|VS3D™ · Gamma|VS3D™ · GammaGamma is the property of the market maker position that decides whether their hedging absorbs movement or amplifies it. This page goes through it from their side of the trade: what the number means, where today's profile comes from in the SPX position (which expiries, which strikes), why one open-interest "GEX" figure is not comparable to it, and how to read it on the VS3D Gradient Chart and its tooltip, starting from this morning's captures. Every figure below is the full position, every expiry, on a stated clock.
VS3D Live Education: Gamma, live in the dashboard, 11:00 AM ET today. About 15 to 30 minutes, no registration. We'll go through today's profile 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 field while we're on it. Reading before or after: The Annotated Guide, the positions page, the charm page, how we trade it and the community onboarding guide.
Every SPX option has a market maker on one side of it. They are not directional; they hedge the delta of what they hold with futures, and gamma is how fast that delta changes as the index moves. That is the whole reason the number matters: it sets the direction of the hedge flow.
An option market makers are long gains delta as the index rises through its strike and loses it as the index falls; an option they are short does the opposite. Sum every line in the position, calls and puts, every expiry, at one index level, and you have one gamma number for that level. Move the level and the number changes, which is why it is a profile, not a figure.
Long gamma: the position picks up delta on a rally and sheds it on a fade, so to stay flat market makers sell futures into strength and buy them into weakness. That flow leans against the move. Short gamma is the mirror image: they buy strength and sell weakness, and the hedge flow adds to the move. The sign is the read; the size says how much futures it takes.
Exposure positive = market makers long gamma at that node. Dollar Per Percent = the futures notional they have to trade for a 1% move in the index, the full position at that level and that clock. Hedge Product to Trade is the futures to trade on a $1 up move in the index, signed as the hedge itself: negative = they sell ES, positive = they buy. Green on the Gradient Chart is long, red is short.
Gamma is highest at the strike and at expiry, so a 0DTE line near spot carries far more of it than a December line the same size. As the day passes the expiring lines take over the profile and the far-dated ones fade into the background. A gamma number without a level and a time attached is a starting point, not a read.
This is the profile: the VS3D Gradient Chart on Gamma at 6:14 AM ET this morning (index 7,645.48, straddle $33.40). The whole market maker position, every expiry, priced at every index level (up the side) and every time of day (along the bottom), coloured by the sign of gamma: green is long, red is short. Today it is green from 7,558.10 to 7,731.90 for the whole session, with one red pocket at 7,690 to 7,710 into the close. Hover or tap anything; the tooltip below is what the dashboard shows when you hover the field yourself.
The whole market maker position (every expiry) simulated at every index level (vertical axis) and every time of day (horizontal axis), coloured by the sign of gamma. Captured Sep 1, 2026 at 6:14 AM ET, the same data the profile in section 2 was computed from.
The at-the-money straddle at capture. The green field is what the position looks like across that range and beyond it.
From 7,558.10 to 7,731.90 and from the open to about 3 PM the field is green: market makers are long gamma at every level, so they sell into rallies and buy into fades everywhere in the priced range. Movement gets absorbed. The shade is lightest (thinnest gamma) in the band around 7,670 to 7,700, which is the trough of the profile in section 2, and brightest under 7,600 where the 7590 long line sits.
The largest red area, outlined by the dashed contour, appears from about 3:15 PM between 7,690 and 7,710. That is the 7690 and 7705 short lines in today's expiry taking over as everything else loses its gamma. If the index is up there late in the day, the hedge response amplifies instead of absorbing.
A thin red pocket at about 7,650 at the right edge: the 7645 short line at the money. Section 6 shows what this looked like in numbers at yesterday's close.
The 7620 short line, small in the morning and visible only in the last half hour.
Pink contours mark where the field crosses a threshold; the dashed one outlines the red pocket. The ones curving up toward the right edge at 7,680, 7,620 and 7,590 are the edges of the strongest long-gamma bands as the 0DTE lines concentrate into the afternoon.
The horizontal axis is the session clock. Read left to right for how the field changes as time passes with the index unchanged: gamma concentrates toward the 0DTE strikes as the day decays. 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 (the fields are explained below).
Hover the figure or the list to reveal an element · click to pin · Esc to unpin
Hovering the 9:01 AM column at 7,644.24 this morning. $5.96bn of futures to trade for a 1% move in the index, the full position on that clock, and -204.01 ES of futures to trade on a $1 up move (negative = market makers sell). That is the headline figure for the day and the one to compare against anything else you read about "gamma" today.
Sep 1, 2026, the 9:01 AM column of the Gradient Chart, hovered at 7,644.24.
Gamma at the node: 102.81. Positive = market makers are long gamma here, negative = short.
$5.96bn of futures to trade for a 1% move in the index. This is the full-position number, every expiry, at that level and that clock, and it is the headline figure for the day. A single-expiry open-interest GEX figure is not comparable to it.
-$77.98mm of futures to trade on a $1 up move in the index at this level and time: negative = they sell into strength.
-204.01 ES: the futures to trade on a $1 up move in the index. The number you carry to the tape: negative means market makers sell that many ES as the index ticks $1 higher, positive means they buy.
The full market maker position (every expiry, 30,175 lines) priced as gamma at every index level from 7,500 to 7,900, from the 6:10 AM ET position and quote snapshots. The index reference in the pre-market quotes was 7,643.34, about 52 points under yesterday's 7,695.34 close. Green is the whole position; the gold dashed line is today's expiry on its own. Hover any level. Read this chart for the shape and the dashboard above for the number: the tooltip on the 9:01 AM column prices the position at $5.96bn per 1% at 7,644.24; this pre-market model (the same method, validated against the dashboard's simulation table) reads +$6.47bn at 7,643.34, about 9% higher on an earlier clock and wider pre-market quotes. Same sign, same shape: the trough here is the lightest band of green on the Gradient Chart.
$5.96bnper 1% on the dashboard (9:01 AM column), +$6.47bn in this model. Long gamma: a rally from here gets met with ES selling and a fade with ES buying, the tooltip reads -204.01 ES of futures to trade on a $1 up move. Today's expiry is +$3.52bn of the model number (54%), the rest of this week +$4.43bn, the rest of September +$0.30bn, everything later -$1.79bn.
+$5.55bnthe thinnest point of the profile in the 7,550 to 7,800 window, and it sits right where the index closed yesterday. The position is least long around the prior close and gets longer in both directions: 7555 reads +$11.25bn and 7790 reads +$12.04bn. The sign never flips in the window: green everywhere.
Long everywhere means every point away from the trough runs into more long gamma, not less. A fade toward 7555 meets steadily more buying from the hedge response with each leg down, and a rally to 7790 meets steadily more selling. The overnight move from 7,695.34 to 7,643.34 has already taken the index into the longer part of the profile.
At yesterday's close the full position (today's expiry excluded, since it is expired at 4 PM) carried +$7.87bnper 1% at 7,695.34: the 73th percentile of this year's closes (median +$4.89bn, high +$16.21bn, low -$2.69bn). Comfortably long, not extreme. Last week close by close: +4.67 / +8.75 / +8.97 / +10.45 / +7.87.
The profile is a sum, so it can be taken apart. At 7,643.34 these are the expiries and the strikes doing the work, in dollars per 1% of the full position. Today's expiry is quoted here only as a share of the total: the headline number is always the whole position.
| Expiry | Gamma at 7,643.34 | Share of the total |
|---|---|---|
| Sep 1 (0DTE) | +$3.52bn | 54% |
| Sep 3 | +$0.63bn | 10% |
| Sep 4 | +$3.51bn | 54% |
| Sep 11 | +$0.79bn | 12% |
| Sep 16 | +$0.45bn | 7% |
| Sep 18 | -$1.46bn | 23% |
| Sep 25 | +$0.62bn | 10% |
| Sep 30 | -$1.69bn | 26% |
Today and Friday carry almost all of the long gamma; the September monthlies and the December line are the short side, and they are why the profile thins out around 7675.
| Strike (all expiries) | Gamma at 7,643.34 | Read |
|---|---|---|
| 8,160 | -$1.71bn | short line: amplifies |
| 7,650 | +$1.53bn | long line: absorbs |
| 7,515 | +$1.45bn | long line: absorbs |
| 7,550 | -$1.19bn | short line: amplifies |
| 8,100 | +$1.16bn | long line: absorbs |
| 7,592.21 FLEX | +$1.05bn | long line: absorbs |
| 7,525 | +$1.02bn | long line: absorbs |
| 7,750 | +$0.97bn | long line: absorbs |
| 8,050 | -$0.92bn | short line: amplifies |
| 7,900 | -$0.91bn | short line: amplifies |
Strikes far from spot make the list because they are large and long-dated (their gamma is small per contract but there are a lot of contracts). FLEX strikes are non-standard lines folded to their nearest listed strike in the dashboard.
The lines that matter most for the day's hedge response are the 0DTE lines nearest spot. First the dashboard's own view at 6:14 AM ET, Positions by Strike on today's expiry (blue long, gold short, calls and puts netted, hover anything), then the same expiry from the 6:00 AM ET database snapshot with the call / put split behind each bar.
One expiry, strike by strike, what market makers hold right now. The index print in the header (7,644.99, -41.39 (-0.54%)) is the live reference at capture, 6:14 AM ET, after an overnight fade of about 52 points from yesterday's close.
Today's expiry, and the at-the-money straddle at $33.40: the market's own estimate of today's range, wider than yesterday's $27.20 after the overnight move. The dashed lines are spot plus and minus that number.
Market makers are long about 3,912 contracts here, mostly a non-standard FLEX strike (7592.21) folded to 7590 the way the dashboard draws it. It is the single biggest gamma contributor in today's expiry. A long line this size under the market is where a fade gets bought hard.
Gold and short: market makers are net short about 1,205 contracts at 7690, just under yesterday's close. Short lines are where the hedge response amplifies, and late in the day this is where the Gradient Chart's red pocket sits.
Long puts under the market: customers sold them, so market makers hold them and are long gamma there. This is the line the open-interest recipe gets backwards (it books dealers short every put).
The nearest big long line under spot, five points below the reference. Long lines absorb: a push into 7640 gets bought.
The index reference at capture, 7,644.99, is right on a short line. Short at the money is the one place the position absorbs nothing, so the first move off the open tends to be fast, toward whichever long line it reaches first: 7640 and 7625 below, 7650 and 7675 above.
The short line at the top of the window, above yesterday's close. With 7690 it makes the upside short, long, short: alternating lines that give a rally little to lean on.
Long line between the two upside shorts, about where the charm flip sits today.
Spot plus the straddle. The 7690 short sits just above it and the 7685 long just below it, so the top of the priced range is where the upside lines start.
The white dashed line is the live reference at capture. Read the position relative to it: what is long above, what is short above, same underneath.
Spot minus the straddle, right on the 7610 long line. The big 7590 long sits 20 points below the priced range.
The "Show Comparison" set: where each bar stood at the reference time (the prior close by default). Bar past its dot = the line grew since; bar short of its dot = it shrank.
The x-axis is net contracts. Every bar is a count of SPX options. The dollars come on the Gradient Chart, once the position is priced at a level and a clock, which is what the rest of this page is about.
Zoom the strike axis, fit to the visible range, or go full screen.
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Most "gamma exposure" charts start from open interest and a sign convention instead: assume customers sold the calls and bought the puts, so dealers are long every call and short every put, multiply by gamma, sum. In today's expiry, 21 of the 39 lines over 300 contracts carry the opposite sign to that convention, so an OI-based profile has the wrong sign on them and the hedge response it predicts at those strikes runs the wrong way.
7590 +3,912 · 7730 +2,010 · 7565 +1,815 · 7755 +1,702
Long lines are where the hedge response absorbs movement: the index gets bought into them on a fade and sold into them on a rally.
7690 -1,205 · 7775 -1,142 · 7740 -1,045 · 7645 -818
Short lines are where it amplifies. A push into one gets extended before it gets rejected, and late in the day these are where the Gradient Chart turns red.
Every SPX option print, with the participant on each side, netted by strike and expiry every session over the last two years of proprietary data. The sign on every line is what actually traded, which is the only reason the gamma profile above can be trusted at the strikes.
| Line | Open-interest heuristic | Participant data, 6:00 AM ET | Customer net | What it means for gamma |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 7590 (FLEX 7592.21) C | MM long | MM long +3,871 | 0 | sign matches the convention on this line |
| 7730 C | MM long | MM long +1,976 | -1,764 | sign matches the convention on this line |
| 7625 P | MM short | MM long +1,878 | -2,025 | customers sold these puts, so market makers are long them and the gamma here is positive: the recipe books it as negative |
| 7565 P | MM short | MM long +1,810 | -1,671 | customers sold these puts, so market makers are long them and the gamma here is positive: the recipe books it as negative |
| 7755 C | MM long | MM long +1,700 | -206 | sign matches the convention on this line |
| 7775 C | MM long | MM short -1,225 | +201 | customers bought these calls, so market makers are short them and the gamma here is negative: the recipe books it as positive |
| 7740 C | MM long | MM short -1,024 | +997 | customers bought these calls, so market makers are short them and the gamma here is negative: the recipe books it as positive |
Gamma, charm and vanna are not three data sets; they are the same position, differentiated three ways. The Gradient Chart on Charm at 6:14 AM ET: the flip sits at about 7,683, right on the 7685 long line and just under the 7690 short from Positions by Strike, and the index opened the morning about 40 points 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 it. Once the position is right the profiles agree with each other; infer the position from open interest and they agree with nothing.
Same position, 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.
Above the flip the field is gold: 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 7,683 and holds, the passive flow for the rest of the day is supportive.
The dotted contour where charm crosses zero. It sits right at the 7685 long line and just under the 7690 short from Positions by Strike, and it comes out of the same position as the gamma field above. We opened the morning about 40 points below it.
Under the flip the sign turns: positive charm, market makers sell futures as time passes. At 9:01 AM with the index at 7,644.37 the tooltip read -28.82 ES over the next five minutes (-$11.01mm). Small next to the gamma number, but it runs all day in one direction while we stay below the flip.
Under the 7675 and 7685 long lines the passive flow turns to buying from about 1:30 PM. Long 0DTE lines pull the index toward them as they decay.
Same mechanism under the 7625 and 7590 longs: late in the day, near those lines, the passive flow 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.
Sep 1, 2026, 9:01 AM column at 7,644.37.
Charm at the node: 14.41. Positive = the position gains delta with time = market makers sell.
-$11.01mm of futures to sell over the next five minutes at this level, purely from time passing.
-28.82 ES contracts to sell. The direction of the lean while the index sits below the flip.
The best illustration of level and clock is how yesterday ended. Yesterday's expiry had market makers short the at-the-money lines going into the close: -1,175 on the 7695 calls, -954 on the 7700 puts and -489 on the 7710 calls, against longs of +1,142 on the 7700 calls and +824 on the 7685 puts. With minutes left, those 0DTE shorts carried almost all of the gamma in the position, and the dashboard's simulation table read:
| Gradient column, Aug 31 | at 7690 | at 7695 | at 7700 |
|---|---|---|---|
| 3:55 PM | -$7.93bn | -$6.87bn | -$5.14bn |
| 3:59 PM | -$18.93bn | -$13.99bn | -$6.16bn |
| 4:00 PM, expiry cleared | +$7.87bn per 1% at 7,695.34 (the full position with the day's expiry gone) | ||
Nothing traded between those rows. The position that read about -$7bn to -$14bn per 1% at the money in the last minutes (short gamma, the hedge response amplifying) reads +$7.9bn the moment the 0DTE lines expire and the rest of the book is all that is left. That is the red pocket on the right edge of the Gradient Chart with a number on it, and it is why the profile is drawn against a clock.
This morning's profile is long across the whole window, and today's expiry is 54% of it. The shorts in today's expiry (7690, 7775, 7740) are small in the morning and grow into the afternoon exactly the way yesterday's 7695 and 7700 lines did; the red pocket at 7,690 to 7,710 on the Gradient Chart is that in colour. Where the index sits relative to them at 3:30 PM matters more than where it sits at 9:30 AM.
Market makers are long gamma at every level in the window: $5.96bn per 1% at 7,644.24 on the dashboard's 9:01 AM column, and in the model profile never below +$5.55bn (at 7675, yesterday's close area). Movement gets absorbed today, and the further the index gets from the trough in either direction, the more of it there is to absorb. Today and Friday are the long side of the position; the September monthlies and December are the short side, which is why the profile is thinnest where it is. The index reference opened on the 7645 short with the 7640 and 7625 longs directly underneath and the 7690 short above, charm is selling under about 7,683, and the $33.40 straddle says the market is braced for a wider day than yesterday. Today's expiry is 54% of the number at spot now and will be most of it by the close.
No directional call from a profile. Gamma tells you how the hedge response behaves at a level and a time, not where the index is going: long gamma is a day where the edges get faded and the shorts in the expiring position are the places that stop absorbing late. The levels for the day, and how they turn 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; the framework is written up on the trading page, and the live position is in the dashboard the trial opens.
The free 7-day trial opens the same dashboard this page came out of: the Gradient Chart on gamma, charm and vanna, Positions by Strike and by Expiry, and the flows behind them. Come to the 11:00 AM ET today session and we'll go through today's profile 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 Sep 1, 2026 6:14 AM ET to 6:19 AM ET; profile and expiring position from the 6:10 AM ET database snapshots; close figures from the Aug 31 4:00 PM simulation table. VolSignals is not a registered investment adviser or broker-dealer.