's expiring position: what each bar, dot and dashed line means, what the shape implies for the hedge response, and why an open-interest "GEX" number cannot get you there. Then the same position priced on the Gradient Chart as gamma and charm.
VS3D Live Education: Positions, live in the dashboard, 11:00 AM ET today. About 15 to 30 minutes, no registration. We'll go through today's position the way it's laid out below and then take questions.
Join on Zoom Start the free 7-day trialThe trial opens the same dashboard, so you can hover the same bars while we're on them. Reading before or after: The Annotated Guide, how we trade it, the charm page and the community onboarding guide.
The VS3D Positions by Strike view at 8:17 AM ET on the Aug 31, 2026 expiry, exactly as it appeared in the dashboard. Blue bars to the right are strikes where market makers are net long, gold bars to the left are strikes where they are net short, calls and puts combined. The dashed lines are spot and the straddle boundaries. Hover or tap anything.
The view: one expiry, strike by strike, what market makers hold right now. The index print in the header (7,696.20, -15.56 (-0.20%)) is the live tape at capture, 8:17 AM ET, before the open.
The expiry selector. Today's page is the 0DTE, the position that dies at 4:00 PM, and it prices the at-the-money straddle at $27.20 at capture. That straddle is the market's own estimate of today's range, and the two dashed lines below are spot plus and minus that number.
Blue and long means market makers are net long about 2,100 contracts at 7750, calls and puts combined. In the framework this is where the range resolves on the upside if the tape gets there: hedging pushes price toward the strikes they are long, not away from them. The open-interest recipe (dealers long every call) happens to get this line right; it gets 7730 and 7695 wrong, see the receipts below.
Market makers are long about 1,930 contracts at 7650, mostly puts. Long puts underneath the market is long gamma below spot: fades into 7650 get bought, not amplified. The equivalent line for the upside is 7750, so today the big longs bracket the range.
A second long line just above 7650. Two adjacent long strikes on one side is the shape you want to see: the pressure is consistent across them, not alternating.
The nearest long line under spot, 11 points below the 8:17 print. Long lines are where the hedge response absorbs movement.
Gold and short means market makers are net short about 920 contracts at 7665 (the biggest short in the whole expiry, about -2,450 at 7615, sits just below this window next to a +1,200 long at 7620). Short lines are where the hedge response amplifies: a push into 7665 gets extended before it gets rejected. Note it sits between the two big longs at 7650 and 7685, so the downside is long, short, long: a test with a target either side.
The index opened the morning at 7,696.20, right on top of a short line. Short at the money is the one place the position is not absorbing anything, which is why the first move off the open tends to be fast. Where it goes next is a question of which long line it reaches first: 7685 and 7660 below, 7700 to 7735 above.
Above spot the shape is a fishbone: long 7700, short 7710, long 7715 to 7725, short 7730, long 7735, short 7740, long 7750. Alternating lines cancel each other and give you very little to lean on until 7750.
First short line above spot. The charm flip on the Gradient Chart sits in the same neighbourhood today (about 7,710), which is not a coincidence: both come out of the same position.
Spot plus the at-the-money straddle. The market is pricing about a $27.20 move either way today. The 7750 long line is outside that range, so on a normal day it is a target only if the tape overshoots what is priced.
The white dashed line is the live index at capture. Read the position relative to it: what is long above, what is short above, same underneath.
Spot minus the straddle. The 7665 short and the 7650 and 7660 longs all sit just inside or at this boundary: the downside of the priced range is where the position is heaviest.
The "Show Comparison" set: where each bar stood at your chosen reference time (the prior close by default). Bar past its dot = the line grew since the reference; bar short of its dot = it shrank. The 7750 bar sits a little short of its dot, so the long there was trimmed overnight, not built.
The x-axis is net contracts, -2,486 to +2,486 today. Every bar is a count of SPX options, not a dollar gamma number. The dollars come later, on the Gradient Chart, once the position is priced at a level and a clock.
Zoom in or out on the strike axis, fit to the visible range, or go full screen. The vertical slider on the right edge does the same by drag.
Hover the figure or the list to reveal an element · click to pin · Esc to unpin
This is the Aug 31, 2026 expiry as of the Aug 31, 2026 9:20 AM ET snapshot, drawn the way the dashboard draws it. Hover a bar and you get the call and put split behind the net number, and the customer side of the same strike. The shape is what you read: which side of spot is long, which is short, and where the biggest lines are.
Short lines are tests, long lines are where the range resolves. Market maker hedging pushes price away from the strikes they are short and toward the strikes they are long, and as the day decays, charm pulls it toward the longs. Read what is long and short on each side of spot before you look at any greek.
7650 +2,069 · 7750 +1,845 · 7660 +1,342 · 7620 +1,211
7650 and 7750 bracket the day's priced range. 7660 and 7685 are the longs directly under spot.
7615 -2,441 · 7665 -913 · 7640 -760 · 7695 -751
7615 is the biggest short in the expiry and sits below the screenshot's window, next to the 7620 long. 7665 sits between the 7650 and 7685 longs, so the downside reads long, short, long. 7695 is at the money, the one place the position absorbs nothing.
Long 7700, short 7710, long 7715 to 7725, short 7730, long 7735, short 7740, long 7750: alternating lines that mostly cancel until the 7750 long. Shape beats size, and this side has little shape until the top.
Call a direction. The position tells you where the hedge response absorbs and where it amplifies; the trade framework (range, balance, tests) is on the trading page, and today's specific levels come from the morning meeting, not from a screenshot.
Most "gamma exposure" charts start from open interest and a sign convention: assume customers sold the calls and bought the puts, so dealers are long every call and short every put, multiply by gamma, sum. Open interest is a count of contracts that exist. It carries no information about who is long them, and anyone who has ever bought a call has already broken the assumption. The position on this page is built from the trade prints themselves, with the participant on each side, so the sign on every line is observed, not assumed. In today's expiry, 20 of the 36 lines over 300 contracts disagree with the convention. Here is what that looks like on a few of them.
| Line | Open-interest heuristic | Participant data, 9:20 ET | Customer net | What it means |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 7730 C | MM long | MM short -1,119 | +1,195 | customers bought these calls, so market makers are short them: the recipe has them long every call and the hedge response here amplifies instead of absorbing |
| 7650 P | MM short | MM long +2,866 | -625 | customers sold these puts, so market makers are long them: the recipe has them short every put and misses the biggest long line on the downside |
| 7695 C | MM long | MM short -1,175 | +1,228 | customers bought these calls, so market makers are short them: the recipe has them long every call and the hedge response here amplifies instead of absorbing |
| 7750 C | MM long | MM long +1,069 | -3,081 | right by luck: this line happens to sit the way the convention assumes |
| 7700 C | MM long | MM long +1,142 | +663 | sign happens to match, but customers AND market makers are both net long the 7700 calls; the short side is firms and broker-dealers, which no customer-vs-dealer split can see |
Get the sign wrong on one big line and the hedge flow you expect at that strike runs the other way: a call strike the recipe books as dealer-long (absorbing) is one market makers are short, so their hedging amplifies into it, and a put strike the recipe books as dealer-short is the biggest long line under the market. 20 of the 36 sized lines in today's expiry carry the wrong sign under the convention, calls and puts both.
The VS3D position is a cumulative record: every SPX option print over the last two years of proprietary data, sized and signed by participant, netted by strike and expiry every session. This morning's page already carries Friday's expiry roll-off and everything that printed since. Open interest updates once a day and forgets who did the trading.
An aggregate GEX figure is one number for the whole market at one price. Hedging happens at a level and a clock. The Gradient Chart below prices the same position at every index level and every time of day, and the published headline gamma is the full position, every expiry, not the 0DTE alone. $8.29bn per 1% at 7,690.13 at 9:00 AM is a full-position number.
Gamma, charm and vanna are not three data sets. They are the same position, differentiated three ways. That is why the charm flip lands on the 7710 short line and the late-day red gamma pockets land on the 0DTE shorts: once the position is right, the profiles agree with each other. Infer the position and they agree with nothing.
The Gradient Chart on Gamma at about 8:25 AM ET. Green is long gamma, and today it's green across the whole range and the whole day. The only red is a set of small pockets on the 0DTE short lines in the last hour.
Same position, now priced. The Gradient Chart takes the whole market maker position (every expiry, not just today's) and simulates the greek at every index level (vertical axis) and every time of day (horizontal axis). Gamma is the first thing you look at because it tells you how the hedge response behaves: does it absorb movement or amplify it.
The at-the-money straddle at the moment of this capture (a few minutes after the positions screenshot, so the number drifted a little from $27.20).
From 7,609 to 7,785 and from the open to the close, the field is green. Market makers are long gamma at every level today, so they sell into rallies and buy into fades everywhere in the priced range. That is a day where movement gets absorbed, and it is the aggregate of the long lines you saw on Positions by Strike (7650, 7660, 7685, 7750) outweighing the shorts.
Along the right edge, small red pockets appear at about 7,620, 7,650, 7,690, 7,710, 7,740 and 7,770 after 3:00 PM. That is the 0DTE short lines taking over as everything else in the position loses gamma into the close. Late in the day, near those strikes, the hedge response briefly amplifies instead of absorbing.
Contours mark where the gamma field crosses a threshold. The long one that runs from about 11:45 AM across to the close near 7,770 to 7,785 is the edge of the strongest long-gamma band; the short ones at the right edge outline the late-day red pockets.
The horizontal axis is the session clock. Read left to right for how the field changes as time passes with the index unchanged. The RTH toggle top right restricts the view to regular hours.
The vertical axis is the index. Hover any point in the field and the tooltip prices the position at that level and that time (see the tooltip below).
Aug 31, 2026, the 9:00 AM column of the Gradient Chart, hovered at 7,690.13.
Gamma at the node: 140.18. Positive = market makers are long gamma here.
$8.29bn of futures to trade for a 1% move in the index. This is the full-position number, every expiry, priced at 7,690.13 at 9:00 AM. A single-expiry open-interest GEX figure is not comparable to it.
-$107.8mm for the standard move step the chart uses: negative = they sell into strength.
-280.37 ES contracts. The number you carry to the tape: a rally of that step size at this level gets met with about 280 ES of selling.
The Gradient Chart on Charm at the same time. The flip sits at about 7,710, right on the first short line above spot, and the index opened the morning below it. Blue below the flip means market makers are selling as time passes while we stay down here; gold above it means the lean turns supportive if we get back over 7,710.
Same field, different greek. Charm is how the delta of the position changes as time passes, so which way the passive hedge leans with no move in the index at all. Full walkthrough on the charm page: volsignals.com/charm.
Everywhere above about 7,710 the field is gold, so that's negative charm: the position sheds delta as the clock ticks and market makers have to buy futures to stay hedged. If the index gets back above 7,710 and holds, the passive flow for the rest of the day is supportive.
The dotted contour where charm crosses zero. It runs almost flat across the day, right on the 7710 short line from Positions by Strike. Above it the passive flow is buying, below it selling. We opened the morning about 15 points below it.
Under 7,710 the sign turns: positive charm, market makers sell futures as time passes. At 9:00 AM with the index at 7,690.13 the tooltip read -12.98 ES over the next five minutes (-$4.99mm). Small next to the gamma number, but it runs all day in one direction while we stay below the flip.
Above the 7750 long line the sign flips back to selling from about 1:00 PM. A late push through 7750 meets charm selling on top of long-gamma selling, which is part of why a line outside the priced range is hard to hold late.
Under the 7650 and 7660 longs, the passive flow turns to buying in the last two hours. Below 7,650 late in the day the position leans supportive again.
Same clock as the gamma view. Charm is weakest at the open and strongest into the close, which is why it is an afternoon tool.
Aug 31, 2026, 9:00 AM column at 7,690.13.
Charm at the node: 6.49. Positive = the position gains delta with time = market makers sell.
-$4.99mm of futures to sell over the next five minutes at this level, purely from time passing.
-12.98 ES contracts to sell. The direction of the lean while the index sits below the flip.
ES from Sunday's open to 8:29 this morning. A 34-point range, high 7,707.55 and low 7,673.55, sitting almost exactly inside the $27.20 straddle boundaries, with the low between the 7665 short and the 7685 long and the high under the 7700 to 7710 area.
Sunday 6:00 PM, the first print of the session, and the high. Nothing above the 7,700 to 7,710 area held overnight, which is the first short line above spot on Positions by Strike.
About 10:40 PM. The low sat between the 7665 short and the 7685 long, inside the lower straddle boundary at 7,669. The tape tested the short line and came back toward the long one.
The 8:29 AM print, a few minutes after the screenshots above. Between the 7685 long and the 7695 short, and about 20 points under the charm flip.
The futures tape is here for market context only: the position above is SPX options, and the VS3D data does not include ES. Overnight the future is the only thing trading, and it sits a few points off the cash index (the basis), so read its levels against the strikes above approximately, not to the tick.
The whole session traded between 7,673 and 7,708, roughly the priced range for the day, before the cash open. That is what a long-gamma position looks like on the tape: the moves get absorbed at the long lines and the shorts get tested and rejected.
Market makers are long gamma across the whole priced range, so movement gets absorbed today and the edges get faded. The big longs are 7650 and 7660 underneath and 7750 on top, the shorts that matter are 7665 and 7695 with spot sitting on the second one at the open, and the upside between 7700 and 7740 is a fishbone with little to lean on. Charm is selling while we hold under about 7,710 and turns to buying above it. The $27.20 straddle says the market is braced for a modest day, and the overnight tape agreed.
Nothing in the first 90 minutes, and no directional call from a screenshot. The position tells you which lines absorb and which amplify. The levels for the day, and how we turn them into a range, a balance and a set of tests, are what Matt and I go through in the morning meeting and in today's session. If you want the framework, it is written up on the trading page; if you want the live position, it is in the dashboard the trial opens.
The free 7-day trial opens the same dashboard this page came out of: Positions by Strike and by Expiry, the Gradient Chart on every greek, and the flows behind them. Come to the 11:00 AM ET today session and we'll go through today's position together and take your questions.
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 · Dashboard captures Aug 31, 2026 8:17 AM ET to 8:25 AM ET; database snapshot Aug 31, 2026 9:20 AM ET. VolSignals is not a registered investment adviser or broker-dealer.