How to Read an Option Chain, Cell by Cell

What This Guide Covers

The picture below is the Advanced view of the chain around the at-the-money strike. Each lettered pin marks the corner of the table that one Part of this guide explains: hover or focus a pin to see which cells it covers, and select it to go to that Part. Almost every figure in the guide comes from one example chain, so each can be traced back to a formula; the few illustrative ones are labelled.

The Advanced viewHover or focus a pin to see what it marks; select it to go there

APart A · 5 topicsThe chain as a wholeSimple and Advanced, expiry and clock, Customise, ladder, spot lineThe spot lineOpen Part A →BPart B · 16 cellsPrice and quote cellsLTP, change, range, bid, ask, size, spreadThe LTP columnOpen Part B →CPart C · 13 cellsOpen interest, volume and build-upWhere positions sit and what changed todayThe Open Interest cellOpen Part C →DPart D · 7 cellsImplied volatility, Greeks and TheorWhat the premium implies and how it reactsIV in the straddle pillOpen Part D →EPart E · 7 cellsValue, distance and the reading orderIntrinsic, time value, breakeven, distance and the reading orderThe strike rowOpen Part E →

One thing holds across all five parts: a chain describes how the option market is positioned right now. It is a record of what has been done, not a statement about what happens next.

Cell Index: Every Cell and Where It Is Explained

All 44 cells a row can print. Each card shows the cell as it is drawn, what it prints and, when only one view has it, which view; it opens the explanation.

Simple View and Advanced View

The page has two views of one chain, chosen with the Simple | Advanced (Beta) switch on the page bar. On a phone the page bar has no switch: the same choice is the first section of Customise, headed Chain view. The choice is remembered in your browser. Switching does not reset any setting, because both views read one shared column selection. Simple prints only its own catalogue, as plain figures. Advanced prints everything selected, with bars, meters and hover cards. Advanced is in beta, so new visual work lands there first; it draws the same numbers differently and adds some columns Simple lacks.

The page-bar switchHover or focus a number to see what it marks

1The switch.The filled capsule is the view you are on. A new browser opens on Simple; the choice is kept in this browser (chainViewModeV2).2Customise.Opens the panel described in Customise, below. The panel adapts to the view you are on. On a phone this switch is not in the page bar; the same choice is the first section of Customise, headed Chain view.3Beta.Advanced is still being tested, so new visual work lands there first. Nothing is taken away from Simple.

1. 1The switch. The filled capsule is the view you are on. A new browser opens on Simple; the choice is kept in this browser (chainViewModeV2).
2. 2Customise. Opens the panel described in Customise, below. The panel adapts to the view you are on. On a phone this switch is not in the page bar; the same choice is the first section of Customise, headed Chain view.
3. 3Beta. Advanced is still being tested, so new visual work lands there first. Nothing is taken away from Simple.

The same strikes, drawn two ways

Pick a view to see how it prints the same strike. The strike, the premium and the build-up are the same in both; what changes is how open interest is drawn and what the spot line carries.

What else differs

Beyond the cells and the spot line above, the two views differ in two things. The cells each view prints are in the chart that follows.

Which cells each view prints

Out of the box both views open on the same Core selection: LTP with its percentage change, the open interest cell, and the one-day build-up. Everything else is reached through Customise. A view offers a column only if it can draw it meaningfully, so a few columns exist in one view alone. Simple has three that Advanced does not: Prev OI, Vol Chg and Vol Chg %. Advanced already carries those figures inside its merged open interest and volume cells. Below, a dashed chip is a column the other view has and this one does not; Advanced’s one Open Interest cell stands in for Simple’s OI, OI Chg and OI Chg %.

Four ways to lay out the table

Customise › View › Table chooses the layout: Both (calls, the fixed strike, puts), Calls only, Puts only, and in Advanced Straddle. Pick a layout below to see the heading row it makes. You can also press the ‘Call’ or ‘Put’ heading above the table: it becomes a chip, and the chip’s cross returns the table to Both. The choice is saved in this browser (preferredTableView), so the table opens the way you left it; Reset in Customise returns it to Both. If you choose Straddle in Advanced and then move to Simple, the page shows Both until you return to Advanced.

A single side has more room for each column. The ATM straddle and expected move stay on the market line.

The Straddle table, column by column

Straddle is Advanced only. It adds each Call and its Put into one row per strike, so the combined figures arrive without any adding up by hand. It is a fixed set of twelve columns, not customisable, and every one of them sorts. The numbers on the picture match the numbers in the table that follows.

StraddleHover or focus a number; the table below works the ATM row

1Strike2Price3Change4Call LTP5Put LTP6Open Interest Profile7Combined Volume8Upper Breakeven9Lower Breakeven10Previous Close11Average IV12Analysis

Cell by cell, the price columns, the bid and ask columns, open interest, volume and build-up, implied volatility and the Greeks, and the value and distance columns are each explained in the sections that follow this one.

Expiry, Data Time and the Phone Layout

Three things decide which numbers you are looking at before any column does: the expiry, how recent the snapshot is, and the screen. The expiry capsule sits in the centre of the header row between the Call and Put headings. It shows the date and the days to expiry (DTE), and opens a list of the expiries the data provider tracks. Every figure below it, from open interest to the Greeks, belongs to that one expiry.

The expiry capsule and its list

The capsule is a date and a pill. The pill reads N DTE, or TODAY on expiry day, and changes colour as the day nears: plain at three or more days, amber at one or two, red and reading TODAY on expiry day.

DTE is the number of calendar days from the date of the data shown, in India time, to the expiry, never below zero. It is the data’s own date, not the clock of the device you read it on, so a replayed day reads the same everywhere; weekends and holidays count as days. A ‘Monthly’ tag marks an expiry when the date a week later falls in the next month, that is, when no later day of the same weekday remains in the month; it is a date rule in the code, not a flag from the data.

On a phone only the Both table carries the wide capsule; the single-side and Straddle tables keep a compact one with the pill under the date, and the list opens as a sheet near the bottom of the screen.

How recent the numbers are

There is no banner on the chain body. Freshness is shown in two places. The market clock in the top bar tells you what the exchange and the data connection are doing. The Open Interest heading in Advanced tells you what the open interest figure is: its tip ends with a status line carrying the data time. The Insight card carries an IST timestamp as well.

Through a trading day the clock moves through five states. The chip changes colour; its description, and the line under the Open Interest heading, say it in words. The times follow the option market: 9:15 AM to the F&O close at 3:40 PM, with the cash closing auction from 3:15 to 3:35 PM.

The heading line is worked out when a new snapshot lands and does not tick on its own.

While the market is open, the state of the data connection joins the chip. Feed trouble wins over the session colour, because a red ring under a dead connection is the honest reading: the session is going on without you. After the close the chip stays plain whatever the connection says.

Other wordings of the heading line appear when the data is not from today, or has no time at all:

The chain is refreshed by polling, every 5 seconds by default, only while the option market is open and the browser tab is visible. A tab that returns after more than 15 seconds refetches at once. The data feed itself updates about once a minute in session, so every cell changes only when a fresh snapshot lands. After the close, the page keeps the last session. In the example chain used throughout this guide, open interest changes are measured against the session of 17 Sep 2026.

This page has no replay control; earlier values are reached through the ‘Prev’ and change columns.

On a phone

A desktop pointer here means a device that can hover, has a fine pointer and is at least 1024 px wide. On a desktop the call and put sides scroll in opposite directions while the Strike never moves. Everywhere else the book is still three panes, but each side becomes one lane. Columns are packed into pages exactly one lane wide, innermost first, and scrolling rests only on page boundaries. Plain figures take 64 px and a build-up cell 100 px, so two figures share a page and build-up stands alone. LTP is page one, opening beside the Strike. Dots under the Strike heading show the page, up to seven pages; beyond that a thin position bar replaces them. The ATM straddle and expected-move pills are hidden at 768 px and narrower, and call-only and put-only views are a single scroller with the Strike pinned, not paged. Both lanes move together as you swipe, a page at a time.

Customise: Columns, Presets and What Is Remembered

The Customise button sits at the top right of the page, beside the Simple | Advanced switch (on a phone the switch moves inside the panel). It opens one panel. Nothing in it changes the data; it changes only what you see. Every switch applies at once, and the only buttons are Reset and Close. The panel has seven sections, top to bottom, each its own card (a phone adds a Chain view section above them, holding the Simple | Advanced choice): Column preset, View, Strikes, Market line, Display, Columns and Add columns. The figure below draws it from the tool’s own option lists; scroll it, or pick a section to jump to it.

Column preset and View

Market line

Numbers 7 to 11 above. The Price line choice is in both views; the four switches are Advanced only. What each of these looks like on the line, and how it is worked out, is in The Spot Line.

Display

Nine switches in Advanced, seven in Simple. The first one differs by name: Open Interest profile draws a bar; in Simple it reads Open Interest & change and prints plain figures.

Keep Call & Put LTP fixed beside Strike, off and on

Switch off, scrolled to the far end

Switch on, the same positionHover or focus a number to see what it marks

1Call LTP.Stays beside the Strike while the other columns scroll past.3Put LTP.Stays beside the Strike on the other side.

Columns

The columns you have chosen, in order. Both views.

1. 2Count. How many columns you have chosen.
2. 3Remove. The minus takes the column out of the table and puts it back in Add columns.
3. 4Order. The first row sits nearest the Strike, on both sides. So the table reads LTP beside the Strike, then the next, outward.
4. 5Arrows. Move the row one place up or down.
5. 6Drag handle. Drag a row to reorder it, or focus a row and hold Alt with the up or down arrow. Headings on the table itself cannot be dragged.

Add columns

Under the chosen columns the panel lists every other column, grouped, each with a plus. Core leaves 32 to add in Advanced and 27 in Simple. The Advanced panel offers 35 columns in five groups; every one is listed under Five ready-made layouts. Simple offers 30 in the same five groups. Both views.

Simple’s shorter panel

Simple shows the same sections with less in them. It has no column preset, no Straddle table, no market line switches, no PCR switch and no pinning of the prices, and its columns come only from its own catalogue plus its three Simple-only columns.

Five ready-made layouts

A column preset switches a whole set of columns on or off in one tap, and you can still change any of them afterwards. Core is the default for a new browser and is what Reset applies. Each of the others is built around the figures that kind of reader scans for. These describe column preferences. They are not bullish or bearish signals.

Reordering, resetting and what is kept

Columns are reordered only inside Customise, in the Columns section above. Reset applies the Core preset and restores the default order; the last column of the table below says what it does to everything else. Your settings are kept in this browser only: there is no account behind them, so clearing the site’s data forgets them and another browser or device starts afresh.

The Ladder, the Strike Column and the Spot Line

The chain is one row per strike: calls on the left, puts on the right, and the strike itself in a fixed column between them. Strikes run in ascending order down the page. Spot is not a row. It is a line drawn between the two strikes that bracket it, so you can see at a glance which strikes are above the market and which are below.

Reading the ladder

Each side mirrors the other: the first column you choose sits next to the strike on both sides, so LTP is always beside the strike and the one-day build-up sits at the outer edges. Hover or focus a number to see what it marks.

The ladder, with in-the-money cells tintedHover or focus a number to see what it marks

1The Strike columnFixed in the middle. The numeral never moves. Press the heading to hide its badges.21D BuildThe outer column. The wash is stronger when the move is larger and better confirmed.3LTPPremium above, the day’s % change beneath. It sits next to the Strike on both sides.4Level capsulesAt most one above the numeral and one below. Green is support, red is resistance.5The ATM rowThe nearest listed strike to spot, with its own capsule and a tinted Strike cell.6The spot lineA rule between the two strikes that bracket spot, with the live price and the day’s move.7A Call in the moneyIts strike is below spot, so the cell above the line carries the warm tint.8A Put in the moneyIts strike is above spot, so the cell below the line carries the tint. The ATM Call, just below the line, is out of the money and untinted.

1. 1The Strike column Fixed in the middle. The numeral never moves. Press the heading to hide its badges.
2. 21D Build The outer column. The wash is stronger when the move is larger and better confirmed.
3. 3LTP Premium above, the day’s % change beneath. It sits next to the Strike on both sides.
4. 4Level capsules At most one above the numeral and one below. Green is support, red is resistance.
5. 5The ATM row The nearest listed strike to spot, with its own capsule and a tinted Strike cell.
6. 6The spot line A rule between the two strikes that bracket spot, with the live price and the day’s move.
7. 7A Call in the money Its strike is below spot, so the cell above the line carries the warm tint.
8. 8A Put in the money Its strike is above spot, so the cell below the line carries the tint. The ATM Call, just below the line, is out of the money and untinted.

The ATM mark is not the spot line

Two marks are easy to confuse. Pins 5 and 6 above show both. They answer different questions, and in this chain they sit on neighbouring strikes.

The ATM mark is also not the vendor’s forward-anchored ATM strike. That one centres the listed window and feeds the straddle, the expected move and the ATM implied-volatility readouts. The two can differ by one strike.

In the money, at the money, out of the money

One rule shades the ladder: calls are in the money above the line (strikes below spot), puts below it (strikes above spot). The two shaded regions meet at the spot line from opposite corners.

In the tool the same rule is a tint. It is off when the chain opens; the switch is Highlight ITM contracts under Display in Customise.

The Contracts filter in Customise (All, ITM, OTM) blanks cells; it never removes rows. The strike ladder and the spot line stay where they are, so you can still see where spot sits, and the ATM row keeps both of its legs whichever filter is on. Pick a filter to see it.

ITMOTM

How many strikes the page shows

A chain holds every strike the vendor lists for the expiry, here 51. The page draws only the ones around the money, because the strikes that matter to a reader sit near the price. How many it draws is a setting: Customise › Strikes, Strikes each side of ATM. It opens on 10, so 21 rows (22850 to 23850 in the example chain). Use the minus and plus to change it, from 3 up to every strike the data holds (25 each side here); the choice is kept in this browser and Reset returns it to 10. Pick a value to see what it does.

• The ATM row is always a row. The window is centred on the vendor ATM strike, so the ATM straddle, the expected move and the ATM IV do not depend on the setting.
• A marked strike outside the window is still drawn. Max Pain and the Open Interest and volume levels are added as extra rows, with a divider reading “N strikes hidden” where the gap is.
• The Insight card reads all 51 strikes, so its Walls chip can name a strike the ladder does not list; its PCR on screen counts only the listed rows.

Three controls on the ladder itself

• Press Strike. Collapses the badges and level pills and leaves only the numerals.
• Press any other heading. Sorts the rows by that column: high to low, then low to high, then back to strike order. While a sort is on, the spot line and the hidden-strike dividers are removed, and empty values sink to the bottom.
• Return to ATM. Appears when the spot line is more than four rows out of view, and scrolls back to it.

The Spot Line and the Strip Above the Ladder

The line between the two bracketing strikes is the most information-dense row on the page. It always carries the live spot and the day’s move. In the Advanced view it can also carry the at-the-money straddle with its implied volatility, the expected move, and a gauge of where spot sits within the day’s low and high. The Simple view shows the spot line from the ladder above; this is the fuller one.

Anatomy of the strip

The strip is the pill-shaped row drawn on the line between the two strikes that bracket spot. Pick any of its eight parts, left to right.

The Advanced strip, with every Market line option onPick a number to see what it is, how it is made and when it shows

12345678

1ATM Straddle2The IV note3Day Low and the fill4The price5The move6Day High7Exp Move8The bracket

1ATM Straddle

Call plus put at the ATM strike.

How it is made

Call LTP + Put LTP at the vendor ATM strike, both legs traded

On this chain

88.05 + 84.65 = ₹172.70

When it shows

Advanced; on by default; hidden on phones.

2The IV note

ATM implied volatility.

How it is made

Mean of the ATM row’s Call IV and Put IV, printed to one decimal

On this chain

(8.85 + 8.85) ÷ 2 = 8.85, printed 8.8%

When it shows

Advanced; on by default. Stands alone as “ATM IV” if the straddle pill is off.

3Day Low and the fill

Lowest spot of the session; the lighter fill runs up to the price.

How it is made

Lowest of the session’s spot samples and the live tick; the fill ends at (price − low) ÷ (high − low)

On this chain

(23346.40 − 23289.55) ÷ (23386.85 − 23289.55) = 58.4% of the way up

When it shows

Advanced; on by default; needs a range where high exceeds low.

4The price

Cash spot. No caption is drawn.

How it is made

The cash index level from the chain

On this chain

23346.40

When it shows

Always on.

5The move

Points and percent against the previous close.

How it is made

Spot − previous close, and that divided by the previous close

On this chain

23346.40 − 23270.60 = 75.80; 75.80 ÷ 23270.60 = +0.33%

When it shows

Always on. Green for a rise, red for a fall.

6Day High

Highest spot; the fill stops where the price sits in the range.

How it is made

Highest of the session’s spot samples and the live tick

On this chain

23386.85

When it shows

Advanced; on by default; needs a range where high exceeds low.

7Exp Move

0.85 of the straddle: a size, not a forecast.

How it is made

0.85 × the ATM straddle

On this chain

0.85 × 172.70 = 146.795, printed ±146.80

When it shows

Advanced; on by default; hidden on phones.

8The bracket

The straddle’s own breakevens.

How it is made

ATM strike − straddle, and ATM strike + straddle

On this chain

23350 − 172.70 = 23177; 23350 + 172.70 = 23523

When it shows

The straddle’s own breakevens, not the ± figure.

The Price line: Spot or Futures

A separate choice in Customise sets which price the pill carries. The wing pills and the gauge follow it. Choose one to see it.

With Spot, the default, the pill shows the cash index and its move against the previous close, as in the strip above. The ATM mark and the in-the-money tint always follow the cash spot, whichever price line you choose. With Futures only the pill changes:

1The forwardThe option-implied forward for the expiry, 23353.75. It is not a live futures quote. The line moves with the pill: it sits between 23350 and 23400 here.2The chipThe future’s own change on the day when that is known, otherwise the premium over spot: 23353.75 − 23346.40 = +7.35.

1. 1The forward The option-implied forward for the expiry, 23353.75. It is not a live futures quote. The line moves with the pill: it sits between 23350 and 23400 here.
2. 2The chip The future’s own change on the day when that is known, otherwise the premium over spot: 23353.75 − 23346.40 = +7.35.

The expected move is printed four ways

The expected move is printed in four places and the four are not the same range: they differ in the centre they are drawn around (the strike or spot) and in whether the 0.85 is applied. All come from one straddle, 172.70.

The summary card above the chain

Above the table sits a summary card for the whole expiry. Its header row shows the instrument, a verdict pill, and three chips: the put-call ratio (PCR), the walls, and the move. The verdict is a plain reading of positioning over the window you choose and is worded as an indication, never a forecast; it is built from the same open interest and price columns you can see in the ladder. The chips are fixed definitions, and are the quickest way to read the expiry before reading any row. The verdict can be re-read over 5 minutes, 15 minutes or the day: an index opens on 15 min and a stock on Day.

Two of these numbers are the same quantities other guides develop in full: see the guides on put-call ratio and on max pain for what they do and do not say.

Price and Change: Last Price, Change, Previous Close

Four cells describe where the premium is and how far it has moved. They share one baseline, the previous close, and one idea: every change is measured from it. All of them use the 23400 Call of the NIFTY example chain (spot 23346.40, expiry 22 Sep 2026), so the numbers can be followed from card to card.

Simple chain: the LTP column beside the Strike

Day Range and Average Price

High, Low and Average place the last price inside the contract’s own session. They describe the option’s premium, not the index, and they are neutral figures: a price near the high is a fact about the day so far, not a signal. The chain carries no High or Low (those two cells would print “—”), so they are shown with example figures; LTP and Average come from the chain.

The price line: NIFTY’s own day range, not a column

The Quote: Bid, Ask, Sizes and Spread

These five cells are the top of the order book, the only level the chain shows: a buyer who pays the ask meets the sellers’ price, a seller who hits the bid meets the buyers’. Bid and Ask are prices. Bid Size and Ask Size are the quantities waiting at those two prices. Sprd is the gap between the prices. Sizes print in contracts; switch on “Open Interest & volume in lots” in Customise and they print in lots (65 for NIFTY here).

Calls only, Advanced: the five quote cells switched on

The Quote as a Percent of Spot

Four Advanced-only cells express the bid and the ask against the index level, then scale that to a year. They help compare the premium of one strike with another on the same expiry. They are arithmetic on the quote and make no statement about return. All four are off in every preset; add them in Customise. The annualising factor is 365 divided by the days to expiry on the tool’s own clock: here 0.010921 years, 3.99 days, rounded to 4, so the factor is 91.25.

All Sixteen Cells on One Strike

The table repeats each rule with the figures for NIFTY 23400, the row the close-ups of the quote cells are taken from, so that a printed number can be traced to its formula. “Shown in” says where each cell appears: Simple carries the plain price and quote cells; Advanced adds Average, Sprd and the percent family. Three empty marks differ: “—” is no figure, a plain “-” is no size, and 0.00% or 0.0% is a zero that never dashes.

Open Interest: the Profile Cell and Its Bar

Open Interest (OI) is the number of contracts at a strike that are still open. It is a stock, not a flow: a contract bought and sold ten times in a day adds ten to volume but, at most, one to Open Interest. Every open contract has a buyer and a seller, so the figure by itself says nothing about direction. The chain prints it for each strike, separately for the Call and the Put.

What you will see

In Advanced the chain prints one cell per leg. Drawn across the strikes, those cells make a picture of where the market is positioned: Call bars to the left, Put bars to the right, one row per strike.

Anatomy of the cell

Every cell has three lines. The top line holds the figure and, at the far end, the change. The middle line is the bar. The bottom line is the Prev line. Below, the real cell is enlarged with the real figures of two legs: a Put whose Open Interest grew, and a Call whose Open Interest shrank.