Track / 02
3 min read
Reading the instruments
One lesson per module: what each panel shows, how to read it in ten seconds, and the common misread.
0 of 6 read
The silhouette
Regime sign top-left, the reticle on the Lock, the walls bracketing the range. Three reads, one glance.
The hero is the day compressed to one image: the regime, the heaviest strike, and the two walls that bound the session. It answers one question before you touch anything, which way the book leans.
Positive GEX and the silhouette sits calm, dealers damp. Negative and it leans, dealers amplify. The reticle marks the Lock, the strike carrying the most gamma; the bracket marks the call wall above and the put wall below.
Common misread The silhouette is not a price target. It is where hedging pushes back, and hedging can be overwhelmed.
The exposure rail
Bars by strike, call side and put side. Tallest bar is the wall that resists most; the rail crosses zero at the flip.
The rail prices every strike as dealer gamma and stacks the bars in strike order. Height is force, not price. The tallest positive bar is the wall the book will defend hardest; the sign flips where net gamma crosses zero, and that crossing is the flip level.
Read it against spot. Walls above spot cap rallies, walls below floor sell-offs, and the distance to the flip tells you how much room the current regime has before it inverts.
Common misread A tall bar does not guarantee price stops there. It marks where hedging leans back, not a wall in the ground.
The time machine
Scrub the session. Levels that hold all day are the ones the book defended; watch the flip and walls move snapshot to snapshot.
The book re-prices every snapshot. The time machine replays those snapshots so you can watch the flip drift, the walls firm up or erode, and the regime hold or turn. The levels that survive the whole session are the credible ones.
It is the same data the board shows live, stepped through time. Use it to check whether a level held because the book defended it or because price simply never went there.
Common misread An early flip crossing is not the whole day. One snapshot is a frame, not the session.
Thermal
Exposure as heat, strike by strike, expiry by expiry. Brightest cells are where gamma concentrates.
Thermal spreads the same gamma across two axes: strike down, expiry across. The brightest cells are where the book is heaviest. A bright row near spot at the front expiry is where a 0DTE pin comes from.
It shows concentration the single rail cannot: gamma that looks thin on one expiry can stack across several into a wall that matters.
Common misread Heat is magnitude, not direction. A bright cell can be dealer long or short gamma; check the sign first.
Current
The tape as it prints: sweeps, blocks, darkpool shelves. Read size and side against the levels.
Current is the flow overlay: real prints against the same levels the rest of the board draws. A large sweep into a wall is the hedge the positioning told you to expect, printing in real time.
Darkpool shelves mark price where size has already changed hands. They read as levels the same way walls do, and they often sit where the book is thin.
Common misread One large print is not a trend. Flow confirms levels, it does not replace them.
Track record
Held versus tested per level kind, with the misses printed next to them. Read the n before the percentage.
The backtest scores every published level against what price actually did, nightly, in public. Each card shows how often a level held when tested, and how often it broke. The misses are printed, not hidden.
This is the honesty layer. A level with a high hit rate on three sessions has told you nothing yet; the sample size sits next to the number for exactly that reason.
Common misread A high hit rate on a small sample is not an edge. Read the n before you trust the percentage.
Self-check
Say what the tallest bar on the exposure rail marks.
The wall the book will defend hardest, not a price target.
Height is force, the strength of hedging that leans back, not a guarantee price stops there.
Explain what makes a level in the time machine credible.
It held across the whole session, not just one snapshot.
The book re-prices every snapshot; a level defended all day is the one to trust.
State the first thing to check before reading a bright Thermal cell.
The sign.
Heat is magnitude, not direction. A bright cell can be dealer long or short gamma.