Compare flow at each strike

Group executed activity by underlying strike

Strike Flow aggregates selected option prints by strike rather than time. It separates call and put premium or volume with gross/net or side-oriented presentation. This is useful for asking which strikes attracted admitted activity through the selected minute. It is distinct from modeled exposure and dated OI, even though those tools can share the same strike axis and symbol chips.

Choose the measurement

Start with a single underlying family so a strike coordinate remains interpretable.

1. Add Strike Flow from Options → Flow or open its statistics-layout tab.
2. Choose symbol, session, trading date and eligible minute.
3. Set the expiration scope and strike neighborhood.
4. Choose premium or contract volume.
5. Select the available gross/net and call/put presentation.
6. Hover a strike and compare its side contributions with the headline total.

A strike can combine several dated contracts

A family strike aggregate can include different expirations and related roots under the current selection. A large bar is not necessarily one exact option. Gross activity measures admitted execution amounts; net activity applies the selected side convention. Compare a narrow expiration with all expirations to isolate that dimension. Do not compare a premium bar directly with an OI count or a gamma dollar amount simply because both are located at the same strike.

Worked example: activity and inventory diverge

Suppose one strike has the highest executed volume but modest daily OI, while another has large OI and little selected-session activity. The first can trade repeatedly or contain closing and opening transactions; the second can retain outstanding contracts without printing during your filter window. Neither observation proves an error. Inspect the exact expirations and OI date, then compare premium if you want to see whether differences in option price also explain the ranking.

Troubleshoot a mismatch with the tape

Match the cutoff minute and all flow filters. Check whether the tape shows only the newest rows while Strike Flow summarizes a broader admitted range. Consolidated row counts are not raw trade counts. If a strike disappears after narrowing expiry, verify the remaining contracts actually traded under those filters. Report the hovered strike, metric, side presentation and selected scope; a label such as largest bar is not a stable identity.

Align filters, measurements and coverage

Premium, contract volume and trade count measure different things. Ten contracts at a high option price can contribute more premium than many contracts at a low price. Gross premium, signed net premium, call-minus-put drift and an individual time bucket are also different aggregates. Before reconciling tools, match the symbol family, exact roots where relevant, trading date, session, expirations, call/put choice, size and premium thresholds, aggressor filters and any trade-type selection.

A live stream can begin after the session started. Its current rows may be fresh while an earlier prefix is missing. Historical repair can add eligible prints and recompute older totals without representing new live trades. Empty filtered results mean no admitted matching rows, not necessarily no market activity. Read the reported source times, observed bounds and partial-coverage state. For an apparent mismatch, reproduce it with broad filters first, then add one filter at a time and compare the same measurement over the same time interval.

Move from a strike aggregate to exact-contract evidence

Select a strike with a large total and narrow the expiration selection to determine whether one date or several dates contribute. Then inspect call and put sides independently before opening a matching exact contract. A net strike aggregate can combine opposing activity, while the drawer belongs to one root, expiration, right and strike. Its daily volume need not equal the entire filtered strike bar because it is a different population and can use different source/date semantics.

If you display compatible futures price coordinates, retain the original strike identity when performing this drill-down. The plotted coordinate can move under a dated mapping without any trade changing contract. A filter action must still refer to the canonical source strike. In a written interpretation, state both the grouped measure and scope: for example, selected-call premium at one source strike through an eligible minute. That description is more reproducible than saying the biggest level, and it avoids confusing executed flow concentrations with modeled walls or resting futures liquidity at a nearby mapped price.