What does negative gamma mean?

In a negative gamma regime, dealers must sell as the market falls and buy as it rises — their hedging pushes in the same direction as the move, amplifying it. Markets in negative gamma tend to see larger, faster swings.

What is the gamma flip?

The gamma flip is the estimated price level where net dealer gamma crosses zero — above it hedging flows dampen moves, below it they amplify moves. It is computed by re-evaluating the net gamma profile across a grid of hypothetical prices.

GEX rests on a simplifying assumption: that dealers are long the calls and short the puts customers trade. That is roughly true on index products most of the time, less true on single stocks. Treat GEX as a volatility-regime gauge, not a trading signal.

What is GEX (gamma exposure)?

Q: What is GEX (gamma exposure)?

GEX aggregates the gamma of all outstanding option contracts into a dollar estimate of how much market makers must re-hedge per 1% move in the underlying. It is a gauge of whether dealer hedging flows are likely to dampen volatility (positive gamma) or amplify it (negative gamma).

A dollar estimate of how hard market makers must lean on the market to stay hedged — and therefore whether their flows are currently dampening volatility or amplifying it.

Why market makers hedge at all

When you buy a call, a market maker usually takes the other side. They don't want a directional bet — their business is collecting spreads — so they immediately neutralize it by buying shares. How many shares depends on the option's delta, and delta itself changes as the price moves. The rate of that change is gamma.

Gamma is why hedging is not a one-time act. Every time the price moves, the dealer's hedge is slightly wrong and must be adjusted — mechanically, regardless of anyone's market view. GEX adds up that re-hedging pressure across every open contract, per 1% move, in dollars.

Positive vs negative gamma: the volatility regime

The sign of net GEX tells you which direction those mechanical flows push:

Positive gamma — dealers are net long gamma. When the market rallies, their hedges get too long, so they sell into strength; when it drops, they buy the dip. Hedging flows fight the move. Result: pinned, low-volatility, "boring" markets.
Negative gamma — dealers are net short gamma. Now they must buy into rallies and sell into declines — hedging flows chase the move and make it bigger. Result: fast, slippery markets where moves overshoot.

Same news, different regime, very different price action. That is why GEX is best read as a volatility-regime gauge rather than a directional signal.

The gamma flip

Net gamma is not a fixed number — it depends on where price sits relative to the strikes where gamma is concentrated. The gamma flip is the estimated price where net dealer gamma crosses zero: above it the market is in the dampening regime, below it in the amplifying one. When spot trades near the flip, small moves can change the regime itself — one reason selloffs sometimes accelerate right after breaking a level.

Gamma walls

Gamma clusters at strikes with heavy open interest. A large positive-gamma strike acts like a magnet-slash-barrier: as price approaches, dealer hedging leans harder against the move, and price tends to stall or oscillate around it. Our dashboards list the top walls by share of total gamma, with distance from spot.

What GEX assumes (read this before trading on it)

Dealer positioning is inferred, not observed. The standard convention counts calls as dealer-long gamma and puts as dealer-short. Roughly right for index products; noisier for single stocks and meme names.
It's built from end-of-day open interest and a Black-Scholes approximation (we use the common retail convention: r = 0, q = 0, IV solved from EOD quotes). Intraday positioning shifts are invisible until the next settlement.
Magnitudes are estimates. The sign and the map of where gamma sits are far more robust than any single dollar figure.

Live GEX dashboards

Net GEX per 1% move, recomputed nightly. Click through for the gamma flip, top walls, and the by-strike profile chart.

AAPL GEX $931M DIA GEX $205M IWM GEX −$1.91bn NVDA GEX $796M QQQ GEX −$561M SMH GEX −$472M SOXX GEX −$95M SPY GEX $2.82bn TSLA GEX $369M VOO GEX $51M XBI GEX −$8M XLE GEX $51M XLF GEX $76M XLI GEX −$33M XLK GEX $31M XLP GEX $19M XLU GEX $15M XLV GEX $42M XLY GEX $3M

The other lens on the same open interest: what is max pain? covers the expiry-pinning view. For how we compute everything, see the methodology.